Unusual duPont Mascot
Image by fossiled
I accidentally erased the long, detailed backstory, which is very interesting, and which I will put back this evening after chores…..check back because the duPont story is fascinating, and it does bear on the gun mascot.
OK, done with chores and dinner,…….now you all think of duPont as a paint company, for street artists who want to spray their projects themselves……like the local rail cars etc. BUT….drum roll …….the massive duPont fortune came originally from …..Armaments.
Pierre Samuel du Pont, (born January 15, 1870, Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.—died April 5, 1954, Wilmington), manufacturer and the LARGEST American munitions producer during World War I.
Pierre Samuel du Pont was the great-great-grandson and namesake of the French economist, whose son, Éleuthère Iréné du Pont, began the family’s fortunes in America in 1802. Graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890, the young du Pont joined his family’s firm, E.I. du Pont de Nemours Powder Co. He was made assistant superintendent at the Carney’s Point, New Jersey, plant, where he helped produce a smokeless shotgun powder. The family enterprise went through a consolidation in 1902, creating one company, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., out of almost 100 firms. Du Pont became its treasurer and then its president from 1915 to 1919, when he became chairman of the board, a post he held until 1940. He saw the firm’s production expand from 12 million pounds of munitions yearly before the war to more than 1 MILLION POUNDS EACH DAY at the height of production during World War I. Before the war ended, the du Pont company had sold nearly 1.5 BILLION (with a B) pounds of explosives to the government and its allies.
So a large gun is an appropriate mascot for a duPont car!
DuPont was founded in 1802 by Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, using capital raised in France and gunpowder machinery imported from France. He started the company at the Eleutherian Mills, on the Brandywine Creek, near Wilmington, Delaware, two years after du Pont and his family left France to escape the French Revolution and religious persecution against Huguenot Protestants. The company began as a manufacturer of gunpowder, as du Pont noticed that the industry in North America was lagging behind Europe. The company grew quickly, and by the mid-19th century had become the largest supplier of gunpowder to the United States military, supplying one-third to one-half the powder used by the Union Army during the American Civil War.[5] The Eleutherian Mills site is now a museum and a National Historic Landmark.
In 1914, Pierre S. du Pont invested in the fledgling automobile industry, buying stock in General Motors (GM). The following year he was invited to be on GM’s board of directors and would eventually be appointed the company’s chairman. The DuPont company would assist the struggling automobile company further with a million purchase of GM stock. In 1920, Pierre S. du Pont was elected president of General Motors. Under du Pont’s guidance, GM became the number one automobile company in the world.
