(2 of 10)
The prospect of pocketing another one-half G.M. share attracted so many buyers to Du Pont that the company's stock made one of its sharpest single-week gains in recent years before giving way to profit taking. The happy windfall for shareholders will deprive Du Pont of a rich lode of dividends that in the past has provided one-third of its earnings. For almost any other company, this loss of earning power would have been a severe blow. But Du Pont's profits from chemicals alone have been rising so rapidly that its profit margin is among the dozen highest in the nation's 500 biggest companies. Not counting its G.M. dividends, Du Pont earned $325 million last year on sales of $2.6 billion. Most important, Du Pont is so busy challenging the market with new products and ideas that the upward trend is almost certain to continue. Recently the company has: — > Invaded the $5 billion-a-year footwear business with Corfam, a leather substitute that looks, feels and "breathes" like leather and could cut into the natural leather market the way nylon slashed into silk.
> Developed an antiflu pill named Symmetrel (the company calls it "the first oral antiviral drug"), which is agitating the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry and could, with the Food and Drug Administration's expected approval, provide a whole new field for Du Pont.
> Received its first eight patents on a new photographic process that produces positive images on film without a negative—an innovation potentially as important as the Polaroid process —and announced plans to introduce a Du Pont color film for home movies. > Brought out an unusually versatile plastic, Surlyn, which scientists can make either hard or soft, transparent or opaque, thick or thin simply by jiggering its ion content; it will be used in such varied products as packaging film, pipes, costume jewelry. >Embarked on an expansion project to enlarge its eight big textile plants and to launch a full-scale assault on foreign markets, where Du Pont is building seven new factories to take advantage of profits and growth rates generally twice as high as those in the U.S.
Operating from a provincial company town in the nation's second smallest state, Du Pont has not only brought all this—and much else—to pass, but yearly piles more millions onto one of the greatest and most enduring U.S. family fortunes—a fortune that now amounts to $3 billion, give or take a few hundred million. Of the 1,500 living Du Ponts, 27 occupy executive positions in the company and more than 150 have sizable stakes in it. The Du Ponts turn out so many goods in so many places that their influence is even greater than their income. In 129 plants stretching across 28 states and 16 foreign countries, they make no fewer than 20,000 separate items.