The Search for God and Guinness

by Stephen Mansfield

  Early and late he was to be seen at the brewery, not simply delegating the various duties of management to others, but taking upon himself more or less the responsibilities of every department, and watching the daily course of business at every point. Not that he did not impose adequate responsibilities upon others; for this he did, and was as fortunate in his selection of men for the chief positions as he was in perceiving the various necessities of adaptability which an increasing trade involved.

  He was no hard taskmaster, however, for he believed in ruling by kindness rather than sternness, knowing full well that the way to get the best service out of a man is to let him feel that he is appreciated and cared for. It is said of him that there was not a workman connected with the brewery, no matter how humbled his duties were, that he did not know and maintain friendly relations with.

  Concluding its tribute to the “Great Man of Guinness,” the book celebrated Benjamin Lee’s character and the high esteem in which the Irish people held him:

  He occupied a position of unique distinction in Dublin. He was not only recognized as the most eminent man of business at the time connected with the city of his birth, but he was also a man of large public spirit, to whom doing good to his fellow men was a pleasure— one almost might say a passion—and in the service he so willingly rendered to the public he was not less devoted and enthusiastic than in the conduct of his colossal business. He was thorough in everything and always cherished noble ideas of life and conduct. No wonder that such a man should have won the affection and esteem of those amongst whom he lived and that the highest honours within the power of the people of Dublin to bestow should have been tendered to him.

  Yet while Benjamin Lee was highly regarded for his astonishingly successful leadership of the family firm, it was his decision to fund and oversee the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral that has caused him to live with affection in Irish memory. Founded in 1192, the cathedral was the shining historic symbol of Christianity in Ireland. It was associated with much that Irish Christians viewed with pride: that it was built on the site where St. Patrick first baptized new believers, that Jonathan Swift had been dean there in the 1700s, that the first performance of Handel’s Messiah had taken place there, and yes, even that the first Arthur Guinness had made the cathedral his spiritual home. Yet by 1860, the venerable church had fallen into such horrible decline that many feared the structure might completely collapse.

  A view of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (Church of Ireland) from the gardens created during the second Guinness renovation

  Benjamin Lee Guinness decided to intervene. For many who knew him, it was a surprising decision. As Michele Guinness has written, “Although Spes Mea in Deo (‘My Hope is in God’) was the family motto, Benjamin Lee’s trust in a gospel of self-help often appeared greater than his trust in God.” He maintained a loose spirituality, preferring the more formal Irish national church to the evangelical Christianity centered at Bethesda Chapel that his wife, Bessie, embraced. Indeed, she grew in time to fear for her husband’s soul. Ill for many years and contemplating her death and what it might mean for her husband, Bessie wrote of her concern for Benjamin to one of her sons.

  Do my darling avoid bad company, I mean worldlings, for there will be plenty anxious to come here, and do guard darling papa from designing worldly women, for he will be much set on and might easily be taken in. I do not mean that he should not marry, but that he should get one who would help him on to that future world and not lead him to think of or live for the present.

  Still, whether from a depth of piety his family did not know or from more patriotic sentiments, Benjamin Lee threw himself into the task of restoring St. Patrick’s. He gave just over £150,000 to the cause, a massive sum for the day, equal to nearly $4,000,000 now. And he directed the work himself. It would take five years and much of his time, but the results live on as testament to both Irish Christianity and Guinness generosity. As the anonymous author of Fortunes Made in Business wrote, “He employed the highest architectural skill of the time in the work, and when, in 1865, the restored building was re-opened, with more than its ancient grandeur given back to it, it was felt that the restorer (Benjamin), who had personally superintended the carrying out of the work as diligently as he was accustomed to look after the affairs of his brewery, had done a memorable thing.”

