Monsanto: Marketed Population Control

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Monsanto: Marketed Population Control

From a pipe dream of the son of two immigrants comes one of the largest chemical engineering companies of our time. John Francis Queeny was born in Chicago in August of 1859. It is hard to believe that a man with only six years of public school education created such a vast empire. In 1871 the Queeny family was devastated by the Great Chicago Fire, the buildings that his father owned and rented out were, of course, totally destroyed, thus ending the rather comfortable life of the Queeny family. John was forced to drop out of school and find a job. After little avail he finally found employ at the drug Firm of Tolman and King for 2.50 a week. (Forrestal 12).

After several years of fighting his way up the corporate ladder he accepted a position as buyer for the drug firm I.L. Lyons of New Orleans. In 1894 he went to New York as sales manager for Merck & Company. In retrospect, it can be said that 1896 and 1897 involved substantial milestones, all ultimately bearing on the development of what is now known as Monsanto Company. In 1896 John F. Queeny married Miss Olga Monsanto, the granddaughter of Don Emmanuel Mendez de Monsanto, an aristocrat who had been knighted by both Queen Isabella II of Spain and King Frederick VII of Denmark. Described as gentle, graceful and charming, she provided a sensitive balance of Old World business in the New World of chemical engineering. Years after her death, a principal executive who knew the family very well declared, “I think the influence of that wonderful woman on that rugged Irishman was one of the basic keystones of the company’s success.” (Forrestal 13)

In 1897 a son, Edgar Monsanto Queeny, was born. John F. Queeny would have “founded som...

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... industrial revolution worked for the assembly line. Mother Nature is far from an assembly line pumping out the same product over and over, and should be proud in its diversity of life and organisms; not streamlined to make the most profit. In the years to come social Darwinism will come to sort out these matters and only the strong will survive; or at least we should hope so.

Works Cited

Definition PCBs. Web. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Polychlorinated+biphenyls

Forrestal, Dan. “Faith Hope and $5,000”. New York. Simon and Schuster. 1977. Print

Health Effects of PCBs. http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/tsd/pcbs/pubs/effects.htm.

Michael Grunwald. The Washington Post - Washington, D.C. Jan 1, 2002 A.01

The Inside Story: Anniston, Alabama. Web. http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/dirtysecrets/annistonindepth/toxicity.asp. Chemical Industry Archives

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