The DuPonts - Profits and Patriotism in America at War
MUNRO, DAVID A.
The DuPonts — Profits and Patriotism in America at War DuPont Escapes Trial For 6 U. S. Indictments By DAVID A. MUNRO This is a banner year in duPont company history. The arms manufacturers and...
...The chief then-apparent effect of the restraints was to prevent the production of fertilizer...
...The Nazis and the Japanese are doing this now in behalf of their "New Order" and "Co-Prosperity Sphere...
...The president of the steamship company is already on the WSA as his own attorney and has, of course, the inside track when the decision is made in Sam's case...
...It is tempting to assume that the "Government"—whoever, whatever that may mean—is probably'giving careful consideration to these things...
...The men waiting for the calling out of jobs, gathered round us to kibitz...
...I AST of the indictments and undoubtedly the most significant were those returned on August 10, 1942, against duPont and Rohm & Haas Company, naming also as co-conspirators Rohm It Haas, G.m.b.H., of Darmstadt, Germany...
...would not retreat The National Maritime Union was quite willing to scuttle wages and conditions in favor of aid-to-Russia, a one-track-mind policy which it has since continued to follow...
...There is a spurious patriotism that gambles on the public nostalgia for a past that never was...
...Recently it was announced by the Department of Justice at the dyes tuffs case that it "has been postponed indefinitely due to war...
...There won't be any chance to re-weave the pattern in one place after we have finished the war in another...
...The duPonts found it obviously a product to play with and not to allow to run wild price-wise...
...You can hardly expect Sam to remember his papers when he jumps from a sinking ship...
...Sam has another beef...
...find us with a set of facts that may make the originally attractive plan impossible, just as a war may start under circumstances that may make the theoretically most attractive plan for a military campaign obsolete...
...It will be mortgaged in one part of the world, as we continue to wage the fight in another...
...The night before "|he> reached home port, they were torn wide open...
...of L. to be exact (including all departments...
...We con only af hievt- it th*-n, if-we clarify our purpose now...
...chief role of the technician—such as tbe diplomat, the' international lawyer and the economist—is the elaboration of the purpose once it has been democratically adopted...
...Far from it The postwar world will not be Utopian...
...and wanted to make sure that I was going "to give the union credit" He told me about bis woman too...
...That captain, he saved us later by keeping up our morale—he kept telling us we were only fifteen miles from land...
...Of this case, it has been agreed by the Anti-Trust Division that it "will not be brought on for trial without further consultation, pursuant to request of the War Department" On June 26 a series or related indictments were brought against duPont and various associated chemical companies for fixing prices and restricting production of chromic acid, formic acid, sulphuric acid and .muriatic acid...
...Even I prayed in the lifeboat Everybody prayed...
...The trials were ordered "postponed until altar.Iba war pursuant to agreement made with the Secretary of the Navy sad approved by the President" There has been no showing that the agreements which prevented all production of these plastics by other American manufacturers and which limited American production to what Rohm A Haas would permit, have yet been abrogated...
...I did, but I had pronilied Sam not to forget his union...
...Several of the shipowners are serving the government as $1 a year men (but profits are very good this year...
...tries to take care of as many of these men as possible, but new legislation is needed-No, Sam's union, is not having an easy...
...The government through the War Shipping Administration has requisitioned all private ships and now dietates -where they are to go and what' cargo'they' are to carry, the shipowners continue to make the profits, the merchant marine to man the ships, with the exception of the gun crew which is Navy...
...I never knew nothing else...
...Peace planning should proceed in .the same manner This is apparently very hard to swallow for some groups...
...In neither case was there a showing that either German or Japanese domestic production had been restricted...
...Those against whom the conspiracy was charged were the identical German, Japanese and British interests who appeared in the "fertilizer" case...
...All that is known of these indictments is that "the Government moved for postponement of trial" and that this motion was "granted...
...Because*of the shortage of men, the government has organized^ttraining schools for merchant seamen...
...Goase-otep-ping, regimentation, propaganda^ bloodlust and racial I hatred are .Vacs' weapons—let us beware of a form of defeatism that tells us that we can only win this war by adopting our enemy's tactics and ideas...
...The pattern will be set in these day-to-day improvisations which will create their own roots, their i own vested interests, their own loyalties...
