Yesterday, Nora and I ventured down to Wilmington, Delaware to visit the Hagley Museum.
But first, I was able to get a free pass (for both of us) through a program offered by the Chester County Library System. Although I have a Pottstown address, we live in East Coventry Township which is part of Chester County. As I mentioned in my two posts a few years ago when I was called for jury duty, we are at the northern end of Chester County, surrounded by Montgomery County locales where we do much of our shopping.
Anyway, the free pass program is wonderful! We have made use of it a few times now, which has provided a double win by not only allowing us to visit some places for free, but has introduced us to historic, and fun destinations that we were not aware of. So, in addition to fueling my reading habit by requesting books to be sent to my local library from all over the county, we are also utilizing the system to plan day trips.
It makes me laugh when I recall a recent text sent to me which stated that "free has no value". For me, the free library has tremendous value, and for Nora and I, these free passes have provided a number of pleasant days.
So, the Hagley Museum.
It is actually referred to as the Hagley Museum and Library and is located in New Castle County, Delaware. It is part of the DuPont family of historic sights in the Wilmington area.
(I asked why it was called the Hagley Museum, and not the DuPont Museum, by the way. Apparently, it was decided that the name Hagley, which was very famous in that area at the time, might attract more tourists than the Dupont name. Perhaps the passage of time has negated that supposition as, to be honest, I didn't know it was related to the Dupont family until accessing the website, and of course, going there.)
To be honest, I wouldn't even call it a museum, and we did not spend any time in the library, although we didn't try to go to that building. While the Visitor Center has a wonderful collection of exhibits about inventions and innovation, the bulk of our time was spent traversing the grounds, by foot and by shuttle bus. For those of you who might want to visit but are less mobile than you would like, the shuttle buses run every 20 minutes from all of the stops, so don't stay away on that account.
In addition to being able to walk at our own pace through the grounds, able to stop at the various informative signs along the way, and to wander around one of the "workers" villages, there were also demonstrations featuring the machines employed at the time, and a wonderful guided tour of the ancestral home.
Today we think of DuPont as a humongous corporation diversified into an assortment of business ventures. But originally, their business was black powder, a product used during war and peace times, as blowing up things can included entrenched enemies as well as mountains to create highways or rock to clear land.
Of course, processing black powder is very dangerous. We were given a demonstration of its power when one of the guides took just a pinch and blew a hole in a rock wall about 6 feet wide.
Just kidding!
He did light up a bit to demonstrate how loud it was when detonated but it was certainly safe, and my requests to almost every guide we met for a dime bag were met with smiles only.
The impetus for this post was due to the obvious respect, almost worship in a few cases, that the guides had for the Dupont family. They were quick to point out that the workers were paid wages well above those of other people who toiled in the region at the time. That there was much documentation of ship's passage for workers' families being paid for by the company. That the family was very generous in donating land for the many historic areas that dot the northern Delaware area. That they even paid for roads to be built for the general public to use.
At one point, a tour guide gushed that she didn't know what Delaware would be today without the influence and largesse of the Duponts.
As I mentioned above, the processing of black powder, is very dangerous due to explosions which occurred multiple times per year and killed a few hundred workers, but also deadly by just the simple fact of being exposed to two of the ingredients, potassium nitrate and sulfur, which certainly did a number on the workers' internal systems.
So, while the Dupont family could be admired for treating their employees better than some, providing plots to grow food, helping them to bring relatives to America, building structures for them to live in, even allowing the widows of killed workers to live on site with a pension for expenses, the huge sums of money derived from the labor stayed mostly in the family.
Were they the worst of the robber barons of the Industrial Age who make enormous fortunes on the backs of the immigrants of the time? It appears not, based on what we were told yesterday.
But the massive fortune made until the site's closure in 1921 were also not liberally shared with the people who did the hard work, many of whom paid for it with their lives.
Still, like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, etc, many of those men, and their descendants, gave back to their communities, and their nation. America is strewn with museums, libraries, and various charitable organizations that were funded, are still funded, with the money earned in those days when labor unions did not exist, when workers lost their jobs when they couldn't work, even if the disability occurred while working, when 60 hours weeks with only Sunday off, was the norm.
While it may be debatable if America would be what it is today without the genius (and ruthlessness) of those bigger than life men, it is just as true that without the labor of the hundreds of thousands of nameless workers, again, mostly immigrants, who built the skyscrapers, dug the tunnels, laid the railroad tracks, our country would also not be as it is now.
Which brings us to today's robber barons, the tech bros.
I don't know how history will judge these people, Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Huang, etc. Perhaps, like their cohorts from the late 19th, early 20th century, they will attempt to buy their way to heaven, and positive historical notations, by leaving foundations, parks, museums, libraries, perhaps even well financed settlements on the moon. Perhaps, like Warren Buffet, they will pledge to donate obscene sums of money to good causes.
I imagine that anyone alive in 1890, or 1910, who lost their livelihood to nefarious business practices, or their husbands to dangerous working conditions, may have never imagined that the source of their pain and suffering might one day be revered for their generosity.
Whether today's giants of industry will someday be spoken of in reverent tones for the positive legacies they leave is anyone's guess. I would like to think that the everyday working man is more aware, has access to more information about the negative aspects of these super rich men, certainly more so than regular people did during the Gilded Age.
But then again, if control of information is used as a gauge, then perhaps we are no better off than the workers of past generations. Especially when we consider that a few of the tech bros I named above own and control some of the most influential, and accessed, news sources today. It certainly makes it easier to be prominent, and admired, in the news when you can bend it towards your own particular viewpoint.
In the meantime, visit a museum, even those that might present a biased viewpoint towards its founder, because even those open your mind to a wider perspective.
And, above all, push our public servants towards striking down the Citizens United Supreme Court Ruling of 2010 that is enabling, at a frightening rate, the ability of the 1% to control the narrative, not to mention, buy off those we elect.
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