Poverty Amidst Plenty in 1992

Against the Current, No. 40, September/October 1992

Robert Hornstein and Daniel Atkins

HIGHWAYS 13 AND 113 cut a narrow north-south swath through Delaware, connecting America’s most popular corporate domicile,(1) Wilmington, with the fashionable seaside resort, Rehoboth Beach. Just a few steps beyond the shadows of Wilmington’s office towers and a short distance from the Delaware gold coast that runs from Rehoboth Beach to the Maryland state line, there exists another Delaware(2) that has not shared in the state’s celebrated decade long economic harvest of plenty.(3)

It is likely that most people today think only of Delaware as a summer vacation destination or as corporate America’s adopted home, but not as home to poverty that bears all the ugly markings of despair, deprivation and neglect. To look at Delaware beyond its boardrooms today is to witness the contradictions and consequences of an economy–state and national–fueled by the promise that what would be good for the nation’s banks and the wealthy would necessarily be good for all, most notably for the poor.

Over the last ten years, Delaware’s economic renaissance and its legislative centerpiece, the 1981 Financial Center Development Act (FCDA)(4) has been chronicled and praised by virtually every national publication that reports on the U.S. economy.(5) Its success has been confirmed by balanced budgets, revenue surpluses and a nationally acclaimed low unemployment rate throughout the eighties.(6) The “other” Delaware has remained virtually unaffected over the last decade: it is most readily distinguished by its legacy of enduring poverty(7) a legacy that continues to exist after years of heralded growth.

In 1990, Delaware’s per capita income increased by 8% and exceeded the national average by 8.8%.(8) Another 1,900 new jobs were created in 1990, raising the total number of new jobs created since 1982 to 87,200.(9) The state’s gross product increased steadily through the eighties and increased again in 1990 an estimated 7.9%.(10) And the hallmark of macroeconomics, the level of unemployment, remained below the national average in 1990 and for much of the eighties was among the lowest in the nation.(11)

In fall 1989, Delaware’s Governor, Mike Castle, hosted the annual Southern Governor’s Association Meeting in Wilmington.(12) Given wide coverage in the local press, the conference provided a forum for Delaware to showcase its supply side success story. The Wilmington News Journal reported on Delaware’s lavish display of southern hospitality, which included moonlight garden parties with orchestral serenades for the eleven visiting southern state chief executives and their staffs.(13) One anonymous contributor explained Governor Castle’s success in finding corporate donors so willing to finance the conference when he told the Wilmington News Journal that “When you’re getting all sorts of favors from the administration, what do you expect?”(14)

Some would argue that there has been no greater favor done for the nation’s banking industry than the passage of the FCDA. What may or may not have been the exclusive political handiwork in 1980 of former Republican governor Pierre S. du Pont IV,(15) is now accepted and marketed as the proud example of bipartisan cooperation among Republicans and Democrats.(16) Launched on the heels of the recession-ridden seventies, the FCDA, boiled down to its barest essentials, was Delaware’s hunch that if it were to jettison its restrictive credit laws and make the sky the limit in consumer and commercial lending, it could entice the credit card subsidiaries of major national banks and affiliated financial institutions to move their operations to Delaware, creating new jobs and new sources of state revenue.(17)

Besides eliminating ceilings on consumer and commercial usury rates, the FCDA cleared the way for the use of alternative methods of computing interest on loans, including variable rates, removed existing limitations on the type of terms that could be included in credit agreements and allowed banks to charge a variety of fees in credit transactions.(18) By removing what supporters of the new law deemed “artificial constraints,” the FCDA effectively deregulated the credit industry in Delaware, thereby letting the marketplace define the fairness of rates and terms.(19)

A key selling feature of the FCDA was a regressive corporate income tax structure which proved to be irresistible to out of state banks.(20) Personal income tax cuts also were the order of the day in Delaware during the eighties.21 At the close of the seventies the highest personal rate was 19.8%.(22) Numerous successive personal income tax cuts have brought the top rate down to 7.7% in 1991.(23)

Other reasons for the state’s supply side success story included slashes in state pending,(24) an amendment to the state constitution that limits expenditures and a mandated annual set aside of state revenue into a “rainy day” reserve fund.(25) At the same time, the state constitution was amended to require a super majority three-fifths vote for passage of any new tax measure.(26)

A 1986 article in Forbes on Delaware, not surprisingly titled “Supply Side Success Story,” pointed out that a key ingredient in Delaware’s strategy was “an aggressive accommodation to what business wants.”(27) Delaware’s historical appreciation for the profit motive is something that both admirers and critics agree has made the state the most hospitable corporate domicile in the United States.(28)