...We refuse to believe * that a free^America has to stoop to lying propaganda as an answer and a defense gainst the lying : propaganda of our enemies...
...We need it also to convince a world which remembers our performance last time, that there will not be another Harding administration...
...We refuse to believe that we must work up a hatred for our enemies to build a world according to our ideals...
...In a democracy this is not a matter ?or specialists...
...Winston Churchill who speaks with considerable authority because of his vast experience in both wars and his participation in the last peace settlement, wrote after the last war that "those who can win a war well, can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace, would never have won the war...
...The men are forced to wait until their skipper returns and makes out new company records before they can ship out again...
...The fact remains that the cessation of hostilities may...
...We managed to win the last -war but in spite of the .' fact that we,had a President and a majority in the Senate to back up our post-war plans of 1919, we lost . the peace because a determined minority was better f prepared for reaction and destruction than the majority which hadn't paid much attention to domestic politics while the war was being fought It is a false picture of history to think of winning the war as one chapter, and of winning the -peace as · another, quite distinct and separate...
...the' "black gang" for the engine rooms...
...He - took part in the long fight that finally brought the sea-' men a minimum wage, better shipboard conditions and protection through collective bargaining...
...But by duPont's only wartime agreement relative to this "plastic glass," complete domination of how moth America could produce was put in the hands of Rohm A Haas Company—whose connection with the German Rohm ? Bai», G.m.b.H., of Darmstadt, ought to have been as clear to citiHt Lammot duPont as a sheet of methyl methacrylate...
...And yon might argue that at this time defendant Lammot duPont, who was also criminally indicted in both these cases, did not know that the then new Hitler government planned to wage war on tie United States...
...T*ODAY Sam's union—the Atlantic and Gulf District ¦ * of the Seafarers*' International Union of North America, A.F...
...But all is not so rosy as it might seem...
...The best way to strengthen the old tradition of a spontaneous and self-reliant public Opinion—which is, of course, the very core of the free and democratic society we are defending—is to preserve the process of free discussion in these matters...
...Sam and his union brothers get the highest overtime pay in the industry (90 cents an hour...
...TpRUTH is ou< "secret weapon...
...The clarification of our purpose and the growth of public support behind it, is a matter of the widest possible participation .Tbe...
...But the agreements had been made with and through the international cartel dominated by the Stickstoff-Syndikat, which was the trade-association mouthpiece for I. G. Farben Industrie...
...Reaction Fights Post-War Planning With Hopes for Return to 'Normalcy' By Marry D. Gfdeonse ?\0 yoa believe — as a New York editor pot it— ^ that thinking about the post-war world and postwar planning is "solemn guff by professors on how to cook a rabbit before yon catch it...
...In a dictatorship this would be a matter for the Propaganda Ministry...
...Fireman-oiler is my racket" he said...
...The most we can buy with a victory is the right to have something to say about the kind of a world we would like to see emerge in a period in which one world is dying and another is struggling to be born...
...We shall need that wie4om when the fighting stops...
...A general staff that is worth its salt will therefore make plans—and careful plans, painstaking in detail, anticipating all possible enemy reaction—for all the types of war that might conceivably arise...
...Twenty-six men cramped in a lifeboat for ejlght and a halfdays...
...The strategy for winning the peace is not unlike the strategy for winning the war...
...By themselves they provide a fairly accurate picture of the aims and methods of the famed Wilmington corporation...
...The problem of the stranded seamen has become acute...
...It is obvious what a blow Naval conscription of the entire merchant marine would be to the maritime Labor unions...
...These indictments concerned the so-called "acrylic products," but this strange word means plastics to a chemist and with it are bound up some of the chances for survival of America in war as well as much of the future of America in peace...
...Now he's .loyal to the S.I.U...
...In fact, he seems to have bees not unwilling to let the other side dominate matters...
...This time the products whose production within U.S.A...
...It would be foolish for a general staff to prepare plans for just one kind of war...
...When he was torpedoed, he had to work his way home, and he didn't get paid for it either...
...This is no aca' demic theory but a simple summary of our tragic ' national experience after the last.war...
...We need such participation to develop the national purpose, to develop the moral "growing points," if you please, and to clarify-all possible alternatives...
