The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Du Pont

one of the largest groups of finance capital in the United States. Its basis has been the Du Pont family wealth.

In 1802 the founder of the group, the fugitive French royalist E. I. Du Pont (the son of P. S. Du Pont de Nemours), set up a gun-powder factory in Wilmington, Del. The Du Pont group grew rich from its military business during the Anglo-American War of 1812-14, the war of the United States with Mexico in 1846-48, the Civil War, and especially World Wars I and II. Having acquired the patents of the I. G. Farben Industries as a result of the defeat of Germany, Du Pont’s firm became the largest chemical trust of the capitalist world; its assets at the end of 1970 were $3.6 billion. In 1970 the trust’s approximately 96 plants in the USA produced explosives, fertilizers and other chemicals for use in agriculture, synthetic fiber, and military products. It also managed a government plant for the production of atomic weapons. It owns plants in Great Britain, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Norway, Japan, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela.

The Du Pont trust subsidizes the scientific work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and uses the results for its own purposes. It controls one of the largest rubber companies, Uniroyal (United States Rubber until 1967; assets of $1.3 billion in 1970), which owns tire and other plants in the USA and other countries and rubber plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. It controls Remington Arms and North American Rockwell Corporation, companies that produce military weapons. In conjunction with the Morgan group it controls General Motors, the largest automobile trust in the world (assets of $14.2 billion in the USA in 1970).

The basic financial operations of the group are conducted through the banking monopoly of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, but Du Pont also has its own small banks—the Wilmington Trust Company and the Delaware Trust Company. In the mid-1960’s the controlled assets of the Du Pont group were valued at $20 billion, and the personal fortune of the members of the Du Pont family at $4.7 billion. The group finances fascist and semifascist organizations in the USA.

REFERENCE

Zorin, V. Nekoronovannye koroli Ameriki, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1968.

M. IU. BORTNIK

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