  The author in the Guinness family pew at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

  When Benjamin Lee Guinness died in London on May 19, 1868, obituaries proclaimed that he had permanently transformed the Guinness firm. It was true. He had tripled the acreage covered by the plant, making it one of the largest breweries in the world. He had dramatically increased Guinness markets both at home and abroad and in the process he had become the richest man in the land, leaving behind an enormous personal fortune of more than £1,100,000 upon his death. Perhaps the most startling tribute to his leadership became evident some years later, when corporate reports revealed that between 1837 and 1887, Guinness sales had increased thirtyfold. Much of this was due to the astuteness and industry of Benjamin Lee Guinness.

  Yet another of his most ingenious decisions became evident after his death. He had expressed in his will that he hoped his sons would continue to serve “at the same place by their Ancestors for so many years.” He had two sons, Arthur Edward and Edward Cecil, both of whom had apprenticed at the brewery. Yet by the time of his father’s death, Arthur Edward began turning away from the brewery to pursue a life in politics. He was elected to Parliament, found it more to his liking, and within a decade of his father’s passing, he asked his brother to buy him out.

  Benjamin Lee had anticipated such a possibility. In his will he had directed that “Brewery concerns shall not be divided or broken up but shall remain as they now are.” His wish was that the son who chose to leave the family business should sell to “his brother so continuing in said business and to no other persona whatsoever.” This is exactly what occurred. In 1876, Arthur Edward formally withdrew from the brewery, selling his half interest to Edward Cecil for £600,000. This resulted from the brilliant decision on the part of Benjamin Lee to assure that the firm stayed in family hands. As two Guinness historians later wrote, “He was typical of many Victorian Industrialists, but more far-seeing than most, in his awareness of the temptations which great wealth offered the next generation.”

  Window honoring the Guinness family in St. Patrick’s Cathedral

  Statue of Benjamin Guinness near the south entrance of St. Patrick’s Cathedral

  After Benjamin Lee’s death in 1868, his son Edward Cecil then became head of the company, for eight years as partner to his brother, Arthur, and then alone after Arthur sold his interest in the company to pursue a political career. The Edward Cecil years would be a time of dramatic prosperity. He had received from his father a brewery that was the largest in Ireland and one of the half dozen largest in the world. Before he had finished leaving his imprint on the family firm, Edward Cecil would make Guinness into the largest and most successful brewery ever known. Even the statistics from the early years are astonishing. During the eight years that Edward and Arthur led the company as partners, the annual output of 350,411 in 1868 doubled to 778,597 barrels in 1876. From that time on, annual output increased 5 percent annually, surpassing 1.2 million barrels by 1886.

  Edward Cecil was a different man from his father.

  Though both enjoyed wealth and knew the gentlemanly arts of sport and pleasure, Edward ran the firm in a less hands-on fashion than Benjamin Lee. As we have seen, Edward’s father was an ever-present, energetic man who was a familiar face to even the lowest tier of workers at the Guinness plant. He was personable, easy to converse with, and interested in each worker’s responsibilities. His transformation of the company during his time as proprietor came from wisdom gained through observation, experience, and on-site management. His son, Edward Cecil, was a different kind of man. He was raised in startling wealth and had learned to love the life of the privilege
d. Though he would lead the company to new heights, he would do so through delegating authority to exceedingly capable men.

  It was a management style fit for the age. It is difficult to express the pace of change that a man of Edward Cecil’s time would have known, but perhaps one illustration will do. To use an American example, the American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 largely utilizing rifles, cavalry charges, cannon, and strategies little different from those of the American Revolution nearly eighty years before. Less than fifty years later, the First World War was fought with machine guns, hand grenades, airplanes, submarines, radar, mustard gas, and tanks. The technological innovations during the years between these two wars, the time of Edward Cecil’s reign over Guinness, was mind-boggling. An approach to management that relied on trusted experts and delegation served many a corporation of that time well, and Guinness perhaps most of all.

  Edward was born in 1847 and was educated at Trinity College Dublin, where he earned his MA and LLD degrees. His devil-may-care attitude led some to believe he was a dandy, a wastrel of the upper class. But he was smarter than he at first appeared and, typical of his age of manhood, practiced the art of seeming more cavalier about life than he actually was. In truth, he was a quick study, a man keenly in tune with his times, and a deeply ambitious soul, eager to fulfill every potential of his wealth and privilege.

