Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1884 — Powder-Making. [ARTICLE]

Powder-Making.

The oldest American firm ihanufacturing gunpowder has been in existence nearly ninety years, during which time its name has not changed. Its founders were Frenchmen. It is not a partnership nor a corporation—simply a family. It is worth probably $30,000,000. The sons are educated to various_ occupations or professions in which they will'be of use to the company. At the age of twenty-one they are taken into the business, but must sign an agreement binding them never to ask a division of the proceeds or estate. During their lives they are given all the money they require, and at their death the widows are handsomely pen sioned until they remarry. Some of the young men become civil engineers, some chemists, some lawyers. A famous American admiral was of this family. An employe is rarely discharged, except for flagrant incompetence, and at his death his widow is pensioned, and his children, if intelligent and capable, brought up to follow in their father’s footsteps. For years this family or community held complete control of the powder market and succeeded in crushing every new powder manufacturer. Once during the late war they professed that their mills were inadequate to their orders, and made what appeared to be a very fair contract with a rival manufacturer, by which he agreed to furnish them within a stipulated time a large amount of powder, which they, in turn, were to sell to the Government. Immediately upon the signing of the contract the powerful firm bought up every pound of saltpeter in the United States, and contracted for all that could be shipped from Europe for months to come, so that their victim could only procure this essential material through the Aim with which he had bound himself by contract. Buin stared him in the face, but the company released him from the contract upon his assenting to certain concessions very advantageous to them. A New York company now makes more powder than this company, but the latter is still the wealthiest,in America. Its mills are in Delaware, ’in the manufacture off powder Pennsylvania stands first, New York second, and Ohio third. —New York Sun.