ABSTRACT
124 One day in 1940, my father came home and triumphantly announced that he had gotten a job at Du Pont. Thus ended many years of unemployment, underemployment, and misemployment, a soul-lacerating experience for a man (and millions like him) whose self-respect required the opportunity to support his family by practicing his trade of sheet-metal work, a skill in which he took great pride. Quite a job he’d found: Du Pont, accepting his credentials as a master craftsman, started him at the top rate for mechanics, more than doubling what he’d earned on his previous job. Better yet, he announced, “Du Pont never lays anybody off. It’s a lifetime job.” And so it proved; he never lost a day until he retired 30 years later. In the interim, he repaid the company’s fidelity by going to work through fair weather and foul, in sickness and in health.
