DuPont and the Irish

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, history, historiography, dupont company, irish, immigrants, gunpowder, sociology

Reading Black Powder, White Lace: The du Pont Irish and Cultural Identity in 19th-Century America, 20th Anniversary Edition, by Margaret M. Mulrooney, I obtained a view into the lives of Irish immigrants and their descendants, not only in northern Delaware, where I now live, but in the industrial Northeast of the United States. I knew I would find no ancestors or even cousins among the gunpowder workers and other Irish employees at the du Pont facilities along the Brandywine River. I am about 1/4 Irish, but my Irish ancestors, upon arriving in the young U.S., made their ways to New Hampshire, Virginia and Pennsylvania. One family did settle in Salem, New Jersey, right across the Delaware River from New Castle, Delaware.

The book's first edition of 2002 was published about the time of the Dupont Company's 200th anniversary celebration. It was an expansion of the author's PhD dissertation at the University of Delaware. The 20th Anniversary Edition is updated with a little new material; the original scholarship is sound and has been supplemented but not reworked. The Introduction and first chapter ("Mutual Interests") summarize the history of the du Pont family, the original company founded by E. I. du Pont in 1802, and the managerial attitude and practices of Mr. du Pont and his successors during the 19th Century.

The title "Mutual Interests" introduces the vital distinction between the du Ponts and the leaders of many other industries in the area. Being of the French aristocratic tradition, yet with originally humble origins, Pierre S. du Pont and his sons, particularly Éleuthère I. and Victor M., had a keen sense of noblesse oblige, the "obligation of power", that induced an attitude of caring for their employees not just as paid labor but as quasi-family members. Some trace of that still remained when I was working for "Uncle Dupie", from which I retired in 2013: I saw on my manager's bookshelf the title How to Recognize and Reward Employees. This same manager was willing to explain business terms that I didn't understand well, and once said, "You don't have to like it, you just have to do it." That sounds harsher than it was, and I was a great fan of this manager, and most of the managers I had during 30 years with the company.

In the environment of the gunpowder yards of the four connected properties that made up the E. I. du Pont de Nemours company throughout most of the 1800's, Irish immigrants thrived. Though the work was dangerous, a point possibly over-emphasized by Dr. Mulrooney, the company's generous caretaking—free or low-cost housing, widows' pensions, higher pay than the norm, company-held savings accounts, and apprenticeship programs, for example—made "the powder" an attractive livelihood.

The company had initially hired mainly French-speaking immigrants, but wave after wave of immigrants from Ireland soon led to near-dominance of the labor market by the Irish. While most histories of Irish immigration to America focus on those who fled the potato famine of 1845-1852, the workforce at du Pont was roughly half Irish even in the 1820's and 1830's. It is on these people that the book initially focuses.

Irish were discriminated against in 19th Century America, because they were visibly "not English", predominantly Catholic, and poorly educated. However, E. I. du Pont soon found that the men could learn as fast as anyone, and their performance overcame his early reluctance to hire Irish workers. He had a practice of all new hires working as laborers for two years so he could assess their attitudes and work habits. Promotion to work as a powderman resulted in a significant increase in pay. He also favored married men for their stability and likelihood of a better attitude toward work.

In spite of discrimination, the Irish mostly knew they had it better than they'd had it in Ulster, where most were from. Consider: prior to the potato famine, some Ulstermen were prosperous but the more typical dwelling was a one-room cottage with a packed earth floor, little or no wood in the construction of mud or sod or peat walls, and a leaky roof. A single man working for the du Ponts would be in a dormitory, or boarding with a family, in a wooden structure with a wood floor, windows and doors that worked. A family would be in a two- to four-room house. The company's liberal benefits allowed a worker or couple to save a little, part of which they used to sponsor relatives in the "old country" to come to America, and chain migration was carried out for more than 100 years.

In time, the Irish Catholics could afford a little stipend for a circuit-riding priest, and later, they built St Joseph's on the Brandywine. By the end of the century, the church sponsored a school for the Catholic children, as seen in this photo from 1887. For much of the 19th Century, children from the powder yards were instructed on Sundays at the Brandywine Manufacturers' Sunday School, where a child's instruction was concordant with the family religion; the deist du Ponts accepted and supported the religious upbringing of the students.

The Irish families also struck a solid compromise between their traditional ways and the Mid-Atlantic culture, with is where the "White Lace" part of the book's title derives. They didn't fully enter the "melting pot" that we may often hear of, which was honored only in the breach anyway. They didn't "assimilate" but they "acculturated," making as much of the benefits of hard work and thrift as possible, while in part acceding to the consumerism that was a continually rising force in industrializing America.

The book's chapters cover in some detail the cultural traditions they kept, and didn't, their dwellings, their use of yards and dooryards and kitchen gardens, and the niceties of life that they obtained. They knew many luxuries were out of reach, but they craved a certain amount of gentility. Having been landless, they knew the value of land, and strove to save enough to buy houses or farms. Over all, the Irish along the Brandywine, and elsewhere in America that they encountered favorable work environments, overcame stereotypes and thrived.

Their stories induced me to hark back to family research I have carried out most of my life; fourteen years ago I wrote a summary of the immigrants in my own family tree. I found a few "ice age immigrants": I am between 6% and 12% Cherokee. Of the rest, 24% were born in Ireland, 9% in Scotland, 39% in England, 16% in Germany, and a smattering of other parts of Europe. It's interesting that Ancestry.com's DNA analysis didn't show a trace of Cherokee, and pegged my English roots at 70%. That's the conundrum of small number statistics. We think of getting 50% of our DNA from our father and 50% from our mother. But the vagaries of "crossing over" that produces eggs and sperm can shift these proportions one way or another, so one child could be 60-40 and another 25-75! Pity poor Senator Elizabeth Warren, who grew up being told she had "substantial" Native American ancestry. Her DNA test results, released in 2018, showed "between 1/64 and 1/1,024" Cherokee ancestry. Actually, I count her lucky. My DNA results cannot demonstrate even that much, yet family records show a minimum of 1/16. That's life.

After retirement I worked for three years as a volunteer docent at the Machine Shop at Hagley Museum, on the grounds of the du Pont powder mills (see the picture). I learned a lot of company and du Pont family history, and Dupont company history. There was much in this book that I'd never heard before. It was great to re-connect with the stories of the powder mill, and to learn of an immigrant population that I had heard only a little about.

A word about safety. The Dupont Company had a strong tradition of safety all during the time I worked there. I learned that the number of gunpowder explosions during the 118 years that black powder was manufactured there exceeded one per year. But a typical black powder factory in America of the time had five to ten times as many explosions. Dupont powdermen had a much greater chance of living long enough to retire, compared to the rest. This is the only quibble I have with Powder & Lace; otherwise, it is a marvelous book.