THE COMPANY STATE: Ralph Nader's Study Group Report on DuPont in Delaware

by James & Robert Pozen Phelan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 1972

It used to be the company store. But now, thanks to our penchant for insatiable growth and typically American progress, we have a company state -- Delaware. That's what this Nader study group discovered when it went into the First State and asked in a thousand ways, who owns Delaware? DuPont does. Or ""Uncle Duple,"" as the blue-collars call the Company that advertises better living through chemistry but in its own fief practices better (?) living through oligarchy. More precisely, through a combination of powerful corporate influence and squirearchic pressure, DuPont -- company and family -- dominates Delaware's governmental process at all levels, its banking industry, its major legal firms, its land market, its communications media, its private manufacture, its charitable institutions, and its public services. The results? Like the company store of old -- occupational indenture, political conformity, emasculated unions, special interest favoritism at public expense, entrepreneurial hauteur and disdain for the public welfare (yes, Uncle Duple pollutes), perversion of the democratic system, and the indignity of noblesse oblige. Recommendations include breaking up the DuPont land and media monopolies, strengthening the company's labor unions through national organization, disclosure of corporate data on minority employment and pollution, state tax reform, etc. This Naderization of the state of DuPont is a logical complement to the symposium Corporate Power in America (p. 1341) -- both expose creepy capitalism.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grossman

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION