Chocolate Wars

by Deborah Cadbury

  EUROPE 1916

  On May 31, the greatest navies the world had ever seen confronted each other in the the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. The two mighty fleets, glittering with an array of weapons sufficient to blow each other out of the water, squared up to each other. With a horrible inevitability, soon all was chaos, the dark shapes of the dreadnoughts and battle cruisers barely visible in the smoke of battle as they spilled out thunderous gunfire. The noise was deafening, the smoke alternately obscuring and revealing scenes of horrific destruction as shells ripped into men and machine. Fourteen British and eleven German ships were lost in the Battle of Jutland, and 8,500 young men gave their lives. Soon numbers were to become meaningless, when a month later, one of the bloodiest military operations ever recorded began to unfold at the Somme in France. In one fateful day, July 1, 19,240 British men died and more than 35,500 were injured—the greatest losses in a single day in the entire history of the British army.

  News from the battlefields in France and Flanders reached George Cadbury and his community at Bournville through journalists at the papers and letters from Laurence in the Quaker convoys. For George Sr., the war proved to be a considerable test of faith.

  How could anyone make spiritual sense of the depths of suffering that the new technology left in its wake? The poisonous yellow-green plumes of chlorine gas floated like clouds over the trenches at Ypres, burning eyes, dissolving lungs, and causing a slow and terrible death by asphyxiation. Fighter planes, the new terror of the skies, were armed with machine guns and rained bombs on the innocent as they darted through the skies like deadly thunderbolts. Then there were tanks that crushed the vestiges of civilization into the mud beneath their treads. Young men torn to shreds in the barbed wire defenses of No Man’s Land. All this evil handed out so impersonally demanded an explanation. The industrial age, which had brought so many benefits, had also unleashed a monster: killing on an industrial scale never before seen in human history. World order, it seemed, was slowly collapsing. This orgy of mindless killing was incomprehensible.

  George Cadbury felt a pastoral concern for his flock at Bournville. Faith was at a crisis point. How could God allow such evil? Although he too had unresolved issues arising from the conflict, he felt it was his duty to visit the families who attended the Bournville Morning and Evening Meetings. They wanted to discuss their worries and fears; they wanted reassurance. The argument usually went, “If God reigns, it would be impossible that all the sin and misery culminating in this terrible war could be permitted.”

  George, wrestling with the same thoughts, gave no sign of any underlying schism and spoke of faith: “If there were no sin, there could be no free agency. God could have created us sinless; then there would have been no freedom of choice and no test of our obedience and love for him.” Then he asked if they “had ever been tempted to evil and resisted temptation?” Drawing on his experiences in the Adult Class, he explained that he had seen many times that “yielding to sin brought no real or lasting happiness, but resisting temptation did.” He quoted from the Bible: “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation for when he is tried he will receive the crown of life, which the lord has promised to them that love him.”

  It is hard to imagine the impact of these visits or whether they were appreciated. According to his biographer, George Cadbury had a “patriarchal relationship” with the inhabitants of Bournville. Doubtless they were in awe of their employer and benefactor; some may have been moved by and helped by the strength of his own faith. George himself saw it as his duty.

  But there was growing hostility to pacifists in Britain, and the Cadbury family made no secret of their views. In November 1916, a military inspector was ordered to examine George’s activities to find out if he was funding antiwar or anticonscription campaigners. The inspector even insisted on going through George’s personal accounts, so he duly fetched his checkbooks. He had nothing to hide; three-quarters of his income was given away to philanthropic causes but none were antiwar campaigns. His family supported the war effort.

