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Better Living Sir: Your cover about the fascinating firm of Du Pont [Nov. 27] provided an enlightening picture of a famous name in one of the most baffling areas of modern science and industry. Aside from wishing the company success in making Methuselahs of us all, I hope that it enters the pharmaceutical field in the traditional spirit of hot price competition against those firms that were recently collecting scandalous profits from the sale of miracle drugs...
...Pont is far ahead of its competitors, but not as far as is suggested by some of the sales figures in your story. The sales of Union Carbide in 1963 were $1.7 billion, of Monsanto $1.2 billion. This year will find five companies in the billion-dollar class, with Allied and Dow also passing this milestone...
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...
...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...
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...