Delaware got its start in the business of servicing America’s corporations around 1913 when New Jersey, which had been the first state to enact a modern corporate code designed to accommodate big business, experienced a wave of corporate law reforms.(29) Woodrow Wilson, then governor of New Jersey, carried out the reforms, and the unintended result was a rapid decline in the number of corporations willing to call New Jersey home.(30) One of Delaware’s most prominent corporate lawyers, Rodman Ward, Jr., in a recent article on why Delaware continues to be the nation’s favorite corporate domicile, explained that New Jersey’s loss was Delaware’s gain because “Delaware did not repeat Wilson’s mistaken foray into corporate reform.”(31)

However, it is not just the executive and legislative branches that have helped make Delaware the corporate capital of America. Delaware’s Court of Chancery and Supreme Court have long been the forums of choice for corporate boards in legal battles with dissident shareholders and raiders. It is therefore no surprise that close to 200,000 businesses are now incorporated in Delaware(32), almost 200 years since Eleuthere Irene du Pont founded a small gunpowder mill on the banks of the Brandywine Creek in 1803.(33)

For many, the history of Delaware has and continues to be its long and intimate relationship with corporate America, and in particular, its relationship with the Du Pont Company and the family that bears the same name.(34) No doubt the story of Delaware during the eighties could be sculpted into an update on the corporate conduct of the du Ponts. But that story would let pass an opportunity to examine the consequences that follow from the deliberate decision of a state’s entire governing body politic to pursue economic policies that attend to the wants of the prosperous instead of the needs of the poor. It was those policies that paved the way for Delaware’s supply side miracle.

A Different Delaware

Not far from Wilmington’s richly decorated office towers and the rolling estates nestled along Brandywine Creek–located in the northwestern portion of the state that forms the beginnings of the Piedmont region of the Appalachians(35)–live thousands of poor people who continue to experience hunger and live in conditions that give a nightmarish cast to the American dream in Delaware.(36)

In 1989, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research organization in Washington D.C., reported that in 1985, midway through its renaissance, 11.5% of Delaware’s population were living in poverty.(37) In 1986, one out of every five Delawareans lived under or just above the poverty line. More startling is the incidence of poverty among children in Delaware and particularly among minority children. During the eighties one out of every four white children and one out of every two Black children in Delaware lived in or near poverty.(38)

Although in 1987 tiny Delaware ranked 11th in the nation in per capita income, the level of AFDC benefits paid to its neediest children who lived in families with either an absent parent or unemployed parent, ranked 32nd among the fifty states.(39) A report released in 1989 by the Public Assistance Task Force, a coalition of social service groups, revealed that hunger remains a pressing concern for tens of thousands of Delaware citizens.(40)

Throughout the eighties Delaware was one of only a minority of states that did not elect to implement the medically needy provisions of the Medicaid Program that extend health care to the working poor.(41) Nor does Delaware supplement the minimal monthly grant the elderly and disabled are able to receive under the federally funded Supplemental Security Income Program.(42)

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the number of very poor Delaware families in need of rental housing in 1985 exceeded the number of very low cost rental units by 123.7%. Over 10,000 Delaware families in need of housing in 1985 remained on waiting lists.(43) Today the number of poor Delawareans in need of decent and affordable housing remains virtually unchanged.(44) Families with children constitute half of all homeless households.(45) Thirty-nine percent of Delaware’s homeless are children.(46)

For years, southern Delaware has been home to notorious rural slums that make local residents wince at the mention of their evocative names.(47) Well into the state’s decade of economic revival most of those rural slums were still home to poor Delawareans. Petty John’s Camp, Eagle Poultry Camp, Blueberry Hill and others like them were impoverished communities where hard working Delawareans could be found living in refurbished chicken coops and structures not unlike those brought to the nation’s attention by Michael Harrington’s classic work, The Other America: Poverty in America.

Some of those slums like Greentop, Eagle Poultry Camp, Petty John’s Camp and Peppertown are gone; however, Shockleytown, Coverdale Crossroads, The Hole, West Rehoboth and others still remain. One of the last refurbished chicken coops that housed Sussex County families in Ellendale came under scrutiny only after several tenants filed lawsuits in 1990.(48) A television commercial in 1989 for a national poultry processor, one of Southern Delaware’s largest private employers, boasted about the care the company takes in raising its chickens. The chief executive proudly told viewers that his company’s chickens live in houses that are built better than the houses many people call home. In Delaware that claim has a chilling truth.

In a 1988 study on homelessness in the state, researchers Steven W. Peuquet and Pamela Leland of the University of Delaware’s College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy found that despite Delaware’s economic expansion over the eighties, poverty had increased and “the ranks of the homeless appear to be swelling.”(49) Given Delaware’s success in lowering unemployment, reducing personal and corporate taxes, attracting scores of financial institutions to the state, creating thousands of new jobs and balancing its budget, how could so many Delawareans be so poor and so far away from the heart and soul of the American dream–living in, if only to rent, a decent home?

