The Gem worker and the Idaho labor herald. (Boise, Idaho) 1914-1917, 1916-06-08
VISIT TO HOPEWELL.
The Magic City Of Virginia Is Graphically
Described by Woman Writer

ScornlnS 10 play lot STAKES OF less
than a dollar. The town was var
iously referred to as THE Magic
City," The Eighth Wonder The
Surprise Baby of the World" The
Fourth Largest City of Virginia.
Probably most chance visitors turn
with feeling of relief from Hope
we'll, which its daily paper calls "a
place where everybody works, every
body talks, everybody boosts and no
one wants finishing touches" to the
orderly DUPONT villages, where >one
may study efficient paternahsm at its
best. The yellow paved streets cross
each other with the regularity OF the
lines on a checker board. -Four hun
dred and seventy-hve policemen, paid
by the duPonts, keep perfect order
in the works and villages. The hbus-
es are exactly alike, only that those
in one street are made of white rub
beroid, and another of gray rubber
old. They seem to have been all
bought by the gross, and even the
distance between the houses does not
vary foot There are no trees, and
the names of the streets lack imagi-
nation as truly as the names OF the
villages. "B Street is found i'll Vii
lage. A, and "A Street is found in
Village B. Station Street" running
at right angles from the railway sta
ton, could not have been difficult to
name. The effect is restful. Before
each house is tiny porch so exactly
like its neighbor that one is disturbed
by the fact that the people sitting on
the porches do not match. Every
body is so we'll cared for in these .du-
Pont villages that there is no chance
to do wrong. Medical attendance is
free to the workmen and to their
families. Inspection and sanitary
control have reached the high-water
mark. Every tiny stream is drain
ed, every puddle oiled, and malaria
eliminated. Typhoid vaccine is ad-
ministered freely, milk and water are
tested again and again. There are
two schools, built by the company on
company land, and every child is
known to the sanitary officer.
The duPonts are real people,
they pay high and give bonus be-
Sides they look after their boys
These are expressions one hears from
the women rocking on the little
porches and rejoicing over the fact
that their men are making more mon
ey than they ever made before in
their lives.
1t is harder to get inside of the
great fence that surrounds the plant
itself than it is to get into Belgium
at the present time. Only the seven
teen thousand men employed in the
manufacture of gun-cotton go in and
out. Each one wears picture oi
i
himself, and this answers for his
passport. Inside of that fence is
little world in itself, for not only
have the duPonts their own police
hut the state has given them the
right to have their own court and
their own Judge. and justice is ad-
ministered without the result reach
ing the outside world. The hospital
lis not a shed, as at Hopewell. but a
real building, where twelve doctors
and FIVE nurses treat FIVE hundred
patients a day, about two Numbered
of them new cases. The safety de-
partment works night and day tc
make the danger less from burns anc
acid fumes. Efficiency is at is high
est state of perfection, and if two
hundred men, on an average, do leav'
in a day, as many more are standing
at the gate ready to take their places
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