Chocolate Wars

by Deborah Cadbury

  For George Jr., it had been a “shattering blow” when his father had sternly ordered him to leave his science studies at London University two years earlier to join the family business. Impatient and mischievous—as a child, he rowed the maids to the island in the lake at the manor and left them there—now the burdensome role of joint managing director sat heavily on young shoulders. To his father, the culture of secondary education was unimportant compared to “the culture of the soul and earning a livelihood.” His son should apply his scientific skills to the needs of their new chemistry department.

  The Cadbury team had struggled for ten years to find a formula that could beat the Swiss milk chocolate. Nothing seemed right.

  Their first attempt, made with milk powder, was not launched until 1897 and was struggling to secure a foothold in the shops. Grocers preferred to stock Swiss chocolate because the public asked for it. Whatever combination of ingredients George Jr. and his team tried in the laboratory, their milk chocolate remained stubbornly coarse, dry, and unsaleable. Rumors were rife that both Rowntree and Fry were preparing to launch a milk chocolate brand.

  George Jr. knew he had a young rival at Rowntree in Haxby Road in York. Like George Cadbury, Joseph Rowntree had turned his chocolate works into a limited liability company and passed the baton to the younger generation. His second son, twenty-eight-year-old Seebohm Rowntree, was running their research laboratory. He too had been tasked with developing products to rival the Swiss. For George Jr., there was no knowing what Rowntree might come up with. Joseph Rowntree’s nephew, Arnold, had already proved himself in areas where his uncle had been sadly lacking. What Joseph thought of as Arnold’s advertising “stunts” had served as a wakeup call. First there was the motorcar—at a time when such a thing was a novelty—with a gigantic tin of Rowntree’s Elect Cocoa attached, which rattled disconcertingly and demanded attention as it was paraded through towns. Then there was the Oxford and Cambridge boat race of 1897. Arnold had the temerity to cover a barge with posters for Elect Cocoa and sail it right through the course. It was nothing his uncle would have done, but it was yielding results. Sales of Elect Cocoa were taking off. As for the Frys, it was anyone’s guess what they might conjure up next.

  After a short apprenticeship at chocolate factories on the continent, records show that George Jr. secured an invitation to tour Peter’s plant in Vevey, Switzerland. This prompted him to set up a specialist milk condensing plant at Bournville to investigate the best ways to evaporate milk in bulk without spoiling it. On outings every weekend in his shiny new Lanchester car—the modern one with the roof—George Jr. could see the dispiriting results of Cadbury’s first milk chocolate bar only too plainly in the shops. It was a disaster. The Swiss were winning hands down. They sold thirty tons of milk chocolate a week in Britain, where Cadbury could not manage one ton. It was a shattering defeat. But what George Jr. came up with next would transform the fortunes of the company.

  In Bournville, George Cadbury Sr., still chairman of the company, was able to step back from the day-to-day operation of the business. He was keen to use his time to expand his philanthropic interests. This was something he had discussed with his wife, and they had many plans.

  Elsie had proved to be the perfect wife for George, capable, warm-hearted, and totally committed to Quaker principles. The manor resounded with the exuberant sounds of their growing family; by 1899 there were ten children from George’s first and second marriages. Portraits of the time capture the strength of the Victorian family. George, bearded and smiling beneath his top hat, has Elsie seated at his side. The teenagers are grouped behind them, the babies sit on their laps, and the younger children are arranged at their feet. The girls are good-looking with flowing hair, long skirts, and frilly white blouses. Even the young boys are dressed to copy their father in smart dark suits and ties. It is a portrait of success but not merely material success. Both parents believed that children must have a firm foundation from which to explore the world.

  Despite the formality of the family pictures, Elsie was not one for stuffy restrictions. The children were left with their governesses during the day while Elsie went on rounds of public engagements. When she returned one day to find that her daughters Dolly and Molly had been sent to their rooms for the most unladylike act of climbing on the roof, she summoned them at once. She told them that all children should learn to take risks, without which they will have no chance to learn. As an ardent Quaker, Elsie was committed to good works, nothing if not zealous, even putting her holiday in jeopardy. It was not uncommon for George Sr., who liked to arrive thirty minutes early for a train, to go on ahead with the children in the pony and trap. Elsie, working for the poor until the last minute, would dash up as the whistle blew. “My recreation begins the moment I drop into a comfortable railway carriage,” she told a friend, “having counted my family to see that none is missing.” On Sundays she played the organ installed in the oak room on the ground floor as the family gathered to sing hymns. George doted on her, and if they were apart, they wrote sometimes twice a day. “What a thing it is to be ruled by one’s wife,” he said.

  Each year they threw open the grounds of the manor house for a party attended by children from some of the roughest districts of Birmingham. They built a large hall known as The Barn in the park to provide tea and refreshments for up to seven hundred children. George Sr., with his love of nature, believed strongly that every child should have access to playing outside in clean air. Games were organized in the open fields, but the star attraction was the open-air baths. More than fifty children could bathe at any one time, and for the young visitors, most of whom had no access to a bath, it was thrilling. The sun on their backs, the sparkling water always inviting, the boys from the inner cities had no desire to leave and would stay in all day, until they were blue and shivering and cleaner than they had been in years.

