Background
Walter Samuel Carpenter Jr. was born on January 8, 1888 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States; the son of Walter S. Carpenter, an engineering contractor, and Belle Morgan.
Walter Samuel Carpenter Jr. was born on January 8, 1888 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States; the son of Walter S. Carpenter, an engineering contractor, and Belle Morgan.
After attending public schools in his hometown, Carpenter enrolled in Wyoming Seminary, a prep school, in Kingston, Pennsylvania, in 1902. Following graduation in 1906, he entered Cornell University, where he majored in civil engineering. Carpenter's older brother, R. R. M. ("Ruly") Carpenter, was working for Du Pont and helped the younger Carpenter to find summer jobs with the firm during each of his first three years at Cornell. In the fall of 1909 the brothers met at the Cornell-Penn football game in Philadelphia, at which time Ruly told his younger brother about an immediate opening Du Pont had in Chile. Walter Carpenter left Cornell, never to return to complete his degree.
Carpenter began full-time work for Du Pont as treasurer of its nitrate company in Chile. The Chilean nitrate market was very competitive, but Carpenter did well obtaining the immense quantities Du Pont needed. After two years in Chile he was rewarded with assignment to the firm's development department in Wilmington, Delaware. The development department was a good place to be just when Du Pont began its diversification, during which it shifted from being almost exclusively an explosives manufacturer and became a diverse chemical company. Big changes began following the purchase of the firm by the "three cousins, " Pierre, Irenee, and Lammot du Pont, and its division in the aftermath of the first Du Pont antitrust case.
In 1917, as the United States entered World War I and the market for Du Pont explosives soared, Carpenter was made head of the development division. By 1919 he was a vice-president and the firm's youngest director and executive committee member to that time. Pierre, Irenee, and Lammot du Pont were reshaping the venerable family firm during these years and Carpenter was one of the key people they counted on as they moved forward. His role in making the modern Du Pont Company was significant because the firm's development division, which he headed, was literally creating new chemicals and new products, such as ammonia derivatives, rayon, celluloid, and lacquers, each of which became the departure point for major new families of chemicals and production divisions that spurred the company's growth. Carpenter was at the center of the firm's research effort at the crucial moment. In 1922, Carpenter was elected treasurer and served as chairman of the finance committee and vice-chairman of the executive committee. As head of the finance committee he continued Du Pont's high level of investment in research and promoted the construction of new plants for new products even during the Great Depression. In 1917 he was one of a group of Du Pont executives elected to the board of General Motors after the firm made a major investment in the automaker and served until 1959, after the second Du Pont antitrust case. In May 1940, as the United States geared up to enter World War II, Carpenter was elected president of the firm, succeeding Lammot du Pont, who became chairman. He was the first president of the firm since its founding in 1802 who was not a member of the Du Pont family. Carpenter's presidency was marked by Du Pont's participation in the American war effort, which required production levels never imagined in peacetime. The company did an excellent job under his leadership of meeting these wartime challenges. Du Pont designed, built, and operated fifty defense plants during the war, and expanded production in its prewar plants. One major accomplishment of Carpenter's presidency was Du Pont's design and operation of the Hanford Engineering Works, which played a key role in the development of the atomic bomb by manufacturing plutonium in quantities never before imagined. After leading the company through reconversion to a peacetime economy, Carpenter stepped down as president in favor of Crawford Greenwalt in 1948 and then served fourteen years as chairman of the board. In 1962 he accepted the rarely bestowed title of honorary chairman, which he held until 1975, when he chose not to stand for reelection to the board, ending a sixty-five-year career with Du Pont.
Carpenter was a strong proponent of owner management of large industrial firms, seeing it as one of the great strengths Du Pont had drawn on over its long history. He felt that managers should have a stake in the company beyond their salaries by becoming major stockholders, a point he made frequently in speeches and interviews and in a well-known letter to a stockholder who had written suggesting that Carpenter and other top managers take pay cuts to increase stockholder dividends.
He served for a time on the board of the Sloan Foundation. He served as a trustee of both Wyoming Seminary and Cornell University and contributed generously to both, especially Cornell, although almost always doing so anonymously. He also served as a trustee of the University of Delaware during its period of greatest growth and was a generous benefactor of that institution as well.
Carpenter died at his home in Wilmington.
He was the first president of the firm since its founding in 1802 who was not a member of the Du Pont family. During his long career he served on the boards of General Motors, the Wilmington Trust Company, the Diamond State Telephone Company, and the Du Pont family holding company, Christiana Securities.
Carpenter was known by his peers as a thoughtful man who was able to grasp key points quickly and to see future needs and opportunities clearly. His personal modesty hid a powerful intellect.
Carpenter married Mary Wootten, to whom he had been introduced by Irenee du Pont, on June 3, 1914; the couple had three children.