  Twenty-year-old Molly, his youngest daughter, had followed her older brother, Laurence, to France soon after the outbreak of war to work in a military hospital. Laurence was building a reputation in the Friends Ambulance Unit with eighty vehicles under his control. Their sister, twenty-two-year-old Dolly, worked as a nurse at Fircroft Working Men’s College, which had been hastily converted into a hospital, along with The Beeches. George’s youngest son, Bertie, was initially posted to Yarmouth on minesweeping operations in the North Sea. “Don’t tell Mother or Father,” Bertie told Laurence after a particularly reckless trip where his unit unknowingly sailed straight through a minefield, “or they will have hell’s own needles.” Nine months later Bertie transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service. His task was to attack the German airships, or Zeppelins, which brought a new terror to the towns of Britain. At first the British were hopelessly ill-equipped. The Zeppelins flew on dark nights, but there were only two searchlights along the East Anglian coast. Even when the British got airborne, the Zeppelins had a faster rate of climb and could move out of range all too easily. Bertie spent long hours patrolling over the North Sea. On one particularly dark night, losing control for a few crucial seconds as his goggles slipped, he crashed into the sea—and was lucky to escape with minor injuries.

  Meanwhile, George Sr.’s much older sons by his first marriage, Edward and George Jr., were dealing with rapidly changing circumstances at Bournville. All the horses at the factory had been commandeered, and parcels could no longer be easily delivered. The trained workforce gradually disappeared. The brothers found it difficult to recruit people who could operate the specialized machinery. Soon raw materials were in short supply.

  Even under these austere conditions, what chocolate they could produce emerged as the high-energy comfort food of choice for troops on the move. Far from an anticipated downturn, Dairy Milk and Bournville Cocoa were in such demand by the British government that the Cadbury brothers had to streamline the chocolate works to gear up production of their two most popular brands. The seven hundred different types of chocolate products they were making at the start of the war were reduced to two hundred within two years. They did, however, introduce a much-loved innovation in 1915: a chocolate assortment sold in special five-pound cartons named Milk Tray.

  As the effects of German U-boats and the naval blockade intensified, the government ordered the production of essential foods at Bournville. The milk-processing plants at Frampton and Knighton developed for Dairy Milk production were hastily adapted to churn out butter, condensed milk, milk powder, and cheese. Sections of the factory at Bournville now made biscuits, dried vegetables, and fruit pulp in addition to the core chocolate lines. “George is having a very anxious time at Bournville,” George Sr. confided to a friend on February 24, 1916. “We have lost some 1,700 out of 3,000 men that were with us when war began . . . to the Army and Navy.” Within a year he reported that another seven hundred of his workers had been moved to munitions factories. It was increasingly hard to find skilled engineers to repair machinery. George Sr. remarked that women were taking over men’s jobs and “were doing remarkably well.”

  The remaining staff contributed to the war effort long after the Bournville bell signalled the end of their workday. Women set up the Bournville Nursing Division, often working in local military hospitals at night. The Bournville Girls Convalescent Home at Bromyard in Herefordshire was transformed into a Military Convalescent Home. Sixty members of the Works Ambulance Class supported the Birmingham division of the St. John Ambulance Brigade; their role was to transport the wounded who arrived at Birmingham’s Snow Hill Station to local hospitals. Bournville volunteers set up stalls at the station and greeted soldiers returning from the front with hot drinks and food. The Works War Relief Committee helped the families of men in active service. The Education Department of Bournville sent books to the troops in the trenches. Wartime spirit saw even the Bournville Dramatic Society ke
eping up the show with plays performed on improvised stages.

  Edward and George Jr. were invited to meet with Fry’s directors in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. The Frys were seeking greater collaboration between the two firms, especially on pricing. As months of war turned into years, chocolate companies were facing shortages of milk and sugar. The government’s Sugar Commission introduced quotas in 1916 to ensure that essential foodstuffs had priority. The Frys found their decision to concentrate primarily on the cheaper end of the market had cost them; they could not produce volume and were losing market share to Cadbury and Rowntree. They were also hit by the loss of exports, which had become prohibitively expensive to insure or simply too dangerous. The struggling house of Fry began to fear being taken over by the predatory Swiss.