Services Grow, Manufacturing Dies

Delaware’s economic recovery was built on the rapid expansion of its service sector, particularly in the areas of finance and insurance. An unmistakable consequence, however, has been the steady decline in manufacturing jobs.(50) In 1981, manufacturing comprised 28.2 percent of all jobs in Delaware.(51) Only four years later, Delaware’s manufacturing base had declined to 25.2 percent of all jobs. During that same period 83.4 percent of the 33,862 new jobs created in Delaware were in the service sector.(52)

In April of 1990, the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Delaware prepared a report, Delaware Economic Trends: Equity Implications, to be used by the United Way of Delaware in conducting a survey of Delaware’s social service needs. The report found that Delaware’s economic gains did nothing to halt a striking increase in income inequality among Delaware families.(53) Despite Delaware’s economic expansion over the last decade, real wages declined over the period of its economic growth.(54)

A more graphic look at the way Delaware defines prosperity is how Delawareans divided the state’s income. In 1986, the top quintile of Delaware families garnered 43.5% of Delaware’s total family income while the next highest quintile received another 25.2% of total family income.(55) The bottom quintile of Delaware’s families walked away from the miracle with 4% of Delaware’s income.(56) The quintile above them managed a mere 10.2%.(57)

To better appreciate just who prospered in Delaware over the last decade, consider that 44%of the new jobs created in Delaware between 1981 and 1987 paid under $5,600 and another 24% of the jobs that were created during that same period paid somewhere between $5,600 and $16,900.(58) Typically, these are jobs that do not provide health insurance, pensions, nor much hope for job security and advancement.(59)

Delaware’s miracle at a distance–and particularly looking down from the top–appears to be an unparalleled triumph, but to venture out of the office towers is to find another generation of poor Delawareans who, as they were in 1981, continue to be ill-housed,(60) in need of more food and better nutrition(61) and paid less than what they need to adequately support their families.(62) Being poor in Delaware also means living with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the nation,(63) and with a health care system that fails to provide coverage to thousands of nonworking poor and to the working poor who fill the jobs that trickled down over the last decade.(64)

The striking contradictions found in Delaware are evident almost everywhere. Most visitors to the state’s beaches at one time or another have passed through the crossroads where Highways 9 and 1 meet. Travel south at that crossroads and it leads down Highway 1, Delaware’s gold coast, lined with homes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,(65) many of which stand vacant for nearly two-thirds of the year.

Turn left before Delaware’s gold coast, and you come to Belltown, a small densely populated enclave of Black families who live in a collection of tiny houses and outdated battered mobile homes, many in conditions that seem more likely to be found in the Mississippi Delta than on the outskirts of one of the nation’s most fashionable seaside towns, Rehoboth Beach. Many of the women and men who live in Belltown and other Black communities–even poorer than Belltown–that mark the Southern Delaware countryside cannot afford better housing or to improve their daily lot on the wages they receive for cleaning the homes and motels along Delaware’s coastal highway or for laboring in the poultry plants, canneries and other food processing operations located throughout Sussex County, Delaware’s southernmost county.(66)

Where Chicken Is King

As you make your way south into the heart of Sussex County, the land flattens and the highways quickly become bordered by fields of soybean, vegetables and corn, with a chicken house at nearly every turn. Tucked away behind Delaware’s carefully crafted public memory is a history of migrant labor camps, intolerable rural poverty and racial egregation.(67) Delawareans in the two lower counties, and particularly Sussex County, have always been more inclined to look south rather than north for their traditions.(68) Though Delaware proudly calls itself the “First State” in recognition of being the first state to ratify the Constitution, it nevertheless failed to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, until 1901.(69)

From public accommodations to public education, Delaware’s social history has been marked by a clear and unmistakable color line. Carol E. Hoffecker, one of Delaware’s leading historians, in her book, Corporate Capital: Wilmington in the Twentieth Century, wrote “[i]n most of Delaware, as in many other states that had maintained legally segregated school systems before 1954, the court’s plea for `all deliberate speed’ resulted only in deliberate delay.”(70)

In the twenties and thirties, southern Delaware was home to scores of canneries that tilized unskilled rural Black laborers from the Deep South.(71) Labor camps often produced squalid conditions.(72) Although most of the nations’s attention focused on the plight of migrants fleeing the Dust Bowl, the federal government recognized a need to examine the problems of migrants in the states along the Atlantic seaboard.(73) In 1941, the United States Department of Labor published a report, “The Migratory Labor Problem in Delaware,” that concluded conditions faced by migrants in Delaware were comparable to those of their brethren out west.(74)

Today there remain only a few canneries in Sussex County, though other food processing operations like Vlasic’s pickle processing plant have taken their place. A new generation of unskilled Black, Hispanic and Haitian laborers,75 not unlike the rural southern migrants who came to Delaware over half a century ago to work in the canneries, now toil in southern Delaware’s remaining canneries, food processing plants, and poultry factories.

