By the start of World War I he was the vice president, and he was named the chairman of the executive committee a year later.

[3] He was the elected president of DuPont from 1919 to 1925, where he oversaw the dismantling of the company's war productions from WWI.

[3] He oversaw DuPont at a time when eight workers were fatally poisoned with tetraethyl lead while he issued statements about there being "slight difficulties".

Du Pont, a registered Republican, voted to repeal Prohibition and was an opponent of the New Deal left-wing agenda of President Franklin Roosevelt.

[4] In the 1930s, he was a proponent of eugenics and racial superiority theories, including those formed in Nazi Germany.