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In naming a figure he thought his state should spend on public education, Mr. duPont did not speak as an inert and dogmatic philanthropist. The duPonts, almost dynastic, are always dynamic. Pierre Samuel duPont,* born 1870, Wartime President of the E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co., now Chairman of its board; recently President of the General Motors Corp., now Chairman of its board, is a financial magnate who is as active as he is important. It is said that Judge Gary would speedily resign as president of the U. S. Steel Corp. if Pierre duPont would take his place.
Descendant and namesake of Pierre Samuel duPont de Nemours,* who fled from France to escape the guillotine and who had a habit of thinking in terms of empires and republics, the Pierre S. duPont of today seems to have all the qualities of his illustrious ancestor and some that are distinctively his own. He is tall and heavy domed, with calm eyes and unagitable lips—a massive, impassive, impressive man. He can make money perhaps more easily than anyone in the U. S. but lets many a chance pass. Instead, he tries to make citizens.
Some years ago Pierre duPont conceived that his native state might be made into an ideal commonwealth. His cousin, U. S. Senator Thomas Coleman duPont, was already building a concrete highway the entire length of the state as a personal contribution to the new civilization. Pierre took education as his domain. He began by putting about $2,000,000 into small Delaware College, giving the impetus to what has become the modern University of Delaware. In 1918 he founded the Service Citizens, a society designed to investigate Delaware's social needs and minister thereunto. Thus far the Service Citizens have used $720,000 in their multiform activities—schooling of aliens; developing community organizations in 320 rural school districts; bringing the average daily attendance of pupils from 90 days a year in 1918 to 148 days in 1924; establishing libraries in country schoolhouses; publishing books of nationwide value on Negro educational problems and the failure of the one-teacher white school in Delaware and elsewhere; starting a teacher-training department in the state university; financing the Foreign Study Group of U. S. undergraduates (it now includes 18 institutions) through which students spend their junior year in France; testing a traveling dental unit and medical inspection of rural schools; standardizing vital statistics under the state Board of Health; operating an employment bureau in conjunction with the Federal Government; tuberculin testing of cattle; co-operative marketing a,nd a score or more of social and civic functions which had been neglected or overlooked.