Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont was a French-born American businessman. He founded the gunpowder manufacturer called E. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company.
Background
Eleuthere Du Pont was born on June 24, 1771, in Paris, the younger son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, celebrated member of the physiocratic school of economists and active participant in French public affairs. Turgot was Irenee's godfather, and gave him his baptismal names. His mother was Nicole Charlotte Marie Louise Le Dee. The boy was brought up on his father's estate, "Bois des Fosses, " adjacent to the village of Egreville, not far from Nemours. He was an indifferent student under private tutors, though his father's reproaches were probably due less to the boy's neglect than to the parent's solicitude. He early proved to be manly, fond of the out-of-doors, energetic, and capable of making up his own mind.
Career
Early in 1788 Lavoisier, his father's close friend, whom Turgot had appointed chief of the royal powder works, took Irenee into the laboratory at Essonne, promising that the boy should have his own post some day. In 1791 Lavoisier lost his direction of the powder works because of the Revolution. His protege left Essonne also, assuming active charge of his father's large printing house in Paris, established earlier in the year to bolster the conservative cause. Father and son suffered several imprisonments, and were in especially grave danger on August 10, 1792, when they went to the Tuileries to defend the king. In 1797 the Jacobins suppressed the publishing business of the Du Ponts, and the father decided the fortunes of the family should be cast in America, where he had acquaintance with important statesmen, and whither his elder son Victor had gone a decade before.
Du Pont de Nemours organized a company which was to exploit land in the valley of the James River in western Virginia, and with Irenee, his wife and three children, and other close relatives, took ship in the American Eagle in September 1799, arriving at Newport, Rhode Island, the first day of the new year. Family moved on to New York, where they received a letter from Thomas Jefferson advising that investment in land be delayed. A part of the company's capital was used to establish a commission business in New York, but this venture was never profitable.
Irenee hit upon a project which offered much more. He chanced to go hunting with a Colonel Toussard; shooting away all their powder, they bought more to finish out the day. Irenee was impressed with its bad quality and high price, and with Toussard's help made a study of the manufacture of powder in America. He concluded that an expertly conducted establishment, even though small (one stamping mill and one wheel mill) would give a profit of $10, 000 a year.
Irenee du Pont returned to France for three months at the beginning of 1801 to secure machinery and designs for the manufacture of powder, and received every assistance from the government works at Essonne. Two-thirds of the necessary capital was subscribed by his father's company. Jefferson had urged that the plant be placed near Washington, but Irenee after investigation decided "the country, the people, the location are all worthless. " He tried without success to buy the powder works of William Lane at Frankford, near Philadelphia, and finally purchased the farm of Jacob Broom, on the Brandywine River four miles from Wilmington, Delaware, where there had formerly been a cotton mill operated by the water power.
Alexander Hamilton sought to be of assistance in the founding of the business by securing favor for it from the Delaware legislature. Irenee du Pont and his family in July 1802 settled in a little log house on the property, and he pushed forward the construction of the mills in spite of many discouragements, particularly in the want of capital. In the spring of 1804 powder was ready for sale, and Jefferson, then president, promised orders from the government. Sales in this year amounted to $10, 000, the next year to $33, 000, and by 1807 were $43, 000. For the first six years the profits, in spite of a bad explosion, averaged about $7, 000 a year. In 1811 the profits were more than $40, 000, and Irenee du Pont and Peter Bauduy, his active associate, invested in a woolen mill near the powder works, to be conducted by Victor du Pont.
The war between the United States and England put the powder business in an assured position. Du Pont was also made a director of the Bank of the United States, to represent the government, and was widely consulted on problems of industry and agriculture. He proved his loyalty to the government by refusing to sell 125, 000 pounds of powder to the South Carolina Nullifiers in 1833 for $24, 000 cash. He insisted, in opposition to Bauduy's wish, that the business should be known by his name, E. I Du Pont de Nemours & Company, which it has continued to this day. His establishment, like some others in America at the period, was semifeudal in the relations between master and workmen, the latter being housed on the property and fed from the farm. He died in Philadelphia of cholera, after a brief illness.
Achievements
Eleuthere Du Pont's company became the largest and principal manufacturer of powder for the government, and supplied large quantities to the American Fur Company and to South American countries. It supplied as much as 40-percent of the powder used by the Union Army forces during the Civil War.
Membership
Du Pont was an active member of the American Colonization Society.
Personality
Irenee du Pont, himself sensitive and taking responsibility seriously, was surrounded by persons nervous and high-strung; he lived, in France and America, under circumstances of care and stress; these things made him often abrupt or downcast, but his extraordinary affection for those near to him comes out in all his letters.
Connections
In 1791, when earning only 1, 260 francs, Du Pont wished to marry Sophie Madelaine Dalmas, daughter of a family beneath his own in station. His father violently opposed the match on every ground, but the young man was determined, fought two duels with another suitor, and was married (November 26), he being twenty and the bride sixteen.
