Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (21 page)

It was not until 1887 that Joseph Rowntree relaunched a pure and new Cocoa Elect. By now, four tons of pastilles left Tanner’s Moat
each week, and demand showed no signs of flagging. When Joseph did his annual accounts, at last he could see that sales, at £96,916, had almost doubled since he launched his gums and pastilles. After deducting costs, his profits were also rising—although at £1,600, they seemed a poor return for the huge volume of output. Had they turned the corner? It was hard to tell. There were steps he could take to help streamline the business, but at least some of them stood in opposition to his Quaker principles.

After Henry’s death, Joseph was joined in the business by his sons. John Wilhelm, the oldest, saw the fragile state of the business and was outspoken in his views. He pushed for change, insisting that certain aspects of Quaker thinking were holding the business back: “Quaker caution and love of detail run to seed.” His father was persuaded, and one year after John Wilhelm joined the company, advertisements for Rowntree’s products began to appear for the first time in popular magazines such as
Tit-bits
and
Answers.
And as he worked his way around the firm’s various departments, John Wilhelm proved to be a natural deputy to his father. In 1888, he was joined by his younger brother, Benjamin Seebohm. Benjamin had read chemistry at Owen College in Manchester and created a laboratory to experiment with new product lines.

Joseph’s attitudes toward running the business softened under the persuasive influence of his sons. He began to see modernization through fresh eyes and this gave urgency to the need for change. It became clear that the business was also being held back by the inefficiency of their premises at Tanner’s Moat. The ragtag factory with its outdated machinery and many floors was a far cry from the gleaming, smooth operation at Bournville.

At first, Joseph Rowntree prevaricated about borrowing money to move to a larger site. This was not Quaker philosophy as he interpreted it. Make do and mend. Thrift. This he understood. And ramping up the business created another conflict for him. Making money on an industrial scale held no appeal. He did not “desire great wealth,” he said, “either for myself or for my children.” Worse, it could damage his children, prompting them to self-indulgence and greed. There was, however, one major consideration in favor of moving the business. He
shared the Cadbury brothers’ view that it would be easier to improve conditions for his fast-growing staff at a site out of town.

Joseph Rowntree heard there were twenty-nine acres for sale on the outskirts of York. With the city walls and York Minster Cathedral behind him, he followed the path for twenty minutes out of town, past rows of humble terraces, along Clarence Street, and into Haxby Road. He crossed a stream and on the left he found the site. The potential was immediately clear. In these spacious grounds, he could build the ideal chocolate factory, where there was room to grow. He could have a porter’s lodge on Haxby Road, stables would be needed, and he envisioned tennis courts, a bowling green, parkland, and lawns. With a special line built to the site by the north-eastern railway, the possibilities seemed endless.

It was a bold move that would require painstaking attention to detail. But Joseph Rowntree now recognized that bold moves and investment were needed to stay ahead. At last they could match the progress of Bournville. After a long, hard struggle, Joseph Rowntree and his sons were going to join the chocolate aristocracy. They were going to make pastilles, cocoa, and chocolate for England.

W
hile Joseph Rowntree had his eye on Bournville as a way forward, the Frys continued to conduct their business as they had always done. Joseph Storrs Fry II felt the company’s success was due to “patience, prudence, honesty and hard work.” This guiding philosophy had served the family well for two hundred years and would carry them forward into the future. In 1885 Fry sold £404,189 of chocolate and cocoa. By 1890 this figure nearly doubled to a staggering £761,969, and in five more years, they were approaching a million pounds in sales. They remained the undisputed Quaker chocolate giant.

It is hardly surprising then that Joseph Storrs Fry II and others in Fry’s management did not “take readily to new fangled ways,” according to the firm’s
Bicentenary Issue
. The management believed there was no need to discard old methods that were so spectacularly
successful unless “thoroughly assured that they had something better to put into their place.” Joseph Storrs Fry II was doing well in areas such as overseas sales, but these were aspects of the business in which his forebears had already taken a lead. The innovative streak and initiative that had prompted his great-grandfather to create the business in the first place and that drove his grandfather to pioneer the use of steam technology in cocoa production was missing.

Furthermore, in his desire to promote a Quakerly concern for all that was honest and true, gradually his advertising budget was slipping behind that of Cadbury or Rowntree as a proportion of his sales figures. Fry favored the gentler promotion of trade fairs rather than bombarding the consumer with advertising campaigns. The efficiency of their production was also slipping behind the competition as the sprawling citadel around Union Street continued to spill out into any spare buildings regardless of their suitability.

For Joseph Storrs Fry II, the welfare of his workers remained a priority. This extended to such thoughtful touches as giving each girl who left to get married a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s
Book of Household Management
. He appreciated simple pleasures, such as the firm’s annual outing. Because the staff had few opportunities to travel around the countryside, he arranged for an excursion train each year. Long before it was due to depart at 6:00 AM, “The platform would be crammed with Fry employees all dressed up in their best,” many with flowers in their coats, anxious to set out on their journey to “furrin parts,” according to one member of staff. As their numbers swelled, literally thousands of staff descended on seaside resorts such as Weymouth, “laying siege to all the restaurants,” and almost reducing the town “to a state of famine.”