...It suggested a shipping pool under government control which would eliminate the union hiring hall (closed shop) according to the rotary shipping list...
...19M, to August 10, 1942...
...Their pay ceases as soon as they land here...
...There is no road back to isolation and "normalcy" that is not a road back to another World War...
...It is a far more important truth that it will be political dynamite for our.entire civilization ' to trust to drift, ignoring all past experience...
...The evidence points toward duPpnt'e having followed its restrictions upon the light metals ? planes with restrictions upon the light plastics for planes...
...Other acrylics are used as the bonding substance in safety glass, finishes for leather and as intermediates in the manufacture of synthetic rubber...
...It is similar to tbe symbolism of Hitler's Third Reich which in its very terminology calls up the memory of an Idealized Teutonic history...
...Thus, indicted conspirator duPont seems to have been more than just an isolationist during the period from November 22...
...The arms manufacturers and auto magnates who call themselves E. j. duPont de Nemours and Company have crawled out of six criminal indictments by one legal device and another, have completely escaped taking any part of the rap loaded on the head of Standard of New Jersey for preventing the growth of synthetic rubber production in the U.S.A...
...stewards' gang or cooks, waiters, porters, etc., 20,000 strong on the east coast alone) has a tough job on its hands...
...But he did nothing to denounce the terms of the "conspiracy" up to the moment of his indictment, eight months'and three days after Pearl Harbor...
...The room was smoky...
...The question of decent quarters gives way to the need of getting- as many men across as possible...
...And that these people have therefore apparently learned nothing from our recent experience about the need for preparedness, about the need for thinking through alternatives that may be open to us—or that may be forced upon us?, _' Our own history tells us that it is harder to prepare intelligently for peace than for war...
...If we win, the victory will not give us our kind of world...
...It charged duPont, Allied Chemical A Dye Corp., The Barrett Company, Semet-Solvay Company and The Solvay Process Company with an artful series of domestic and international agreements to boost prices of nitrates and to restrict production thereof...
...Or do yon agree With a Republican state platform in one of our Middle Western states, which I read last week, and which avoided all mention of post-war programs because the subject was considered to be premature until the war wad over ? Doesn't it seem strange that the same persons who hold these views, refused to prepare for possible war until the war had come to us...
...Merchant seamen have been deferred, but new they are threatened with induction unless they join the Naval Reserve...
...He feels that the shipowner is still the shipowner—it is hard to understand that the shipowner is now the government—and you can't bargain with the Government...
...Mitsui ? Company and Imperial Chemical were likewise parties to the agreement...
...If they have not succeeded within that period, they must take any job offered by the government, and the government of necessity usually directs them to non-union ships because they are the most difficult to man...
...Sam Martin and his buddies are waiting for jobs...
...lend-lease legislation and our draft legislation—passed .before we were attacked—made us a moire formidable adversary when the attack finally came than we would have been if we had not developed our industries to , support our later allies at an earlier stage, and had we made no preparations in advance...
...This agreement has continued in effect to the date of the presentation of this indictment...
...I do not even believe that it will be very secure or stable...
...The emergency conditions of recent years have given us a tendency to lean too much on Washington...
...The S.U.P...
...On May 14 of this year a grand jury returned an indictment against almost the same defendants for almost the same kind of plot...
...was curtailed were dyes tuffs...
...We'd better see to it that our domestic political picture doesn't resemble the 1910 pattern of American politics too closely for the comfort of those who will have sons of draft age in I960...
...For its part, duPont administered its responsibilities in this field as if it were indifferent to the fortunes of America at war and unconcerned with her future in peace...
...It will merely give us an opportunity—which we would not have in case of defeat—to work out our own destiny in a frank process of experimentation...
...Everything looked pretty good, but if Sam gets a berth on a ship which is requisitioned by the Army Transport Service, this is what can happen: It's the job of the Army and Navy transport to get the necessary manpower to whatever place they.are* needed most Sam didn't know when he signed up on this ship that the army was going to take over...
...the "deck gang' or sailors...
...an unsympathetic or uninformed public opinion...
...Then again, when he signed up he knew, that at the end of a long voyage, if he were left at a port more than fifteen miles from his place of embarcation, he would continue to be paid until he reached home port...
