Trying to clean up my dashboard,way to many open books,this is another one of the 'rare' ones,that I started last year,and then some of the events of the last year happened,and so on...but not to worry one of my disorders takes over,and starts to try and clean up...to that end...

Very fascinating read here,with the way this family had their hands in so many pies.Sort of like reading a time capsule as you recall some of the comings and goings of your reality on the planet,if you are old enough to recall the events.The take on Penn Central is very interesting as once again a railroad takes center stage in the narrative,which also details the financial fall of one Dupont,and concludes with the Duports attitude toward their Labor in Niagara....

[....There were only a few policemen inside, all murmuring complaints about the heat and none bothering to look busy. They all looked very much alike in their uniforms, having the rough look of men who had reached middle age prematurely. Like chicks around a hen, they gathered around the desk sergeant, a big man with drooping jowls and small eyes reddened with fatigue. Like most of the men, he hadn’t had much rest since the curfew was imposed four months before. It wasn’t that the work was so challenging. Hardly, especially with the National Guard on hand to help. It was just the boring nightly routine of endless arrests and bookings that was tiring.

The sergeant had just finished checking the night’s list of arrests when a thin, unimpressive-looking man walked quietly through the entrance and approached the desk. The man, a Caucasian, was slight of figure, with a dark suit that hung loosely about his slender shoulders. His short black hair was plastered down in that conservative, no nonsense style of a small businessman in his mid-forties who has already lost his youthful flair. He had a quiet manner about him as he spoke with thin, weak lips, his small eyes peering timidly behind light-rimmed glasses.

The policemen scratched their heads and looked questioningly at each other as their visitor stated his desire to post bail for four young Black prisoners. The sergeant knew the case: the four were part of a party of seven Black men charged with illegal entry. They had claimed they were fleeing from unknown assailants and were forced to take refuge in an occupied home. Police, on the scene on a supposed tip-off, and National Guardsmen reported hearing gunshots and discovered the van the men were driving was peppered with bullet holes, but they were unable to find anyone but the seven Blacks. So the seven were arrested and charged with illegal entry.

The sergeant looked up at the man, not sure he wanted to be bothered, and told him to sit down. The visitor sat patiently for half an hour or so and then rose and quietly approached the sergeant again about bail.

“Bail’s pretty high, you know,” warned the sergeant.

The man seemed undisturbed. “I’ll put up my yacht as collateral,” he answered.

The sergeant was startled for a moment. Then he broke into a large infectious smile that caught on the other policemen’s faces.

“Your yacht, eh?” he said. “Sit down please.”

The visitor again complied. After a while he nervously began casting glances at his watch. Finally, after the sergeant had left, he got up and approached the other policemen.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I really can’t stay here all night, so I’ll just have to let my lawyer handle this.” He took out a card from his wallet. “When you know how much the bail is set for, please contact me.”

The policemen’s eyes widened as they read the card:

IRÉNÉE DU PONT, JR.

The four prisoners were released within half an hour.

This incident, hitherto unpublished, may well shock some readers, for direct involvement by Delaware’s richest family in the personal trials of Black Delawareans has indeed been rare. That the four young Blacks involved were all leading political activists, in fact, makes Irénée’s actions unprecedented in the family’s 200-year history. Yet these were unprecedented days for the DuPonts, days of mounting defeat abroad in the most unpopular war in the country’s history, days of social disintegration, upheaval, and mounting rebellion at home, even in Delaware.

Irénée Jr.’s providing bail for these four Black activists, an event so completely without precedent in the affairs of the Du Ponts, was the inevitable culmination of the family’s attempt to control social discontent in Wilmington, the capital city of their empire. The discontent had been sharpening in response to underlying economic and social trends that were transforming cities everywhere in the country. But now some members of the family were aware of what was taking place in Wilmington and were actively trying to head off a social explosion. ...]
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/02/part-9dupont-dynastybehind-nylon.html