Little by little, almost imperceptibly, the paternalism began to seem quaint, the religious values otherworldly, and the success of the business, a miracle. Dressed in sober colors as a plain Quaker, his black suit and waistcoat immaculate, a neat bow tie at his chin, Joseph Storrs Fry II’s style and manner formed an increasingly striking contrast with those around him. Gradually, the head of the giant chocolate company, looking a little more tired and a little more grey
with each passing year, appeared to belong in another world that was being left behind.

T
he success at Bournville in the late 1880s was marred by a deeply personal loss for George Cadbury. On March 23, 1887, thirty-eight-year-old Mary gave birth to her sixth child, a baby boy who died a few hours later. About a month later, the family was on holiday in Dawlish in Devon. George organized an outing for the children, leaving Mary behind to rest. He soon received a telegram saying that Mary had been taken seriously ill.

The family was staying at a boarding house in Dawlish. The place was homely but it was not home. Mary did not have her familiar doctor. She made light of her illness, as was her custom, while a fever, almost unnoticed, took deathly hold. To George’s alarm, he found his wife’s condition had deteriorated beyond remedy. The doctor informed him there was nothing he could do. They must both prepare for the end, for that long separation in the quiet unfamiliar room while the fever marked out those final hours on Mary’s face.

“She was most patient during her illness,” George told the children later. “She seemed willing to leave all in her Father’s hands.” After twenty-four hours, “Her countenance was calm and peaceful as she passed into the presence of her King.” George and Mary had been married for fifteen years. Richard’s eldest daughter, Jessie, moved in to help care for the five motherless children. In spite of her help, the loss of both wife and mother made for a somber household.

As the months passed, a distraught George turned to a friend, Elizabeth Taylor, confiding the terrible sense of loss that he and “my precious little ones have sustained.” Elizabeth, or “Elsie” as she was called by her family, had known George for over ten years, when they had met by chance while she was visiting her uncle and aunt, George and Caroline Barrow, in Birmingham. Inevitably it was Quaker interests that had drawn them together. George had been organizing a temperance meeting and called upon the Barrows and was pleased to
discover that they were hosting a young visitor, Elsie, who offered to help out by making a speech at the meeting.

Over the following years, George and Elsie met occasionally through the Barrows. She was inspired by his discussions of such thinkers as Ruskin and his practical vision of how social problems could be solved. He was impressed to find a forceful woman who was as passionate about Quaker values as himself. She taught a class of forty boys from the poor districts of south London on Sundays in addition to organizing choirs and Bible lessons. Although she was in her twenties, she pursued her education rather than rush into marriage, and took over the role of governess to her younger brothers and sisters. Elsie was thirty when her father asked George to visit their home in London in the spring of 1888.

A whirlwind courtship followed. Elsie, with her even features, intelligent expression, and high forehead, may not have been pretty but was most certainly handsome. More important to George, she had a strength of purpose, an abundance of energy, and shared his passion for social reform. He felt confident that in this unusual and attractive woman he could build “a life in the kingdom of the spirit.” They married at a Quaker meeting in Peckham in June 1888. “The bride,” said the
Ladies Pictorial
, “wore a gown of ivory satin trimmed with brocaded velvet, and a tulle bonnet with orange blossom and a veil. Her ornaments were a gold bracelet and a diamond and gold bracelet and brooch, the gifts of the bridegroom.”

It was soon clear that George had found a true soul mate. As soon as they returned from their honeymoon, in a clear signal of her intentions, she joined her husband in the Adult School in Severn Street. In the hopeful, anxious faces of the wives of George’s students who had come in to meet her, she could see her duty. The women asked if she could teach them, and Elsie happily agreed.

With her considerable experience teaching children, Elsie made a good stepmother to George’s children. In March 1889, they welcomed a child of their own, Laurence. He was born just in time to be held by his grandfather, John Cadbury, who died at the age of eighty-eight six weeks later. Another son, Norman, was born in 1890, followed in
quick succession by Dolly in 1892, Egbert in 1893, and Molly in 1894. By now, George’s oldest son by his first marriage, twenty-year-old Edward had joined his father at Bournville and was working his way up from the factory floor. Edward’s cousins, Barrow and William, had already gained experience in the packing room, the chocolate room, the grinding room, and the hot room—before the days of ventilation. To qualify for advancement, it was made clear to the younger generation that they had to understand the company “in spirit” as well as industrial and financial efficiency.

In 1894, George Cadbury’s rapidly expanding household moved into a much larger home a couple of miles from Bournville. It was approached by carriage from Bristol Road, where a lodge-house marked the entrance to a drive over a quarter-mile long. Stately cedars and oaks bordered the driveway, affording glimpses of a grand house beyond. To the left was a large lake with an island, and to the right, sitting on a gentle rise in the land, the rambling Victorian manor house came into view. Nestled around the house were a series of gardens bordered by brick walls or herbaceous borders, including a dairy and George’s rose garden. The household and grounds staff numbered thirty, the women neatly turned out in starched white pinafores and caps. This was not the home of a plain Quaker but of a successful Victorian industrialist. The former grocer’s son—known to his friends as “the practical mystic”—took his place at the center of his own chocolate empire.