...PHE present grew out of the past—it cannot even be * understood without studying the past The future will grow out of the present—and we can help to determine the future by the direction we give to the present If we refnaKvto give thought to the future ¦ which may grow out of our present—either because of ulterior motives of a political sort or because of a thoroughly understandable pre-occupation with the immediate challenge of the enormous peril in which we find ourselves—then we are really deciding in favor 'of another type of post-war planning...
...If they sign on a ship the chances are ten to one that >¦ the President of that particular line is an official in the War Shipping Administration...
...Furthermore, any decision handed down by the WSA is binding and not subject to appeal...
...So yen see, Sam's union has a tough fight on its bands...
...Most ideological isolationists favored a strong defense prior to Pearl Harbor, all of them favored a strong defense after Pearl Harbor...
...Lawyers for the Anti-Trust Division have learned the power of duPont...
...If history is a seamless web, the future Willi be mortgaged then and there...
...People all over the world wonder whether we will treat Mr...
...If they join the Naval Reserve, the Navy has the authority to draft them at any time...
...and the S.I.U...
...QHORTLY after the indictments were returned, the duPont power manifested itself in the Navy Department and on Penntyl*«ni» Avenue...
...They may know about the methods of achieving a common purpose when that common purpose Clearly exists...
...Such groups may have their minds all set on one pet idea, and they may be impatient with the idea of a careful study of alternative notions...
...The first indictment, which waa really split two ways, was returned on September 1, 1939, the week war was declared...
...SAM remembers the victory of the S.I.U...
...and won out In May 1942, the government froze existing contracts for the duration, and because of the strict military discipline necessary in War-time, the unions agreed that there were to be no union meetings aboard ships...
...About how good ' it was to come home, with your . pay added up after six months, a hundred a month, plus a monthly $100 bonus, plus bonuses for entering particularly dangerous ports—and to spend it in a month or two, and ship out again when ,: your number comes up on the rotary list Now he feels it's better to go out than ever, because he knows he's doing his bit What's a little thing like a torpedoing...
...time of it these days...
...If Hitler wins, that question will be answered by" the Axis...
...It would "cook up" the right idea, develop the radio and press "angles,' and then "enlighten" the people...
...Sureyou're scared," Sam said, "but that's'nothing...
...at last clutching something—to discover the captain's half-dead body, to finally, still holding the half-dead man, be picked up by .the' singly surviving lifeboat That's not much of a memory for a man like Sam Martin...
...Chief of the acrylics ia methyl methacrylate, now used in bomber noses, gun turrets, cockpit enclosures, etc...
...They will be based on such public agencies and policies as then exist...
...It may well be one of the most dangerous temptations of the present to picture the future in rosy and optimistic terms...
...J4?tots monotonous," one of them said, "you don't tjant to" hear any more, do you...
...and the famed LG...
...History is a seamless web—there are no separate and water-tight compartments of time...
...We ore firm in the belief that t war fought from deep conviction anchored In truth and reason, is not only a more promising introduction to the peas-war reconstruction that will follow the war, but also ? war that will be harder to meet with the traditional weapons of the Anis...
...That is to say: we are then in fact planning to leave the future to drift Drift has given us two World Wars in twenty-five years...
...There is no road back to the pre-war statue quo that is not a road back to the precise conditions out of which the present war grew...
...MOW these are not problems for Washington, for some public official who is likely to be swamped with the detail of his own immediate job, and who, not infrequently, is likely to be profoundly impressed with the wisdom of "leaving well enough alone" when he is urged to get people interested in something that is not immediately on the agenda...
...To go back to "where we came from," is to go back where the war gradually became inevitable...
...But remember, it's Sam and his buddies who deliver the goods to Murmansk, to Liverpool, to Capetown, to Sues, the Persian Gulf, and down to Sydney in Australia...
...His working hours are longer...
...They saw eye-to-eye with the German concerns...
...It is very difficult to collect back pay without papers...
...It's Up to us now to see that they are right...
...The majority of those men had similar stories to tell...
...On November 22, 1939, according to the indictment, "defendants Rohm it Haas Company and duPont entered into a written agreement providing for further cross-licensing...
...Roosevelt as we treated Mr...
...lined up a united front of all unlicensed maritime unions except the N.M.U...