  During the war, the Swiss firms stood to lose the most. Their home market in Switzerland was small, and production and sales across continental Europe had been disrupted. The naval blockade made it dangerous to secure supplies and export to lucrative foreign markets like Britain. By 1916, faced with a shortage of fresh milk, some factories had to be closed. But Nestlé’s directors devised a brilliant strategy for getting around the crisis. They knew that dairy and chocolate production in many countries was soaring to meet large government orders. Their solution: Nestlé went on a spending spree.

  The Nestlé directors borrowed on a large scale to invest in setting up companies overseas or buying a controlling stake in foreign companies. Through their American branch in Fulton, New York, they acquired interests in firms in North and South America. Their shares in milk-processing companies in Ohio and Philadelphia alone brought them control of twenty-seven factories. Nestlé’s production in America rapidly became five times greater than its entire Swiss production before the war. Soon company directors were in Australia hunting down similar deals, and it was not long before the hungry Swiss set their sights on the lucrative British market: They would target Fry.

  It was in the Quaker chocolate firms’ interests to help each other repel foreign rivals. At Cheltenham, Fry, Rowntree, and Cadbury voluntarily agreed to limit production of less essentials lines such as confectionery in favor of basic foods like cocoa and milk. By cooperating, they hoped to pull through the war without falling into Swiss hands.

  By early 1917, German submarines were having a devastating effect on supplies. Sugar quotas plummeted 50 percent. The British chocolate houses rushed to adapt recipes of their remaining core lines to reduce the amount of sugar. Fancy Boxes and other luxury lines disappeared. At Bournville, milk chocolate production stopped altogether. There was a shortage of basic food for the public. “We are sending 20,000 gallons of milk each week from Frampton to Birmingham as there is a great scarcity in the poorer districts,” George Sr. told a friend. Cadbury was forced to abandon its leading line, Dairy Milk.

  Over in Switzerland, thanks to the support of Swiss banks, Nestlé’s worldwide acquisitions grew exponentially—but so did their borrowing. Loans of 12 million Swiss francs in 1912 increased to 54 million by 1917.

  Isolated from the horrors of global conflict, Milton Hershey continued to thrive. “Hershey town was so peaceful and serene a community that all the horrors of war one read about seemed strangely out of tune with the course of life,” wrote Hershey’s relative, Joseph Snavely. “Even the prospect of war with Germany seemed far-fetched.”

  Nothing seemed to tarnish Hershey’s Midas touch. He continued to benefit from his Cuban spending spree as sugar prices rose with the threat to shipping. By January 1917, German submarines began targeting merchant ships in the Atlantic directly. On April 2, President Woodrow Wilson spoke to a special session of Congress setting out the case for war. “German submarine warfare is a warfare against mankind,” he declared. America joined the war four days later.

  Almost immediately the U.S. government placed an order for 2 million Hershey bars. The firm’s sales soared from $10 million in 1915 to $20 million in 1918. Amidst wild rumors that the Germans would find a way to sabotage the factory, Hershey set up a Home Guard. “A finer squad of soldiers never before carried broom handles,” said Snavely, since the workers were not permitted to carry arms.

  In contrast to the hive of activity in Hershey’s chocolate works in America, in Britain, parts of the great Fry citadel in Bristol fell silent. The firm was struggling. Fearing that Fry—or even Rowntree—might be tempted to sell out to their rich Swiss rivals, Edward Cadbury came up with a radical solution: a merger of all three companies to create a Quaker giant. Such a large Quaker enterprise, he argued, “will aim not only to make profits, but also serve the community.” Continued competition under wartime conditions is wrong, he reasoned, if together they could give “better service to the public and create better conditions for our workers.”

  On February 5, 1918, at a solemn Rowntree board meeting in York, the younger members of the family, Seebohm and Arnold Rowntree, argued earnestly in favor of the three Quaker firms joining forces. But Joseph Rowntree was resolutely against it. Some believe this was a matter of stubborn pride; others attribute it to his vision. As a Quaker, he wanted Rowntree to survive independently in order to pioneer a profit-sharing scheme for its staff. “The present industrial organisation of the country is unsound,” he said, because it causes a class division “between the holders of capital on one side and workers on the other.” He wanted to use the family firm to test out how to “minimise the evils” of the capitalist system. As a Quaker, Joseph saw it as his duty to nurture the guiding light within each member of staff. The real goal for an employer “was to seek to secure for others . . . the fullest life of which an individual is capable.” An amalgamation between firms he thought would lead to a colossus: a moneymaking behemoth that lost sight of Quakerly ambitions.