On a country road just outside of the farming town of Bridgeville, located on the western edge of Sussex County, stands an old house, recently renovated, that rubs the shoulder of railroad tracks running behind it. On any hot summer evening, over two dozen men can be seen playing soccer, cooking, or just resting after a long day in the fields or the chicken plants. To the migrants who make the yearly pilgrimage to Delaware, the house has come to be known as the “Reservation.”(76) Gloria Fernandez, a social worker for Delmarva Rural Ministries, an agency that provides social services and health care to migrants in Kent and Sussex Counties, explained that “the house got its name because it seems no matter how many times they come and go from Delaware, they ultimately must return to the `Reservation’, just like the Indians.”(77)

Rural Poverty and Racism

What cotton was to the American South,(78) chickens are to Sussex County.(79)8 Both agricultural products gave rise to an industry and a way of life. The commercial broiler industry was born in Sussex County in the early twenties(80) and now accounts for two-thirds of Delaware’s agricultural income.(81) Agriculture dominates life in Southern Delaware and is the state’s largest industry, bigger even than corporations.(82)

Bill Satterfield, a spokesperson with Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc., a nonprofit trade association that represents the poultry industry on the Delmarva Peninsula, estimates that nearly 9,000 persons are employed in the poultry industry in Delaware.(83) Delaware’s poultry industry supports nearly 1,200 chicken farmers.(84) Sussex County has regularly ranked first among counties in the nation for the value of poultry products produced each year and in production of broiler chickens.(85) Delaware’s broiler industry ranked seventh nationally in broiler production.(86) Sussex County is home to national poultry giants like Townsends, Inc., ranked ninth in the nation in weekly production of ready-to-cook broilers, and Allen Family Foods Inc., ranked fifteenth.(87)

The tremendous wealth generated by the poultry industry, like the wealth created during the reign of King Cotton in the American South, has failed to trickle down to those who labor in the fields and factories.(88) Hard work for poultry workers in southern Delaware has never guaranteed a decent wage or decent quality of life. Current wage rates earn poultry plant line workers around $6.00 an hour, depending on the company or the particular position.(89) One worker at Allen’s reported that she had earned a raise of about 60 cents after four and a half years of work and is still only entitled to a one week vacation per year.90

A debilitating health problem for poultry workers is carpal tunnel syndrome, which is caused by the rapid repetitive wrist movements made by laborers on the processing line.(91) Fingernails of workers fall off because of the damage that results from the arduous and painful task of removing the skin from meat.(92) Another woman who works at a Sussex County poultry plant explained that she is required to inspect thirty-five chicken breasts a minute for bones.(93) Repeating this task for eight hours a day, with one fifteen minute break every three hours, the woman remarked, is stressful and exhausting.(94)

For recent immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti, who traveled north to find employment in Delaware’s chicken plants, work is not made any easier by the fact that for years company handbooks and safety instructions accompanying plant machinery, not to mention job applications, were all in English.(95) Bill Satterfield of Delmarva Poultry, Inc., however, points out that “now some companies are offering literacy classes and progress has been made in printing some company literature in Spanish.”(96)

A frequent allegation that circulates among American poultry workers is that poultry plants located in Sussex County underpay and make far greater demands of illegal immigrants, thereby diminishing the economic strength of American workers and documented aliens.(97) Evidence to confirm these allegations is difficult to come by, if for no other reason than the reluctance of Hispanic and Haitian workers to complain to labor officials.(98) Poultry plant workers maintain that the slightest controversy or complaint routinely leads to termination. Workers report that supervisors have Spanish speaking employees sign waivers, in English, that state the employee agrees with the reason for the termination.(99)

Satterfield contends there has always existed a shortage of available workers that at one time even required companies to bus people from Baltimore.(100) However, workers and their advocates maintain that with a large labor pool and one that never runs dry, the poultry companies have never been forced to confront serious demands for better wages or effective unions among its work force.(101)

What has traditionally been a labor intensive industry, nevertheless, will someday come to rely more on machines and robots than men(102)–like the mechanization of cotton production. For the moment, anyway, a steady stream of workers can be seen on any day of the week walking along the sides of desolate rural roads throughout Sussex County in work clothing that closely resembles the garb worn by hospital emergency room staff.

Beyond the Corporate Boardrooms

Rural Delaware is littered with ramshackle shacks and their modern cousins, mobile homes. In southern Delaware there are children who still do not enjoy the unthinking privilege of running water or indoor toilets. The city of Wilmington is filled with neighborhoods defined by poverty and separated by race.(103) The tiny state’s single-minded determination during the eighties to make Delaware as popular with the nation’s banks as it is with the nation’s corporations explains much about the state’s continuing legacy of poverty. In a decade launched by political rhetoric that promised opportunity for everyone would flow from policies that benefitted the nation’s banks, the somber reality for thousands of Delawareans has been declining opportunities.