  Though the brewery prospered while Edward was partnered with Arthur, this was nothing compared with the prosperity that came in the decade after. Edward saw to the construction of new offices and storage facilities of hops and grain. He also approved construction of brewhouse number 2 at St. James’s Gate, a colossal structure that housed four mash tuns and would soon after be increased to eight. Having inherited his father’s farsightedness, he realized how traffic on the River Liffey was increasing both in volume and in importance to his firm, so he bought a vast tract of land that lay between the brewery and the river, granting the company access to quays and thus to the Port of Dublin. To exploit this new access, in 1877 he contracted for a fleet of barges that would become enduring symbols of Guinness’s strategic reach to the waterways of Ireland.

  Trinity College, 1890

  This dizzying season of expansion is summarized well in notes from a later head brewer, D. Owen Williams:

  The expansion of trade during the 1800’s continued to leave Guinness short of plant and buildings to contain it. Between 1870 and 1876 the Brewhouse was mostly reconstructed. A new building containing bins, elevators, mills, and hoppers, necessary for the receipt and storage of malt and preparing it for brewing, was erected. The four existing kieves were increased to eight in 1865. The additional plant required for brewing and fermentation was also correspondingly increased, including the addition of new tuns and skimmers and five new vathouses, containing 72 vats, making a total of 134 vats. Most of this expansion was done in existing premises but the space available was already too small. By 1872, new ground had been acquired to the south of the main brewery east of Robert Street and new stables and an additional vat-house, No. 8, containing 32 vats, erected there. A large tract of land to the North between James’s Street and the Liffey was bought in 1873, almost doubling the area of the brewery, and by 1874 a large maltings, a new cooperate, and new cask cleansing and racking sheds were being erected there. The new arrangements set the pattern that was to last for over a hundred years whereby the beer was brewed and fermented around the original premises to the south of James’s Street and racked and dispatched to the north.

  So great was the pace of growth at the Guinness brewery that necessity became the mother of invention. Realizing that expansion required more rapid transportation within the plant, Edward Cecil decided that the firm needed its own customized railroad, and—in a move typical of his management style—he entrusted the project to chief engineer Sam Geoghegan.

  It was good that Geoghegan was one of the great engineering minds of his time, for his task was not an easy one. The challenge was to design a system that was of the right size to move amongst the Guinness buildings and yet could interchange with the standard-gauge track of the Great Southern & Western Railway at Kingsbridge Station, just adjacent to the new property Edward had acquired.

  Geoghegan proposed a plan that used two tracks, a twenty-two– inch narrow-gauge system and a standard gauge that linked Guinness to the broader Irish rail. It was a brilliant solution and soon became a model for similar plants around the world.

  Then Geoghegan had to solve another problem: the fifty-foot incline from the Liffey to the highest elevations of the Guinness plant. How could railroad cars make such an ascent? Some suggested elevators, but this plan was soon rejected as too time-consuming. The pace of the Guinness plant wouldn’t allow for trains to wait for elevators that were slow and of limited capacity. Instead, Geoghegan decided to build an ingenious underground spiral tunnel that revolved two and a half times underneath James’s Street, allowing train cars to move unimpeded from one end of the brewery to the other. A similar tunnel had been built under the Alps; Geoghegan knew of it and adapted the plan for use beneath the brewery. It was a remarkably original solution for the age. Geoghegan wasn’t done, though. He added to his list of innovations a unique cooling system that eliminated dangerous carbon dioxide, which had long been a hazardous by-product of large-scale fermentation.

  As brilliant as Geoghegan was in engineering creative solutions to Guinness challenges, Edward Cecil was his entrepreneurial match, and the world learned just how true this was in 1868 when he announced he was going to make Guinness a publicly traded company. It was another astounding Guinness innovation, once again copied by major brewers around the world.