  Although the Rowntrees opposed the merger, they joined the Frys, Cadburys, and other Quaker colleagues for a Conference of Quaker Employers that April. They wanted to discuss steps to realize such high ambitions. “War has revolutionised the industrial outlook,” declared the conference chairman, Arnold Rowntree, in his opening address. During a time of crisis, there was an urgent need for Quaker leaders—whether shareholders, employers, or workers—to examine the way their religious faith could be given “even fuller expression in business life.” He asked all friends to consider the Quaker Book of Discipline. Citing the section on “The Stewardship of Wealth,” he warned against “the spirit of greed . . . unchecked by a sense of social responsibility” and urged the conference to find ways to express the Quaker view “that all human life should be reverenced as capable of the highest distinction.”

  Seebohm Rowntree led a session on wages that explored the ethical principles that should be used in determining wages. It was a “monstrous thing,” he declared, that millions still lived below the poverty line, and he encouraged Quaker employers to “strongly press for State action in that direction.” He argued that employers should ensure “that every man should be entitled to a Basic Wage,” set at a level that “should enable a man to marry, live in a decent house, and provide the necessaries of physical efficiency for a normal family.” If a business could not afford to pay such wages, its management “should very strictly limit” what they pay themselves while they improve the efficiency of their company. George Cadbury Jr. led a session on the factors that affect a worker’s peace of mind: security of employment, quality of environment, and so on. Other speakers addressed such topics as industrial injury, pensions, and even the democratization of industry: schemes for profit sharing or other forms of copartnership and training to enable junior staff to aspire to senior positions within a firm. The result was a visionary report setting out a template for applying Quaker principles to business life. Years later, after the Second World War, some of these ideas were enshrined in British law with the formation of the Welfare State.

  But at such a time, it was not easy to apply Quaker ideals when the war brought real issues of business survival to deal with. Talks about Fry joining forces with Cadb
ury continued over the spring of 1918. At a directors meeting in Bournville, George Sr. opposed a merger of the chocolate houses but for different and more commercial reasons than his rival in York. “If we fought off the foreign competition once, I have no fear of doing so again,” he said. His voice may have sounded frail, but his fighting spirit was intact. With ingenuity and drive, he was certain they could take on their overseas competitors. As part of a merged entity, he felt there would not be “the same energy thrown by either firm into their business.” As someone who had forged the business from the start, he recognized the significance of that immeasurable, indefinable fighting spirit.

  The younger generation of Frys and Cadburys listened to their Quaker elders, but they were keen to proceed. The Great War had exposed fundamental weaknesses in Fry’s operation, and Barrow and Edward Cadbury, calling the matter “urgent,” feared “the Frys might be tempted to take offers from other quarters.” If Nestlé bought Fry, they would gain an “insurmountable advantage” in the British market. Over the spring and summer of 1918, the chocolate companies were valued by two different city accountants as a first step towards a potential merger.

  By now, letters from their younger brothers brought news of turning points in the war. Laurence’s Quaker convoy was at the Second Battle of Marne, seventy-five miles northeast of Paris. At the front line in late June 1918, “There was great uneasiness,” Laurence wrote. “Everyone knew an attack was coming—but where?” On July 15, “The Hun made his greatest and last push over a 50 mile front,” he wrote. Convoys from the Friends Ambulance Unit were positioned to help the French Army at the hottest points. By late July, the tables had turned. “We had regained the initiative and were attacking.” At a certain point, the French found there was no one in front of them. They started in pursuit, recounted Laurence, “and kept the Hun on the run giving him absolute hell.” It was the first in a series of Allied victories.