Ten years after the passage of the FCDA, Delaware’s welfare rolls are experiencing dramatic increases,(104) its unemployment rate has hovered around or just above the national average and its ability to house and feed its poor is no better today than it was ten years ago.(105)

The contrast in how the First State accommodates its wealthy and its poor can be startling and at times almost surreal. A businessperson from Delaware, or for that matter New Delhi, can conduct her business with the state’s Division of Corporations by telephone or by facsimile until midnight.(106) On the other hand, a Delaware family that returns home after 4:30 p.m. to find itself evicted from an apartment, or facing some other emergency that demands immediate assistance, must wait until the next morning to ask for help at the state social service center because emergency social services are available only during business hours–which end at 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

While Wilmington’s minority neighborhoods and small businesses continue to decline, some of the nation’s most powerful banks and corporations have successfully persuaded Wilmington politicians to spend federal Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) funds to build new corporate headquarters.(107) Jim Sills, a professor at the University of Delaware, who is trying to become Wilmington’s first Black chief executive, in a recent speech pointed out that 80%of the 40 million dollars Wilmington received in UDAG money during the eighties has “been made available as low interest loans to just six large non-community focused corporations to either build or expand their office buildings.” Sills notes that “in only one instance were any of these funds used to foster economic development in city neighborhoods.”(108)

The Wilmington News Journal reported this past October that the construction of the new Delaware headquarters of corporate and banking giants like Hercules, Inc., Chase Manhattan, Wilmington Trust and Beneficial Trust was accomplished with the use of UDAG money.(109) Even the Tour de Trump bicycle race got in line for UDAG money ahead of the thousands of poor Delawareans living in substandard housing.(110)

The economic policies pursued by Delaware over the last ten years advanced a narrow class of interests. In every venue politicians argued forcefully that the benefits of those policies would trickle down the social ladder. Delaware’s experience with the politics of prosperity and supply side economics, however, lays bare the erroneous assumptions upon which they rest.

Read any report on the state of Delaware’s economy over the last decade and it talks of increases in the number of newly created jobs, decreasing unemployment rates and decreasing tax rates. But behind this lexicon of economics lies a separate society for which conventional measures of prosperity hold little, if any, meaning.

Notes

  1. See Kirk, A Case Study in Legislative Opportunism: How Delaware Used The Federal-State System to Attain Corporate Pre-eminence 10 J. Corp. L. 233 (1984); Ward and Kelly, Why Delaware Leads the Nation as a Corporate Domicile, Del. Lawyer (Fall 1991) at 15-18. Cary, Federalism and Corporate Law : Reflections Upon Delaware, 83 Yale L.J. 663 (1974); Seligman, A Brief History of Delaware’s General Corporation Law of 1899, 1 Del. J. Corp. L. 249 (1976); Comment, Law for Sale: A Study of the Delaware Corporation Law of 1967, 117 U. Pa. L. Rev. 861 (1969), Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, Delaware: The Good Life (1991) at 18.
    back to text
  2. See Bureau of Economic and Business Research 1991 Annual Delaware Economic Report (Summer 1991) at K-2; Stapleford and Mcduffie, Delaware Economic Trends: Equity Implications, University of Delaware Bureau of Economic & Business Research (April 1990) at 10-17; The Public Assistance Task Force, The Realities of Poverty in Delaware 1989 Update (1989); Peuquet and Leland, Homelessness in Delaware (April 1988) at 80-92; Shapiro and Greenstein, Holes in the Safety Net: Poverty Programs and Policies in the States: Delaware (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 1989).
    back to text
  3. See Supra note 3; See also McDonough, Delaware First Place: A Contemporary Portrait (Windsor Publications Inc., 1990); Craig, Delaware: An Economic Overview (Delaware State Chamber of Commerce 1990); Delaware Development Office, Delaware Data Book (March 1991).
    back to text
  4. 63 Del. Laws, Ch.2 ;2-23, codified in Del. Code Ann. tit. 5, 801-1105; tit. 6 4301-4343; tit. 30 2101- 6301.
    back to text
  5. Novack, Supply Side Success Story, Forbes November 17, 1986 at 144-150; Davis, Delaware Inc. Fifty Bucks-Credit Cards Accepted Will Put You in Business, N. Y. Times June 5, 1988 (Magazine), at 28-96: Conigliaro, The Delaware Banking Experience, The Bankers Magazine, 166 (January-February 1983), at 25-27; Breckenfield, Little Delaware’s Powerful Lure for Big Banks, Fortune May 16, 1983, at 147-148; Delaware Tries to Lure Out-Of-State Banks with Bill to Offer Regulatory Tax Haven, Wall Street Journal, February 4, 1981, at 8-10; See also Ripsom, Twenty Months Later and Beyond, Delaware Lawyer (Fall 1982) at 33; Butkiewicz and Latham, Banking Deregulation as an Economic Development Policy Tool, 57 S.Econ. J. at 961-971 (1991).
    back to text
  6. Delaware Development Office, elaware Data Book, (March 1991) at sec. I, 1-8; N. Y. Times Magazine, June 5, 1988 at 29-31.
    back to text
  7. See sources cited supra note 3.
    back to text
  8. Delaware Development Office, Delaware Data Book, (March 1991) at sec. I., 2.
    back to text
  9. Id.
    back to text
  10. Id; Bureau of Economic and Business Research, 1991 Annual Delaware Economic Report (Summer 1991) at A-6.
    back to text
  11. Delaware Development Office, Delaware Data Book (March 1991) at sec. I, 2.
    back to text
  12. 12. Conference Local Bankers: Good, But Poorer, Sports, Wilmington News Journal, September 19, 1989, at A1.