  The parties at the Barn were just an informal beginning. George and Elsie had both witnessed the critical problems of urban industrial living: housing shortages, inner-city crowding, poverty, and the social problems that come with deprivation. George wanted to take a scientific approach to tackling these problems. He aimed to use Bournville as a testing ground for reform. As a Quaker, the business was not just to benefit the owners and the workers but also the local community and society at large.

  Before George Cadbury could implement his plans, an outbreak of war raised difficult questions for how a man should best use his wealth. On October 11, 1899, an ill-equipped army of 35,000 Boers prepared to take on the British Empire. The Boers, a group of farmers of Dutch descent, had settled in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal in southern Africa, territories that were rich in mineral wealth. But there were many who agreed with the British mining magnate Cecil Rhodes that the British Empire should command a sweep of land from “the Cape to Cairo.”

  George and Elsie were shocked at the way the national press fuelled the appetite for war. The brash new Daily Mail, under such rousing headers as “For Empire and Liberty,” glorified British prospects. “Brain for brain, body for body,” the paper assured its 750,000 readers, “the English speaking people are much more than a match for the Dutchman” despite “the trickery and cunning of men from the Low countries.” Patriotic crowds gathered in throngs to give an ovation to those stalwarts departing for the Cape, “equal to any that even victorious troops have ever been accorded on returning from a campaign.” In Waterloo station, soldiers departed to the triumphant crash of brass and cavalry bands. “All semblance of military order disappeared. The police were swept aside and men were borne, in many cases, shoulder high. . . . Even total strangers, carried away with enthusiasm broke into the ranks and insisted on carrying rifles and kitbags.”

  George Cadbury was approached by a rising star of the Liberal Party, the radical Welshman David Lloyd George. He was opposed to the war and knew that George Cadbury shared his views. Lloyd George had a challenging proposal. The national press was speaking almost in one voice
in favor of war and fuelling the jingoistic fervor of the public. Lloyd George was keen to ensure that the public heard alternative views. Very few papers dared to take on the establishment, challenge the policy on war, and probe the interests of the mine owners. The Manchester Guardian in the north and London’s Morning Leader in the south were the only papers consistently opposed to war. Lloyd George had a special interest in the Daily News. This once-radical paper had been founded by Charles Dickens in 1834 and had championed liberal reforms and social issues; now it was taking an editorial line that sanctioned the war. He asked George to join a syndicate to buy the paper.

  George Cadbury was sympathetic to Lloyd George’s view. He believed that British diamond speculators and mine owners in southern Africa like Cecil Rhodes wanted to suppress the Boer government in the Transvaal to keep control of the mines for themselves. He abhorred the greed and imperialism masquerading as a just cause and like Lloyd George believed that the cost of the war was delaying social reforms at home. But he hesitated. The ownership of a national newspaper would be a completely new venture. He had avoided a prominent role in politics when he turned down an invitation from William Gladstone in 1892 to stand as an MP. George wrestled with the decision. What was the best way to use his wealth to benefit society at large? Should he seek to influence and educate public opinion and present issues honestly through a national newspaper? Or should he develop his template at Bournville?

  He told Lloyd George that he was reluctant to take on the Daily News, but he could make a small contribution. He paid for an early train to take copies of the Morning Leader each day to key towns between London and Sheffield so the public would be exposed to an alternative view. George’s greatest priority was his plan for Bournville. Ever mindful of the corrosive effects that great wealth can have on the soul, his first step, on which he had his wife’s complete support, was to partially disinherit his children.

  There is a family picture that marks the day, December 14, 1900, when George Cadbury gave away his wealth. The Quaker parish he first established with 142 homes clustered around the chocolate works had blossomed into an idyllic English village with 370 cottages and 500 acres of land. Now he wanted to give it away to create the Bournville Village Trust. A large and solemn group had gathered in front of the Friends Meeting House on the village green to hear what he had to say.

  “I am not rich as an American millionaire would count riches,” George declared. “My gift is in the bulk of my property outside of the business. . . . I have seriously considered how far a man is justified in giving away the heritage of his children and have come to the conclusion that my children will be all the better for being deprived of this money. Great wealth is not to be desired and in my experience it is more of a curse than a blessing to the families that possess it.”

  He explained that six of his ten children were of an age to understand how this action affected them, “and they all entirely approve.” Provision was made for “an insurance of a modest competence” for each child. Beyond this, it was up to them. Judging by the sober faces of the large family around him, the enormity of the decision and his high expectations of them were all too plain.

  George Cadbury was the first English chocolate entrepreneur to create a trust, and his hopes for what it would accomplish are clear from the deeds. The aim of the Bournville Trust was for “the amelioration of the conditions of the working class and labouring population,” with a special emphasis on improving their quality of life with “improved dwellings with gardens and open spaces to be enjoyed therewith.” The homes were meant to be inhabited by a cross section of society and this was reflected in the price or the rent. At the time of the gift, 143 houses had already been sold to tenants on 999-year leases—some for as little as £150. The remaining 227 homes were let on varying rentals depending on the size of the house. All houses had a garden that was sufficiently large to grow a significant amount of food. Each plot could produce around two shillings’ worth of fruit and vegetables per week—worth roughly £375 a year today—increasing the value of the home to the tenant still further.

