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...stage of Du Pont's growth, the company could have concentrated on achieving dominance in the fields it then occupied. But Du Pont has been chary of monopoly, for it knows that any monopoly gets fat and lazy, obsoletes itself in time. Thus Du Pont, though it is one of the biggest U.S. paintmakers, yields first place to Sherwin-Williams. Union Carbide outsells Du Pont in the field of plastics. American Viscose outsells it in rayon. Black gunpowder (once Du Pont's prime product) is now so obsolete that the company, which formerly operated 25 black gunpowder plants...
...Du Pont grown too big? The U.S. Government seems to think so. Though it relies on Du Pont's size to build the plant for H-bomb components, the Government keeps trying to cut it down by antitrust suits. Since the original 1912 "powder trust" suit, the Government has brought 20 antitrust prosecutions against Du Pont. The score to date: civil cases-one conviction, one dismissal without trial, one consent decree; criminal cases-one acquittal after trial, one quashed, two nol-prossed, seven nolo contendere. Now six antitrust cases are pending...
...Du Pont no longer meets such attacks with its closemouthed, publicity-shy methods of old. Greenewalt, who devotes a great deal of his time to public relations, believes in taking Du Pont's case to the public. His answer to the charge of bigness is that Du Pont has grown big because it has succeeded in providing things the U.S. consumer wants, that it will continue to grow as long as it succeeds in the market place. Says President Greenewalt: "It is the customer, and the customer alone, who casts the vote that determines how big any company should...
Greenewalt points out that small businesses, instead of declining, have continued to multiply, with big companies such as Du Pont contributing to their growth. "Cellophane alone," he says, "has given rise to 300 smaller businesses that process it. They provide 40,000 jobs with an annual payroll of $120 million-and only 7,000 of the jobs are in the manufacture of it. Concentration, far from being unwholesome, may be desirable or even indispensable if it means that through a concentration of money, skill and management a job is done that otherwise would not be done...
...Du Pont's own employees have such boundless faith in the company's abilities that when Du Pont polled them on products they would most like to see developed, they suggested everything from a tooth preservative and a salve that grows hair, to wings enabling man to fly on his own power. Du Pont's President Greene-walt thinks their imagination may have ranged a little far, but he points out that there are 90-odd chemical elements and that only a tiny fraction of their possible combinations have been put to commercial use. Says...