  13. Conference Local Bankers: Good, But Poorer, Sports, Wilmington News Journal, September 19, 1989, at A1.
    back to text
  14. Id.
    back to text
  15. McDonough, Delaware First Place: A Contemporary Portrait (Windsor Publications Inc., 1990) at 55-57; McBride, Birth of a Banking Bonanza, Del. Law. (Fall 1982) at 32-56.
    back to text
  16. Id; See also Davis, Delaware Inc., Fifty Bucks-Credit Cards Accepted Will Put You in Business, N. Y. Times Magazine June 5, 1988 at 30-31.
    back to text
  17. See supra notes 6 and 16.
    back to text
  18. See Ripsom, Butkiewicz and Latham, supra note 6; Del. Code Ann. tit 5, 941 (b)(c)(d), 961 (b)(c), 964.
    back to text
  19. See Prickett, Swayze and Spivack, A Preview of Delaware’s Financial Center Development Act of 1981, 6 Del. J. Corp. Law 104 (1981).
    back to text
  20. Del. Code Ann. tit. 5, 941(b)(c)(d), 961(b)(c), 964.
    back to text
  21. Delaware Development Office, Delaware Office Data Book (March 1991) sec. I and II.
    back to text
  22. Id. at sec. I p.3.; See also McDonough Delaware First Place: A Contemporary Portrait (Windsor Publications Inc., 1990) at 55.
    back to text
  23. Delaware Development Office, Delaware Data Book (March 1991) at sec. I p. 3 and sec. II.
    back to text
  24. Del. Const. art. VIII 6 (b), (c) and (d).
    back to text
  25. See Craig, Delaware: An Economic Overview (Delaware State Chamber of Commerce 1990); Delaware Development Office, Delaware Data Book (March 1991) at sec I; Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, Delaware: The Good Life (1991) at 4.
    back to text
  26. Del. Const. art. VIII 10 and 11.
    back to text
  27. Novack, Supply Side Success Story, Forbes, November 17, 1986 at 149.
    back to text
  28. See supra note 1; Arsht, The History of the Delaware Corporation Law, 1 Del. J. of Corp. Law, 1-22 (1979); Henn, The Law of Corporations (3rd ed. 1983) at 31-32; Nocera, Delaware Puts Out, Esquire, February 1990 at 47-48.
    back to text
  29. See sources cited supra notes 1 and 29.
    back to text
  30. Id.
    back to text
  31. Ward and Kelly, Why Delaware Leads The Nation as a Corporate Domicile, Del. Lawyer (Fall 1991) at 15-18.
    back to text
  32. Id. at 15.
    back to text
  33. See generally H. Clay Reed, Delaware: A History of the First State, vol. 1 (Lewes Historical Society Publishing Company, Inc., 1947) at 456-473; Joseph F. Wall, Alfred I. du Pont: The Man and His Family, (Oxford University Press 1990) at 36-112; Alfred Chandler, Jr. and Stephen Salsbury, Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation (Harper & Row 1973).
    back to text
  34. James Phelan and Robert Pozen, The Company State (Grossman Publishers 1973).
    back to text
  35. Encyclopedia American, vol. 8, at 653.
    back to text
  36. See sources cited supra note 3; see also, Stapleford and Mcduffie Delaware Economic Trends: Equity Implications, University of Delaware Bureau of Economics and Business Research (April 1990) at 14-15, 34-40.
    back to text
  37. Shapiro and Greenstein Holes in the Safety Net: Delaware (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 1989) at 1.
    back to text
  38. Stapleford and Mcduffie, Delaware Economic Trends: Equity Implications University of Delaware, Bureau of Economics and Business Research (April 1990) at 86.
    back to text
  39. Shapiro and Greenstein, Holes in the Safety Net: Delaware (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 1989) at 1.
    back to text
  40. The Public Assistance Task Force, The Realities of Poverty in Delaware, 1989 Update at 8.
    back to text
  41. Shapiro and Greenstein, Holes in the Safety Net: Delaware, at 7-16.
    back to text
  42. Id.
    back to text
  43. Id. at 14-15.
    back to text
  44. Delaware Housing Coalition, Fostering Nonprofit Housing Development in Delaware (September 1991) at 3; Detailed Study Points to Need for Low-Cost Housing, Wilmington News Journal, September 19, 1989 at A6; Delaware State Housing Authority Needs Report: Technical
    back to text
  45. Analysis (1989).

