Originally founded to produce bleach, the Dow Chemical Corporation became a global science and technology company producing a wide array of chemicals, plastics, and agricultural products.
Established in 1897 by Herbert Dow, the company initially focused on developing a new way to make bleach. Dow had discovered a process by which bleach could be produced more cheaply and effectively. In January 1898, Dow made its first sales of bleach but ceased making bleach to explore other ventures in 1913. The direction of the Dow Chemical Corporation took a rapid turn as the United States entered World War I in April 1917. In order to contend with the use of chemical weapons by Germany, Dow plunged into the production of these chemical agents. Herbert Dow abhorred this fact, calling the production of chemical weapons “the worst thing I ever had to do.” The company produced tear gas, chlorine gas, and, most deadly of all, mustard gas. By 1918, 90 percent of Dow’s production was for war purposes.
Following the conclusion of World War I, Dow diversified into other fields. The company developed Dowmetal pistons, constructed with magnesium, which was a third lighter than aluminum. In 1921, Tommy Milton won the Indianapolis 500 equipped with Dowmetal pistons.
Over the next few decades, Dow Chemical Corporation researchers perfected a method for producing vinyl chloride, the basic element in plastic products. The group produced Saran Wrap and Handi-Wrap, consumer products that became familiar items in the home. Dow also perfected the process of obtaining bromine from seawater, a critical element in an antiknock gasoline compound that kept an automobile engine running smoothly.
Perhaps the biggest challenge the Dow Chemical Corporation faced came with the onset of the Vietnam War. Dow became the leading producer of napalm, a type of jellied gasoline that stuck to people’s bodies and burned at an intense heat. It was used to dislodge troops from fortified positions, which proved highly effective in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Due to television footage from the field, however, protesters argued that napalm was also being used against innocent civilians, including women and children. Although military officials denied this, the Dow Chemical Corporation took the brunt of the protests. Often protesters carried signs saying “Dow Shall Not Kill,” and “Napalm burns babies, Dow makes money.” In addition to napalm, the Dow Chemical Corporation, along with other companies, also produced Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant that was used in Vietnam. Although these chemicals came under constant criticism, the Dow Chemical Corporation regained its position as one of the leaders of chemical research and production following the Vietnam War.
By the end of the 20th century, the Dow Chemical Corporation earned annual profits of $20 billion through its wide variety of products.
Further reading: E. N. Brandt, Growth Company: Dow Chomical’s First Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997).
—Clayton Douglas
Dulles, John Foster (1888-1959) American diplomat John Foster Dulles was President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first secretary of state, serving from 1953 to 1959.
John Foster Dulles (right) shakes hands with his brother Allen Welsh Dulles at La Guardia Field, New York City (Library of Congress)
Born in Washington, D. C., on February 25, 1888, Dulles was the grandson of John Watson Foster, an ambassador, international lawyer, and Benjamin Harrison’s secretary of state, and the nephew of Robert Lansing, Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state. Dulles graduated from Princeton in 1908 and attended the Sorbonne in Paris the following winter before heading to the George Washington University law school in 1909.
Dulles spent the first half of his career as an international lawyer. In 1907, he attended a peace conference in The Hague, the Netherlands. In 1911, he joined the New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, and accompanied the U. S. delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, serving as legal counsel and as a member of the war reparations commission. He helped draft the United Nations charter at the Dumberton Oaks conference in 1944, and he attended the conference to set up the organization in San Francisco in 1945, where he served as senior adviser. He single-handedly negotiated the 1951 Japanese Peace Treaty.
When Eisenhower was elected president in November 1952, he chose Dulles as his secretary of state. The nation’s chief diplomat brought strong opinions to the office. A devout Presbyterian and the son of a minister, Dulles possessed a strong moralistic streak that led him to view issues in black-and-white terms and prevented him from seeking common ground with the Soviet Union.
Along with Eisenhower, Dulles devised a policy described as the New Look, which relied on the threat of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union proved belligerent. This was a way of providing adequate defense while limiting spending. Abandoning containment as an immoral policy that accepted communist control of parts of Asia and Europe, the New Look sought to lessen Soviet influence by preaching the need for liberation of captive nations from the Soviet yoke. Aware of the limited geographic reach of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Dulles initiated talks to establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in an effort to unite nations in Southeast Asia in a similar defense pact.
During the 1950s, many Asian and African countries gained their independence. When some of these opted in favor of neutralism, Dulles was intent on making sure the third world chose the American side in the cold war. Neutralism, he declared, was immoral. He was furious when Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser sought to play the Soviet Union against the United States. When Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal after Dulles abruptly withdrew his offer to fund Nasser’s pet project, the Aswan Dam, Dulles was furious, but he still kept allies in the Middle East from destroying Egypt.
In other areas of the globe, anticommunism took precedence over third world sympathies. The United States funded France’s war to keep Indochina French (1945-54). After the Geneva Accords (July 1954) temporarily divided Vietnam, the United States shored up the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem in the first move toward the Vietnam War. In 1953 and 1954, the CIA helped overthrow the left-leaning nationalist governments of Mohammad Mosaddeq in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. Soon after Fidel Castro gained power in January 1959, U. S.-Cuban relations turned sour.
Sick with cancer, Dulles resigned on April 15, 1959, and he died the next month. Though he was often criticized for his harsh, calculated methods, particularly his support for “brinkmanship”—pushing an adversary to the brink—Eisenhower called him “one of the truly great men of our time.”
Further reading: Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); Ronald W. Pruessen, John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power (New York: Free Press, 1982).
—Philippe R. Girard
World History
