Chocolate Wars

by Deborah Cadbury

  The Frenchman Claude Gaget toiled over boiling cauldrons of fruit in the quest for the perfect fruit pastille. Joseph and his younger brother, Henry, dedicated precious resources to finding just the right formula. Anxious words were exchanged as early efforts were spurned. But by 1881, they believed they had cracked it: Gaget’s recipe was luxuriously chewy and fruity. Advertising was unnecessary, Joseph insisted: Here was an honest product that he planned to sell at a fair price. How could it not be a huge success?

  But the first launch of Crystallized Gum Pastilles in 1881 did not bring about an immediate change in the Rowntrees’ fortune. Although demand rose steadily, the costs kept pace. The Rowntree brothers had to order more boiling pots to support production, and over two years, the number of staff at the ramshackle factory at Tanner’s Moat doubled, reaching two hundred. If they dared to entertain thoughts that they were, at long last, turning the corner, they were sadly mistaken.

  The year 1883 was a difficult one for the Rowntree family. In May, Henry died of complications from appendicitis. He and Joseph had operated the business together for fifteen years, and Henry’s cheerful presence had always balanced Joseph’s seriousness. Now Joseph was alone with his worries at the helm of a business that had grown but continued to struggle.

  When Henry Rowntree died, he was in debt to the family firm. His widow and three children needed some kind of modest support, and there was still an outstanding £10,000 owing in overdrafts and mortgages on the factory. Although sales jumped in the 1880s after the launch of the pastilles, Joseph fought to control costs. By 1883, the neat columns of red figures in his account ledger told an unbelievable story. Sales reached a record £55,547, but the company still lost £329. Worse, Joseph knew that the business was unstable. Sales for his cocoa, which he knew was no match for Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence and Dutch pure cocoa, could plummet at any time. Despite years of unforgiving hard work, the future was insecure.

  Joseph Rowntree had good reason to fear that his cocoa business could vanish altogether if he failed to develop a pure cocoa of his own. His first effort, which he called Elect Cocoa, debuted without advertising in 1880. It was not a success and was soon removed from sale. Fry had also launched a pure cocoa that failed. In 1883, however, Fry relaunched their pure cocoa, and this time they made sure to get their message across. Fry’s Pure Concentrated Cocoa won the backing of the Lancet and other medical journals and was soon selling well. Joseph Rowntree, watching from York, could see that the market for pure cocoa was getting more crowded by the day and he had nothing to contribute.

  In 1885 Joseph Rowntree embarked on a tour of Europe in an urgent quest to understand the Dutch process. Rising sales from his pastilles enabled him to invest in a Van Houten press, but it was still not clear how to create a superior pure cocoa. In May, Joseph arrived in Cologne, Germany, to visit Stollwerck Brothers to buy new equipment. Soon after, he was in Amsterdam, where things looked more hopeful. He met a Dutchman, Cornelius Hollander, who assured him that he had a process that could match the quality of Van Houten’s cocoas. The Dutchman was convincing and persuasive. Joseph could not resist the promised gem of knowledge that could turn his company around. Deciding to take a risk, he agreed to pay Hollander £5 a week for six years, and Hollander promised “to communicate the secret of the Van Houten manufacture of cocoa and make cocoa powder for the Rowntrees.”

  Five pounds per week was a handsome payment, and Joseph Rowntree did not want the rest of his staff to know how much he was paying Hollander. So when Hollander arrived in York and insisted on working in absolute secrecy, Rowntree heartily agreed. At Hollander’s insistence, his research room in North Street was carefully padlocked when he left each night.

  Weeks turned to months as Joseph Rowntree was obliged to watch and wait. His slippery Dutchman failed to deliver: no satisfactory recipe for pure cocoa emerged from Hollander’s locked room, and his behavior became increasingly strange. He guarded his workroom, overcharged for materials, burned his mixtures, and exhausted everyone who dealt with him with endless haggling.

  Joseph Rowntree’s patience ran dry. An indignant Hollander found himself locked out of his workroom one day. Rowntree’s staff had broken in and and finally uncovered his secret. Hollander knew next to nothing. Worse, with the help of the police, Rowntree’s staff entered Hollander’s house and removed numerous objects that had been stolen or copied from them, including “boiling glasses, drawings of hydraulic presses, drawings of the grinding mill, cocoa breaking machinery, a cocoa roasting machine,” and more.

  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.

  While Joseph Rowntree had his eye on Bournvill
e 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.

  The 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 ga
rden. 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.

  Among the Society of Friends, there were purists who doubted that such an imposing manor, which went well beyond the simple lifestyle embraced by his forebears, could be reconciled with Quakerism. How did such Victorian luxury fit with the plain black coats, the frugality, and puritanical beliefs of the movement’s seventeenth-century founders? The Cadburys did not adhere rigidly to the rules of their Quaker forefathers but nor could they abandon their faith altogether like some wealthy Quaker industrialists. They found a third way through the ever-widening gulf between the demands of their faith and the secular world. They belonged to a growing breed of successful Quakers who maintained their faith but did not turn their back on material prosperity.

  For those in the Quaker community who considered the Cadburys too worldly, there was a surprise in store. In 1895 George was poised to use his wealth to pursue his ideal of building a utopia. It was the culmination of a family dream first discussed by his father and Uncle Benjamin nearly fifty years earlier. George’s aim was to turn his garden factory into a garden city.

  Worried that his goal might be thwarted if speculators and slum builders got hold of the land surrounding his factory, George had been discreetly using his income to buy parcels of land around the chocolate works. In 1893 he bought fields to the north of the chocolate works and then he purchased the imposing Bournbrook Hall, a 118-acre estate adjoining Bournville to the west. He was now ready to embark on the first stage of his ambitious plan.

  Initially he could only afford to build 142 homes around the chocolate factory. But it was a start. He was convinced from his work at the Adult School that if slum dwellers were provided with homes that gave them a sense of dignity, they would thrive and their health would improve. The key to his scheme was land: Each home should have enough land for a family to cultivate a garden and grow food. This, he believed, would improve their quality of life and lead to a better diet. “About a sixth of an acre is as much as a man working in a factory can cultivate in his leisure time,” he reasoned. Consequently, his village was designed with no more than six or seven houses to an acre.