Los Banos Rotary Club History
Tools Make America Great, Says De Loache

The one big thing that makes America great and strong is its abundance of marvelous and efficient tools.

So said Wyatte F. De Loache, Pacific Coast manager of the Du Pont Company's Extension Division, in a talk before a joint meeting of the Rotary and Lions Clubs here Tuesday evening.

"Tools," De Loache declared, "provide the explanation why the average industrial employee today who works but 40 hours a week can produce more, earn more, own more, and live better than his grandfather could, working 72 hours a week."

Declaring knowledge is a normal thing in America and that any knowledge is useless unless it be harnessed and made useful to man, De Loache pointed to his own Du Pont company as an example of this nation's ability to convert knowledge into production, to build machinery and tools to make new and fantastic products for the good of man, and to produce then for a small fraction of the cost than would be possible under less modern methods.
Illustrating his point with some of the newer products that have been developed and are being manufactured by the Du Pont De Loache showed samples of nylon, Dacron and other synthetic fibres, and also titanium, a new non-corrosive metal having twice the strength of steel that is still in the experimental stage.

Such products, he pointed out, are made possible only through the vast resources and wealth of big companies, who can afford to maintain large laboratories and engineering staffs that are continually devoted to searching for new and better products that can be adapted into industry to make a better life for Americans and all the world.

Pointing out some of the risks and difficulties that a large company such as Du Pont encounters in the development of new products, De Loache told of nylon, on which research started in 1928. It was not until 11 years and $27 million later that nylon was ready for actual commercial production.
The motivation for such tremendous research and development, De Loache said, is the basic principle of profit – lifeblood of all business and endeavor. For Du Pont and similar big companies profit means a fair investment to the thousands of people who invest their money in its stocks and bonds, and success of any company depends on its ability to, first, continue to earn a profit for its investors, and second, to continually forge ahead to develop new and better products that the consuming public will buy.

Anthony Patricio Jr., president of the Lions Club, presided at the joint dinner meeting and introduced the speaker.

November 12, 1956

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