...The case was disposed of by the usual legal legerdemain of · "consent decree," which is to say that the court looks the other way while an indicted criminal is metamorphosed into a civil defendant, then instructs the genteel defendant to go and sin no more—bat avoids making any mention of crime...
...A memory of a ship, broken in two like a matchstick, of -searching dark icy waters, without a lifebelt to find a floating object to hang on to...
...Suppose he beefs a bit but decides to stay, and ha usually does...
...It is also true, however, that our record last time—I mean the manner in which we refused to back up Wood row Wilson when the fightng had come to an end—has created a very great psychological handicap for our public spokesmen...
...However, in neither the text nor the tone of the indictments handed down by the grand jurors on August 10th was there indication of treasonable acts or motivation on the part of either duPont or the "American" firm of Hohm * Haas Cearpany...
...L...
...What does all this mean to Sam Martini It means that if he has any beefs about the way the line is chiseling on union wages and conditions, he must appeal to the union and the union in turn takes it to the War Shipping Administration...
...Now he has no such guarantee...
...Besides he knows that although his ? wages have been decreased, the shipowners are still making fat profits...
...On graduation the men are given two weeks to get a job...
...In a free society this initiative and momentum should arise in the discussion of war objectives among the people themselves...
...Bam remembers when there wasn't any union...
...A gold wrist-- watch glistened on his left hand, a gold bracelet shone on his right His small dark eyes twinkled, a deep scar creased his left temple...
...And.what of course was involved, though it was tactfully unmeationed in the legal proceed, ings, was relative national nitrogen production for the manufacture of explosives...
...The result—Sam is no longer getting union conditions...
...If and when we win the war, we'll probably win it by stages...
...and the Sailors Union of Pacific in the May, 1942, conference, called in Washington by the Maritime War Emergency Board (the little war labor board set up by presidential order in 1941...
...So were a good number of the men, but most of them are anxious to ship out again...
...They moved far more cautiously than in the ease of Sterling Products...
...There is an understandable reluctance to open up ' a -chapter of discussion that is so full of sore memories of past disagreements and mistakes...
...On June 4 of this year duPont and American friends were indicted for criminal conspiracy to control the market of "commercial explosives...
...The S.I.U...
...Drift will almost certainly repeat the pattern of the past—and a refusal to think about our long-run purpose is therefore really a proposal to have another World War when our present soldiers and sailors have sons old enough to be drafted...
...Its an odd wind that has blown shipowners John E. Cushing of the American Hawaiian Line, A. E. King of the Isthmian, Ralph' Keating of United Fruit Wilcox of the United Fruit Company right into membership of the, War Shipping, Administration, headed by Rear Admiral Emory S. Land (of "shoot them at sunrise", fame...
...These improvisations will be the crucial process...
...It is true it may be politically dangerous for"- some people to discuss their post-war ideas—which is one .reason why they .would like to see all of us silent on the subject now...
...Yes, Sam was torpedoed on his last trip...
...The construction of the new highway 4hO organization of the peace will depend upon our wisdom...
...The Army recognizes the 8-hour day, but so many classifications of work are fisted as "necessary for safety of cargo and crew"—the seamen refer to this work as "time for Jesus"—that overtime pay has been drastically reduced...
...About 1,600 men in the union have been torpedoed since the War started, and many did not get the first-class passage back they are entitled to in their** contracts...
...They have now become, in the eyes of WPB, blameless patriots in the struggle to enforce the Four Freedoms everywhere...
...Free men and women can live in the challenge of the present without these drugs of false history or selected facts...
...Tne sea is my life...
...Following a dicker between OPM's'John Lord ? "Brian and Attorney-General Robert Jackson, the consent decree was signed on May 29, 1941...
...There was no showing in the indictment that these defendants were allied in any way to foreign interests in this particular conspiracy...
...They will be based on such ideas and plans as then prevail...
...A headline in the October 15 issue of the Seafarers Log reads: "Navy Threatens Seamen With Bayonets for Your Tools...
...The Long Voyage Home Seamen Fight Enemy Subs and Dollar-Minded Shipowners By ELIZABETH CHARNEY IN the hiring hall of the Seafarers' International * Union at 2 Stone Street Sam Martin, for thirty »· years a seaman, sat down on a decrepit leather sofa, rubbed his weather-beaten tattooed bands, and told me his story...