  In his ten years at the head of the firm, Edward Cecil had already grown the company by more than 56 percent. This was largely due to expanding foreign markets, to which Guinness was exporting over a million barrels of beer annually. In the eighteen years that Edward had been with Guinness, overall production had increased fourfold. Merging his own ambition with a gift for timing and the long-range view he inherited from his father, Edward decided it was the perfect moment to take the company public.

  Personal considerations may have moved him to this decision as well. He was happily married to a renowned beauty named Adelaide, whom the family nicknamed Dodo for unknown but certainly kind reasons. Their marriage was notoriously fulfilling and produced three sons: Rupert Edward Cecil Lee Guinness, Arthur Ernest Guinness, and Walter Edward Guinness. Only Ernest involved himself in the family business, though, and this may have moved Edward Cecil to contemplate the Guinness generations to come and what their personal choices might mean for the well-being of the company. Moreover, he was somewhat distracted himself. He had been appointed Sheriff of Dublin and then later, when the Prince of Wales visited Ireland, was made High Sheriff. He was also made a baronet in the seat of Castleknock in County Dublin. Some six years later, he would be created first Baron Iveagh, of Iveagh, County Down, which was upgraded in succeeding years to a viscount and then an earl. This gave him the title of Lord Iveagh in the British peerage (County Down being then and still a part of the UK), thus elevating the Guinness name to dazzling heights. The first Arthur, who died an esteemed member of the Dublin upper-middle class, could hardly have envisioned it.

  All of this may have informed his decision to make the family firm a public property. Whatever motivated him, it was one of the greatest stock offerings in British history. A stock prospectus issued by Baring on October 21, 1886, showed the offering as “250,000 ordinary shares at £10, another 250,000, 6 percent cumulative preferred shares at £10 and 150,000 5 percent debenture shares redeemable at the company’s option in 20 years. One third of the ordinary shares were reserved for Edward Cecil, who became the Chairman of the new company to be known as Arthur Guinness, Son & Company, Limited.” As the Daily News exulted, “Nothing within the memory of living man had been quite like it . . . On Saturday morning Baring’s place was literally besieged. Special policemen kept back
the pushing crowd of clerks, agents, messengers and City men, and pains were taken to have one of the swing doors only partly open, notwithstanding (or because of) whim one of the outer doors of Messrs. Baring’s office was broken.” Even the usually understated Times of London called the response “extraordinary.”

  On Monday, October 25, the stock offering sold out within an hour. Both the Irish and the English press struggled to capture its import. Typical of Guinness generosity, workers at St. James’s Gate received shares from Edward Cecil’s portion and some employees even received cash bonuses. Edward Cecil Guinness was now the richest man in Ireland and one of the richest in the United Kingdom. Befitting his new station, he purchased a grand home at Grosvenor Place in London, furnished it lavishly, and made it a center of Irish culture and hospitality in the heart of England.

  Iveagh trust building

  Yet as skilled as Edward Cecil was in expanding the family firm beyond anything his predecessors might have dreamed, it is not this that keeps his memory alive to this day. Indeed, as it is with many a great man of industry, it was not the creation of wealth but the benevolent use of wealth that framed his legacy for generations to come.

  In 1889, Edward Cecil put £250,000 into the hands of three trustees to create the Guinness Trust, “to be held by them in trust for the creation of dwellings for the labouring poor” in Dublin and London. This proved to be one of the great acts of benevolence of his generation and it laid a foundation for the later Iveagh Trust, which continues to serve the needy of Ireland to this day. The Times described Edward’s deed as “the most splendid act of private munificence that has been contemplated and carried out in our time by an Englishman.” It was, indeed, an inspiring act of generosity and it helped alleviate suffering in both cities to an untold degree. Yet it was perfectly in keeping with the Guinness sense of social obligation, of the duty of the privileged to the less fortunate of society. It was a gift consistent with the faith and largesse of the Guinness generations that had come before, and it was predecessor to an equally thrilling investment in social problems, one that would change Ireland forever, as we shall see.