  46. Peuquet and Leland, Homelessness in Delaware (1988) at 22.
    back to text
  47. Id. at 20.
    back to text
  48. The Silent Poor of Sussex County, Wilmington News Journal, February 2, 1986 at A1.
    back to text
  49. Baines v. Savage, (Del. J.P. Ct. 1989); Washington v. Savage, (Del. J.P. Ct. 1990); December 4, 1989 Sussex County Department of Inspection Notice of Condemnation.
    back to text
  50. Peuquet and Leland, Homelessness in Delaware (1988) at 83.
    back to text
  51. Bureau of Economic and Business Research, 1991 Annual Delaware Economic Report (Summer 1991) at L-3, L-4.
    back to text
  52. Id; see also, Peuquet and Leland, Homelessness in Delaware (1988) at 84.
    back to text
  53. Peuquet and Leland at 84.
    back to text
  54. Stapleford and Mcduffie, Delaware Economic Trends:Equity Implications University of Delaware, Bureau of Economic Business Research (April 1990) at 14-15.
    back to text
  55. Id. at 16.
    back to text
  56. Id.
    back to text
  57. Id. at 16.
    back to text
  58. Id.
    back to text
  59. Id. at 14.
    back to text
  60. Id. at 14.
    back to text
  61. See supra notes 3, 40-43; see also Peuquet and Leland, Homelessness in Delaware (1988) at 89-94
    back to text
  62. .

  63. The Public Assistance Task Force, <MI>The Realities of Poverty in Delaware, 1989 Update at 8.
    back to text
  64. Stapleford and Mcduffie Delaware Economic Trends: Equity Implications University of Delaware, Bureau of Economic and Business Research (April 1990) at 14, 15, 17; Peuquet and Leland, Homelessness in Delaware (1988) at 88.
    back to text
  65. Shapiro and Greenstein, Holes in the Safety Net: Poverty Programs and Policies in the States: Delaware (Center on Budget Policies and Priorities 1989) at 10.
    back to text
  66. Id. at 7-10; Care for Poor Addressed, Wilmington News Journal, September 16, 1991; Health Care Panel Nurtures a Plan for the Uninsured, Wilmington News Journal, September 29, 1991 at A1.
    back to text
  67. Delaware State Chamber of Commerece, Delaware: The Good Life (1991) at 83.
    back to text
  68. Stapleford and Mcduffie Delaware Economic Trends: Equity Implications University of Delaware, Bureau of Economic and Business Research (April 1990) at 13-14, 17; Delaware State Housing Authority Report: Technical Analysis (1989) at ii; Dun’s Regional Business Directory, vol. 1 at 73-87 (Dun’s Marketing Services, 1990
    back to text
  69. ).

  70. H. Clay Reed, Delaware A History of The First State, vol. II (Lewes Historical Publishing Company Inc.) at 571- 581, John A. Munroe, History of Delaware (University of Delaware Press 1979) at 223-230; John A. Munroe, The Negro In Delaware, 56 S. Atl. Q. 428-448 (1957): Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F. Supp. 428 (D. Del. 1975); Gebhart v. Belton, 91 A.2d 137 (Del. Supr. 1952); Steiner v. Simmons, 111 A.2d 574 (Del. Supr. 1955).
    back to text
  71. Robert A. Wilson and Charles P. Wilson, The Delawareans: Delaware Enters the 1970’s (1972) at 61-62; John A. Munroe, The Negro In Delaware, 56 S. Atl. Q. 428-448 (1957).
    back to text
  72. Randall L. Broyles, <MI>Concepts of Delaware: (1974) at 182; Federal Writers Project Delaware, A Guide To The First State (Viking Press 1938) at 528.
    back to text
  73. Carol E. Hoffecker, Corporate Capital: Wilmington in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press 1983) at 247; See Gebhart v. Belton, 91 A. 2d. 137 (Del. Supr. 1952); Steiner v. Simmons, 111 A.2d 574 (Del Supr. 1955): 3000 At Meeting Called to Organize
    back to text
  74. Integration Fight, Wilmington Morning News Journal, Sept. 27, 1954 at 1; An Outsider Stirs Up Small Town Troubles, Life Magazine, Oct. 11, 1954; Carol E. Hoffecker, Delaware: A Bicentennial History, (W.W. Norton & Co. 1977) at 130.

