Feature Article

Cleveland's A.B. duPont: Engineer, Reformer, Visionary

By: Arthur E. DeMatteo, University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley

Attempting to synthesize the events, agents, and accomplishments of the years spanning the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries into a neat package labeled "The Progressive Era" can prove frustrating for the modern historian. Reformers of the period were a diffuse and diverse group, often more noteworthy for their disunity and incongruities than for coherence to any set of standards; they included pacifists, municipal ownership advocates, feminists, Single Taxers, civil rights crusaders, efficiency experts, and countless others. This lack of commonality led Peter Filene to assert, in a seminal article published over thirty years ago, that progressivism was merely an artificial creation of historians, and that the dynamics of this period were the result of "agents and forces more complex than a progressive movement."¹

In an essay of later vintage, historian Daniel Rodgers acknowledged the difficulty of defining progressivism, while offering a useful counter-thesis to Filene. Rodgers suggested that Progressive Era reformers shared at least one of three "idea clusters," or "shared languages of discontent."² The first of these languages, antimonopolism, was traceable to the Jacksonian era, and had once been the exclusive domain of "outsiders," such as farmers and Populists; by the turn of the twentieth century, however, the crusade against inequitable taxation and abusive business practices had gained acceptance among "respectable" segments of American society. The second language, that of "social bonds," was more specific to the Progressive Era, and encompassed an attack on a "set of formal fictions," including notions of racial, sexual, or ethnic inferiority; it sought to create a "consciously contrived harmony" among societal groups. The third language of discontent was that of "social efficiency," and could be applied to a broad range of reformers, from those seeking to rationalize and streamline municipal government to engineers designing modern manufacturing plants.

Like so many reformers of his era, Antoine Bidermann duPont, friend and confidant of Cleveland Mayor Tom L. Johnson, was a complex person who defies easy categorization. Throughout his life he applied his low-key efficiency to sundry endeavors and crusades, nearly all of them intended to make the world better in some way. Despite his wealth and family name, duPont was a proponent of tax equalization, free trade, and municipal ownership of public utilities. He supported the causes of feminism and civil rights, and was an associate of some of America's most renowned reformers. And duPont became an expert in the efficient management and modernization of street railway lines and other commercial concerns. His efforts at an eclectic mix of reforms and activities conform to all three of the "idea clusters" posited by Rodgers. A.B. duPont is not a well-known figure, usually mentioned only in an obscure footnote or in the index of an old book, and he spent only the final thirteen years of his life in Cleveland. But he was a major public figure during one of Northeast Ohio's most dynamic eras. More importantly, his life helps define the very essence of the Progressive Era, and that is what makes him worth studying.

Antoine Bidermann duPont Jr. was born in 1865 in Louisville, the great-grandson of the French-born industrialist Eleuthere Irenee duPont deNemours. Eleven years earlier duPont's father, Antoine Bidermann Sr., and his uncle, Alfred Victor II, had left Delaware to seek their fortunes in Kentucky. The brothers soon established successful enterprises in paper manufacturing, explosives, coal mining, iron and steel production, and newspaper publishing, and at one point enjoyed monopoly control of Louisville's street railway system.³ In 1861 Antoine Bidermann duPont Sr. married Ellen Coleman of Louisville; Antoine Bidermann Jr. was the third of eight children, the second of three sons. Although as an adult he would shorten his name to "A.B." to facilitate the signing of documents, young Antoine Bidermann became known affectionately as "Ermann," a nickname close friends would call him throughout his life.⁴

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