# Olin Corporation Olin Corporation (NYSE: OLN) is an American manufacturer of ammunition, chlor alkali chemicals, and defense products headquartered in Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1892 as the Western Cartridge Company by Franklin W. Olin in East Alton, Illinois, the company is the industrial base that generated the fortune behind one of the most consequential conservative philanthropic operations in American history — the [[John M. Olin Foundation]]. ## Corporate history Franklin W. Olin built Western Cartridge into a major ammunition supplier across two world wars. In 1931, the company acquired Winchester Repeating Arms, making Olin the manufacturer of Winchester-branded ammunition — one of the most recognized names in American firearms. The company diversified into chemicals (chlor alkali products, epoxies, bleaching chemicals) and defense manufacturing (military-grade ammunition, propellants, ordnance). Today Olin operates through three segments: Winchester (commercial and military ammunition), Chlor Alkali Products and Vinyls, and Epoxy. ## The Olin fortune and conservative philanthropy The company's significance for the RWKB is not its products but what its profits funded. [[John M. Olin]] (1892–1982), son of the founder, ran the company from the 1940s through the 1960s and transformed the family industrial fortune into political infrastructure through the [[John M. Olin Foundation]]. The foundation — run with extraordinary strategic discipline by [[James Piereson]] from 1985 to 2005 — disbursed approximately $370 million into conservative intellectual infrastructure over its lifetime. The money was targeted with precision at institutions that would reshape American law and political economy for decades: the [[Federalist Society]] (the pipeline from law school to the federal judiciary), Law and Economics programs at elite universities (Chicago, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Virginia, Georgetown), the [[Heritage Foundation]], the [[American Enterprise Institute]], the [[Hoover Institution]], the [[Manhattan Institute]], and conservative academic chairs at major universities. ## The spend-down model The [[John M. Olin Foundation]] deliberately spent its entire endowment rather than existing in perpetuity — a strategic choice that ensured donor intent would not be diluted by future trustees drifting from the founder's vision. This spend-down model influenced subsequent conservative philanthropic strategy, including Leonard Leo's approach at the [[Marble Freedom Trust]]. ## The Olin → Federalist Society → judiciary pipeline The connection between Olin Corporation's ammunition profits and the composition of the federal judiciary is one of the most important causal chains in the RWKB's [[Dark Money Ecosystem]]. Olin ammunition revenue → [[John M. Olin]] personal fortune → [[John M. Olin Foundation]] → [[Federalist Society]] founding and growth → conservative legal movement infrastructure → [[Judicial Capture]] of the federal bench. [[Antonin Scalia]], [[Robert Bork]], and the entire generation of [[Originalism]]-committed judges were incubated in institutions funded by Olin money. The [[Federalist Society Founding]] in 1982 was underwritten in part by Olin Foundation grants. ## The company today Olin Corporation continues to operate as a publicly traded company (the [[Olin Family]] no longer controls it). It remains one of the largest ammunition manufacturers in the United States and a significant defense contractor. The Winchester brand is ubiquitous in American firearms culture — connecting the company, if distantly, to the [[Second Amendment]] and [[NRA]] ecosystem. But the company's primary RWKB relevance is historical: Olin Corporation is where the money came from. ## KB significance Olin Corporation illustrates a pattern the RWKB documents repeatedly: industrial wealth → philanthropic vehicle → intellectual infrastructure → political power. The [[Koch Network]] used petrochemical profits. The [[Scaife-Mellon Family]] used banking and oil. The [[Bradley Foundation]] used defense electronics (Allen-Bradley). The [[Coors Family]] used brewing. Olin used ammunition and chemicals. In each case, the fortune itself is less interesting than what it bought — and what Olin bought, through the [[John M. Olin Foundation]] and [[James Piereson]]'s strategic vision, was nothing less than the conservative legal movement that now controls the [[Supreme Court of the United States]]. See also: [[Dark Money]], [[Movement Conservatism]], [[Powell Memo]], [[Free Market Fundamentalism]], [[Think Tank Ecosystem]].