(December 14, 1739–August 7, 1817), was a French-born American economist and politician. Along with his son, Eleuthere Irenee, he founded the E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, 1802, near Wilmington, Delaware. They began to produce a higher quality gun-powder which caused their company, especially after the War of 1812, to grow rapidly, eventually becoming the industrial giant of DuPont Industries.
Thomas Jefferson had commissioned DuPont de Nemours to survey and report on the status of American education in the early 1800’s. He reported:
Most young Americans … can read, write and cipher. Not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly. …
The Bible is read; it is considered a duty to read it to the children; and in that form of religion the sermons and liturgies in the language of the people tend to increase and formulate ideas of responsibility. …
In America, a great number of people read the Bible, and all the people read a newspaper. The fathers read aloud to their children while breakfast is being prepared—a task which occupies the mothers for three-quarters of an hour every morning. …
It is because of this kind of education that the Americans of the United States … have the advantage of having a larger proportion of moderately well-informed men.1158
New Guide to the English Tongue (1740), was published first in England by Thomas Dilworth, a distinguished educator and textbook writer. The book’s popularity grew in the Colonies, until, by 1765, it was universally adopted in the New England schools. The book contained spelling, reading and grammar lessons, “adorned with proper Scriptures.” Its first lesson, having words only three letters long or less, stated:
No Man may put off the Law of God.
The Way of God is no ill Way.
My Joy is in God all the Day.
A bad Man is a Foe to God.1159
Noah Webster, known as the “Schoolmaster to America,” used only the Bible and the New Guide to the English Tongue, 1740, in his earliest school. Thomas Dilworth said he wanted to rescue:
Poor creatures from the Slavery of Sin and Satan by setting the word of God for a Lantern to our feet and a Light to our Paths.1160