...Whether the staff would ever be allowed to fight the war in that particular way, would depend on many factors, including the military skill and imagination of the enemy...
...Wilson—and they are inclined to accept our pronouncements at a heavy discount for this reason...
...DuPont had a leading part in creating the shortage up to September 1, 1939...
...Defendant duPont agreed to- restrict its production (of methyl methacrylate cast sheets, used in bombers) to one-half of those produced by defendant Rohm t Haas Company...
...Wax and peace are interwoven from -peace to war, and back again from war to peace...
...Imperial Chemicals Industries, Ltd...
...The sober fact, however, is that the government, as a good democratic government, is extremely reluctant to "put its neck out" too far ahead of clearly expressed public opinion, and, secondly, that the government itself is far too busy with the process of streamlining our war effort It is furthermore historically clear that the people who are good at waging a war, are not necessarily as good at preparing a peace...
...In other words, even from the standpoint of their' immediate political and military effectiveness, our poet-war program must have behind it a convincing measure of public endorsement, and this can only arise in a campaign of public discussion...
...An interesting angle of this story is that the "plastic plane" experiments which were often mentioned prior to ,the war ???» to have dropped oat of eight You should add this to the known fact that duPont participated in the famed Nazi-sponsored agreementa by which aluminum production was restricted in this country and by which magnesium, farmed out by the Nasi* te duPont A Dow, was all but killed...
...Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft...
...This may take weeks...
...We are not even interested in preserving "the American way of life" if that phrase means the preservation of America as it was in 1939—end if this is not what the slogan means, the only fruitful subject for discussion would be the distinction of the things that are worth preserving or restoring from the things that had better be forgotten as a part of the past that helped to bring on the present...
...This is hard for Sam to understand because he'is used to the procedure of collective bargaining with the shipowner...
...While Sam understands that the needs of War transportation come first, he also knows that the Army Transport Service is directed on the East Coast by Jack Franklin (former President of the anti-union United States Lines) and people like the West Coast's ?. C. Plant (former official of the anti-union American-Hawaiian Line...
...There will be no general peace conference...
...Almost like a character out of a sea yarn, -Sam said: "I went to sea when I was a kid of 19...
...v...
...No one who remembers the influence of Wood row Wilson's Fourteen Points inside Germany, can deny that such a clarification of war aims can have the greatest possible military importance...
...If a free America is to be preserved in a free world, we shall therefore need a program that goes beyond the daydreaming of those fellow-citizens who are merely homesick for the past...
...The United Seamen's Service, which is the sailor's U.S.O...
...Let*a take a look at the duPont indictments in the order in which Federal grand juries returned them...
...Such wishful thinking may simply promote the type of disillusioned "morning after" sentiment when it becomes clear that winning the war is merely the first— even if essential—step, and that winning the peace is not an easy road back to some familiar picture of the past but rather a challenging, difficult and morally exhausting process over the years that will follow the actual cessation of hostilities...
...We must convince the world, including our enemies, that we mean it this time, and that our governmental statements are not likely to be disavowed by...
...Id the same way the things we do now, while at war, will help to determine the framework of the post-war settlement that will follow our victory...
...Such an, opportunity exists again this time—in some ways the ruthlessness of our enemies has increased their vulnerability in the war of propaganda...
...T^H ? Navy has become somewhat of a bogey to Sam * and his fellow seamen...
...TA/IY point is not that we should prepare blueprints "* now for the utopia to come...
...Peace is not established by winning the war...
...According to the indictments, duPont first agreed to a limitation upon the production of acrylics on October 30, 1934...
...His wages and living standards are lowered, because the protection of a union contract has been -withdrawn...
...Winning the war merely clears the path...
...and Harry Lundeberg's S.U.P...
...True conservatism in a time of unparalleled speed of social and scientific change, will stress the need for truth as the first weapon of freedom, and for continuous reconstruction in die light of emerging experience—at home as well as abroad...
...There may be war in the Far East long after war may have ceased in Europe—and we will therefore of necessity be improvising peace settlements while we are still waging th* war elsewhere...
...On the six months' trip, during which they crossed the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, they never so much as sighted the enemy...
...They will set the pattern for the future...
Vol. 25 • November 1942 • No. 45