  George wanted the village to grow while maintaining its quality. Once repairs and maintenance were carried out, the trustees were to use any extra rental income to buy land and build more homes, applying the same generous ratios of parkland and gardens to buildings. He wanted to prove that the scheme was economically viable so that other philanthropists or investors could see its benefits and follow suit. If investors could make a return on quality housing for tenants of varying backgrounds without resorting to building a slum, they might be inspired to copy it. In this way Bournville could influence society at large.

  The experiment at Bournville was part of a wider debate concerning the problems of inner cities. In 1898 a parliamentary shorthand writer, Ebenezer Howard, had published Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, which set out a grand scheme for a revolution in town planning. Howard was concerned by the waves of people moving from the country into the towns; London had almost doubled in size between 1870 and 1900 from a population of 3.9 million to 6.6 million. This brought all the familiar problems of urban poverty. Howard believed the solution lay in a futuristic scheme in which “Town and country must be married.” He toured Bournville and believed the garden city idea could be developed to provide an entire social and economic system with the potential to tackle key problems of Victorian capitalism.

  Howard’s idealistic scheme saw large areas of land converted to clusters of garden cities. Each garden city of approximately 32,000 people would be geometrically arranged around green belts separating it from the next garden city. Unlike Bournville, Howard’s garden city was arranged on a circular design with boulevards and avenues surrounding a central park. The compact design gave it a human scale and put most essentials within walking distance of the residents. He thought of every need, even foreshadowing today’s shopping malls with elegant glass arcades in each town called a “Crystal Palace.” An idealist to the last, Howard hoped that workers would unite to create the vision, “for the vastness of the task which seems to frighten some . . . represents in fact the very measure of its value to the community.” He was so fervent in his beliefs that he launched the Garden City Association in 1899 to turn belief into practice.

  George Cadbury supported Howard’s vision because it coincided with his own ideas on land use. He believed that injustices in the ownership of land “lay at the root of many social evils.” If the estimated 9 million households in England were housed in cottages at ten to the acre, he reasoned, they would occupy a mere 900,000 acres of the 77 million acres in Britain. Since tests at Bournville showed that one acre of cottage gardens yielded twelve times more produce than one acre of pasture, it was a much more effective way of meeting the nation’s food needs. A massive increase in death duties was needed, he thought, so that it would no longer be possible for most of Britain’s land to accumulate in just a few hands. Bournville proved that land was more effectively cultivated “in the hands of the people themselves.”

  As for the difficult decision to disinherit his own children—the reasoning behind it was set out six years later in an interview that George Cadbury gave to a committee of the Canterbury Convocation investigating social problems, including the accumulation of wealth. At the heart of it, he explained, was his unwavering faith.

  George believed that “every man must give an account of himself to God.” According to Matthew 19:24, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” The camel, it is said, had to stoop to go through the Needle’s Eye gate into Jerusalem; a rich man can enter if he will humble himself before God. For George Cadbury, it was simply wrong that a lucky few “have a superabundance of wealth . . . and every conceivable comfort and luxury” while countless others in “so-called Christian lands . . . lack things which are essential to health and morality.” He felt, moreover, that great wealth was of questionable value. “I have seen many famil
ies ruined by it, morally and spiritually,” he told the committee. And while money brought no lasting happiness to the rich, it “certainly brought a vast amount of misery upon those who did not have their share.”

  George and Elsie wanted to contribute more of their personal wealth to develop the community at Bournville. Over the years several handsome public buildings were built around the village green. The first was a meeting place known as Ruskin Hall, which eventually became the Bournville School of Arts and Crafts. It provided professional qualifications such as teacher training as well as many craft skills like dressmaking and metal work. George and his wife also paid for the Bournville Schools. Happy afternoons were spent together perfecting the designs that equipped each school with a modern library, scientific laboratory, and extensive playgrounds. And of course it all had to be in a beautiful setting, something immemorial that evoked a continental style and possessed classical beauty. When staying in Bruges, Belgium, George and Elsie were enchanted by the sound of the cathedral’s bells, and they arranged to make an exact copy of the Bruges bells for Bournville. It was a great day when all twenty-two bells were hoisted into position below the domed cupola in the tower of the Infant School, the carillon ringing out around the village green.

  The Cadbury brothers had initiated a great many schemes targeted at improving the health and well-being of their staff, and George was dedicated to developing them further. A job at the chocolate factory was not for the physically faint hearted. The men’s sports grounds now reached to twelve acres, and there were Bournville teams for every conceivable sport. In the summer months, the outdoor pool for men was popular, and in 1905 an imposing indoor pool was completed for women, and thousands of staff learned to swim. The women also had twelve acres of grounds for sport. Fitness training was compulsory for anyone under eighteen; an hour a week was set aside in the work schedules. Village events were organized on the green, including a maypole for children’s dancing in spring, folk dancing, Morris dancing, country dancing, and a youth club.