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Copeland's hilltop estate is only one of the largest in the woodland Delaware area known as the "Du Pont Chateau Country," where the family's estates lock one into another to form a magnificent preserve for shooting and fox hunting. Proud of their French Huguenot ancestry, the Du Fonts have given their places such names as Montchanin, Granogue, Chevannes, Nemours, Louviers and Bois des Fosses. The houses contain the big-game trophies bagged by the family on African safaris, the pictures of such Du Pont yachts as the American Eagle (a 1964 America's Cup contender) and cups won by the family's thoroughbreds, including Mrs. Richard du Font's Kelso.
For all of these distractions, the family's control of the business has been remarkably enlightened. Even the critics of its nepotism concede that the family shunts its mediocre members into powerless "drag" jobs. The Du Ponts motivate their hired managers to fierce loyalty by giving them uncommon amounts of power and money. To achieve the outlook and flexibility of a small company, they have broken up their firm into a dozen operating departments that are only loosely supervised from above. A department general manager is like a captain on a ship, free to chart his own course so long as he meets schedules and wins battles, and he has a broader field of command and a plumper paycheck than most company presidents—often $250,000. Half of the general managers control sales of more than $100 million annually, and the one who runs the biggest department—textile fibers—is responsible for close to $1 billion.
On the lower executive echelons, Du Pont also offers fairly handsome salaries, bonuses, and such benefits as the company-run country club for all employees (highest fee: $125 a year). By the time he is 40, the rising Du Pont executive may earn well over $25,000, enough to move to the farther-out suburbs, where the pond in the backyard is preferred to the swimming pool. To those at home base, in fact, Du Pont is more than a place of work; it is a way of life in the most thoroughgoing company town in the U.S. The Du Ponts own Wilmington's biggest bank, its only playhouse and its two daily newspapers —and what they do not control in Delaware they decidedly influence.
Copeland himself last year earned $349,846 in salary and bonus—a sum that pales in comparison with the $3,400,000 he collected in dividends on his Du Pont and Christiana shares. But the statistic that he watches most closely is Du Pont's profit as a percentage of invested capital. The company always aims for a 10% return on investment, usually comes close to achieving it. This year the figure has risen somewhat above the 8.6% of 1963, but the gain is not enough to satisfy Copeland, despite Du Pont's rising sales. Says he: "When you get to the point where sales are rated above profits, that's not business—that's bureaucracy." To help reach its profit goal, Du Pont is capable of counting its pennies very closely: a few years back, it even adopted a cost-squeezing suggestion to remove the lemon wedges from the shrimp cocktails served at the company-owned Hotel Du Pont. Saving: $200 a year.