  75. See Arthur T. Sutherland, The Migratory Labor Problem in Delaware, United States Department of Labor (1941); M. Loretta Sullivan, Women’s Employment In Vegetable Canneries in Delaware, United States Department of Labor, Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 62 (1927).
    back to text
  76. Id.
    back to text
  77. Arthur T. Sutherland, The Migratory Labor Problem in Delaware at 1-4.
    back to text
  78. Id.
    back to text
  79. September 21, 1991 interview with Gloria Fernandez in Dover, Delaware.
    back to text
  80. September 16, 1991, Interview with Gloria Fernandez in Dover, Delaware.
    back to text
  81. Id.
    back to text
  82. Donald Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton (University of North Carolina Press 1971); Arthur F. Roper and Ira Dea. Reid, Sharecroppers All (University of North Carolina Press 1941); Joseph W. Cash, The Mind of the South (A.A. Knopf 1941).
    back to text
  83. Delaware Department of Agriculture Statistical Summary, 1990; Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc., Facts About Delaware’s Poultry Industry, (August 1991); McDonough, Delaware First Place: A Contemporary Portrait (Windsor Publications Inc., 1990) at 70; Gordon Sawyer, The Agribusiness Poultry Industry (1971) at 36-77; Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc., County Rankings of Broilers and Other Meat-Type Chickens Sold (July 1991); November 27, 1991, Bill Satterfield Interview in Georgetown, Delaware.
    back to text
  84. Id.
    back to text
  85. Delaware Department of Agriculture Statistics Summary (1990).
    back to text
  86. Id.
    back to text
  87. November 27, 1991 Interview with Bill Satterfield in Georgetown, Delaware.
    back to text
  88. Id.
    back to text
  89. 1987 Census of Agriculture, vol. 2 pt. 3, pp. 18, 20, 47.
    back to text
  90. Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc., <MI>Facts About Delaware’s Poultry Industry (August 1991).
    back to text
  91. Broiler Industry Magazine (December 1990) at 32-73.
    back to text
  92. See supra note 3; Robert A. Wilson and Charles P. Wilson, The Delawareans: Delaware Enters the 1970’s (1972) at 61-62.
    back to text
  93. September 22, 1991 Interview with Debra and Dennis Nichols in Bridgeville, Delaware; November 18, 1991 Interview with C. Sanchez, Marcos Morales, Juan Salazaar, and M. Ramirez in Georgetown, Delaware.
    back to text
  94. November 18, 1991 Interview with C. Sanchez, et.al.
    back to text
  95. Id.
    back to text
  96. Id.
    back to text
  97. Id.
    back to text
  98. Id.
    back to text
  99. September 16, 1991 Gloria Fernandez Interview in Dover, Delaware.
    back to text
  100. November 27, 1991 Interview with Bill Satterfield in Georgetown, Delaware.
    back to text
  101. September 29, 1991 Interview with Dennis and Debra Nichols in Bridgeville, Delaware; September 16, 1991 Interview with Gloria Fernandez in Dover, Delaware; November 18, 1991 Interview with G. Sanchez, Marcos Morales, Juan Salazaar and M. Ramirez in Georgetown, Delaware.
    back to text
  102. September 10, 1991 Interview with Gloria Fernandez in Dover, Delaware.
    back to text
  103. November 18, 1991 Interview with G. Sanchez, Marcos Morales, Juan Salazaar and M. Ramirez in Georgetown, Delaware.
    back to text
  104. November 27, 1991 Interview with Bill Satterfield in Georgetown, Delaware.
    back to text
  105. September 29, 1991 Interview with Dennis and Debra Nichols, and September 10, 1991 Interview with Gloria Fernandez.
    back to text
  106. November 27, 1991 Interview with Bill Satterfield in Georgetown, Delaware; See also Poultry Tech Bulletin, vol. 2. no. 2 at 4 (Spring 1990); J. Craig Wyvill, Wiley Holcombe, Chris Thompson and Gary McMurray, The Potential of Robotics In Poultry Processing (presentation at 26th National Meeting On Poultry Health and Condemnations, Ocean City, Maryland, October 17-18, 1991).
    back to text
  107. Jabbar-Bey, Wilmington Area Community-Based Development Project (College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, University of Delaware, May 1991); Carol E. Hoffecker, Corporate Capital, Wilmington in The Twentieth Century, (Temple University Press 1983) at 159-200, 218-227.
    back to text
  108. Bureau of Economic and Business Research, 1991 Annual Delaware Economic Report (Summer 1991) at K-5.
    back to text
  109. See supra note 3; see also Delaware Economic Outlook Quarterly Bulletin, University of Delaware Bureau of Economic and Business Research (Winter 1991) at 5.
    back to text
  110. Ward and Kelly, Why Delaware Leads The Nation as a Corporate Domicile, Del. Law. (Fall 1991) at 17.
    back to text
  111. Wilmington’s Shadow Government, Wilmington News Journal October 13, 1991, at A1.
    back to text
  112. Jim Sills’ speech to Kiwanis Club on November 14, 1991 at the University and Whist Club in Wilmington, Delaware.
    back to text
  113. Wilmington’s Shadow Government, Wilmington News Journal, October 13, 1991, at A1.
    back to text
  114. Id.
    back to text

September-October 1992, ATC 40.