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Show GRASSROOTS Is DuPont Really a Monopoly or Just Too Large? By Wright A. Patterson FOR SEVERAL YEARS an effort has been made to secure legislation legisla-tion that would provide for a national na-tional science foundation through which the top notch scientists could work at fundamental scientific discoveries. dis-coveries. Last year the long desired de-sired legislation was passed. As the bill was Introduced, it provided pro-vided an appropriation of 14 million dollars from which to provide compensation com-pensation for the scientists, laboratories labora-tories in which they could work, and materials with which to work. But In one of those rare economy spurts, the house appropriations committee. Clarence Cannon, Dem., Missouri, chairman, cut that 14 million mil-lion down to $300,000, a sum entirely too meagre with which to start such a foundation, and nothing has happened hap-pened because of that legislation. In the DuPont hotel In Wilmington, Wilming-ton, Del. there is a display window in which are shown hundreds of those things which the scientific research re-search of the DuPont laboratories, and the top notch scientists whose time and ability are at its disposal, have made possible. That company spends something like 20 million dollars a year on scientific research. re-search. From their unhampered research, there has come the commodities that are shown in that display win. dow in Wilmington, a window before be-fore which I have stood many timas to wonder at the accomplishments of this one company in providing hundreds of different things for the convenience and pleasure of the people peo-ple of the world. They make use of wastes that have been deemed valueless; they provide new industries that give employment to millions of workers; they increase American sales to the extent of millions, even billions, of dollars each year. And because of that increased business, the government gov-ernment collects a considerable portion of the nations' taxes. When the government wanted an A-bomb, it perfected its own organization, or-ganization, and spent billions of dollars on the project. Now the government gov-ernment wants an H-bomb, it turns to the DuPont company and its corps of scientists, working in DuPont Du-Pont laboratories with DuPont equipment equip-ment and materials, to produce that more terrible, more destructive implement of warfare through which to insure our success against the ! Red hordes of communism. Wheth-er Wheth-er or not those DuPont scientists will be able to construct such a bomb and the methods of exploding It, only time will tell, but tf it can be done they will do it Now the attorney general says the DuPont Company is too big for the good of the nation, and has brought suit to break it up into small pieces so it would not be able to do for the government the things a congress refused to do for us. DuPont is a concern that has provided pro-vided the munitions needed in practically prac-tically every war In which we have engaged: a company that through its scientific research has provided millions of Jobs for American workers; work-ers; that has turned the wastes of mine, field and forests into com modities of value; a company that has added billions to America's sales, from which the government collects a large portion of the nation's na-tion's taxes; a company that can do for the government, if it can be done, what the government is not prepared to do for Itself. It might be well for the attorney general to study, as I have, that display in the window of the DuPont Du-Pont hotel in Wilmington. From it he would probably get a new Idea of the value of this too-big company, and what It. and others like it mean to America. DuPont is but one of a number f concerns that maintain extensive exten-sive research departments Into which they pour vast sums. From these laboratories come Increased production. Increased jobs, that 240-billion-dollars annual business from which the President insistently insistent-ly demands a federal government tax return of 70 billion dollars. It takes a too-big concern to stand the drain the government places upon business. Breaking them into small pieces would be but killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If Wheeler McMillen. editor of the Farm Journal and the Pathfinder, Path-finder, could be chairman of the agricultural committee of either the senate or the house, he would find a practical solution of the vexing farm problem. Creeping socialism in America has become running socialism. |