When Dorrance died in 1930, he left an estate of over $115 million the nation’s third largest at that time. He also left a company devoted to engineering, committed to providing good products (in recessions it would rather shave margins than cut back product quality or raise price),and obsessed with secrecy. His successor, John T. Dorrance, Jr., headed the company for the next 24 years (1930-54) and few, if any, important decisions were made at Campbell without John Dorrance, Jr.’s approval. In 1954, the company went public, with the Dorrance family retaining majority control. In 1998 the Dorrance family still owned about 50 percent of Campbell’s stock and, despite having relinquished direct management control, still exerted considerable shareholder influence. Four of Campbell Soup’s 16 board members were grandchildren of John T. Dorrance.