DuPont

DuPont is presented as a major corporation in the rise of industrial trusts in the United States and as one of the companies later pursued by federal authorities. Its appearances trace a contrast: concentrated markets and rising inequality prompted organized opposition, while Progressive-era reformers used government power to investigate and regulate large corporations.

Market Concentration and the Trusts

In the 1890s, large trusts emerged across nearly every sector of the U.S. economy, with many controlling more than 70 percent of their respective markets. DuPont is named among these firms, alongside Eastman Kodak and International Harvester. The account sets this expansion against an earlier pattern of comparatively competitive markets in the northern and midwestern United States. As competition gave way to monopoly, wealth inequality increased rapidly.

The growth of the trusts was not merely a change in company size. It raised questions about who could enter markets and who could influence economic life. The book describes a political system with a broad enough base of power for people harmed by monopolistic practices, and those opposed to the trusts’ dominance, to organize. They formed the Populist movement and, subsequently, the Progressive movement.

Federal Antitrust Action

DuPont became one of the corporations pursued through federal antitrust efforts during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. By 1902, Roosevelt had used the Sherman Act to break up the Northern Securities Company, affecting J.P. Morgan’s interests; subsequent suits were brought against DuPont, the American Tobacco Company, and Standard Oil. The account places DuPont within a wider campaign rather than attributing a specific case outcome to the company.

Roosevelt also strengthened federal oversight of business. The Hepburn Act of 1906 expanded the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, allowing it to inspect railway financial accounts and extending its authority into additional areas. His successor, William Taft, prosecuted trusts still more vigorously; the most prominent result described was the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. These measures show the reform effort extending beyond any single company, as federal institutions took a more active role in regulating concentrated corporate power.

Significance in the Institutional Argument

DuPont’s role connects two parts of the book’s account of political economy: the formation of concentrated private power and the political response to it. The emergence of trusts coincided with rising inequality, but the existence of powerful corporations did not, in this account, determine the outcome by itself. Those opposed to monopolistic practices could organize, and reformers could pursue federal investigation and regulation.

The company is therefore a brief but concrete example in a broader discussion of how economic power and political institutions interact. Its inclusion among the trusts and among the targets of antitrust suits marks both the reach of corporate concentration and the capacity of political actors to challenge it.