Extract from Chocolate Wars
200 years of fierce rivalry between confectionary giants
By Deborah Cadbury
In the stock room at 6:00am over breakfast, George Cadbury encouraged workers to discuss their lives.
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Extract from Chocolate Wars by Deborah Cadbury
Original full-length version published by Harper Press, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers
Condensed version © Reader’s Digest (Australia) Pty Ltd, 2011
Effectively, as early as 1738, Quakers had a set of specific guidelines for business, which endeavoured to apply the teachings of Christ to the workplace. Straight dealing, fair play and honesty would form the basis of Quaker capitalism. The trading guidelines were updated in 1833 into the more formal Rules of Discipline. By this time, material prosperity presented another issue to exercise the minds of Quaker elders. Was it right for a religious person cultivating plainness and simplicity to accumulate wealth? ‘We do not condemn industry, which we believe to be not only praiseworthy but indispensable,’ noted the Rules of Discipline, but ‘the love of money is said in Scripture to be “the root of all Evil”.’ The guidelines urged ‘Dear Friends who are favoured with outward prosperity, when riches increase not to set your hearts upon them.’
Original full-length version published by Harper Press, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers
Condensed version © Reader’s Digest (Australia) Pty Ltd, 2011
Effectively, as early as 1738, Quakers had a set of specific guidelines for business, which endeavoured to apply the teachings of Christ to the workplace. Straight dealing, fair play and honesty would form the basis of Quaker capitalism. The trading guidelines were updated in 1833 into the more formal Rules of Discipline. By this time, material prosperity presented another issue to exercise the minds of Quaker elders. Was it right for a religious person cultivating plainness and simplicity to accumulate wealth? ‘We do not condemn industry, which we believe to be not only praiseworthy but indispensable,’ noted the Rules of Discipline, but ‘the love of money is said in Scripture to be “the root of all Evil”.’ The guidelines urged ‘Dear Friends who are favoured with outward prosperity, when riches increase not to set your hearts upon them.’
Richard and George Cadbury’s entire world-view was shaped by Quaker values. They moulded their early chihood experiences, their social and marriage opportunities, their choice of career, and their all-encompassing view of the wider purpose of their chocolate business.
From the earliest years they had seen their father endeavour to apply Quaker ideals in the community. John Cadbury was deeply concerned about society’s ‘savage indifference to the child’. In the 1820s, when John was developing his shop on Bull Street, it was not uncommon for children to be carted off from the workhouses ‘to the cotton mills or the mines’, to be used there as if they were disposable. John was horrified by the misery of children trapped in a life of slavery.
His greatest outrage was reserved for the ‘barbarous practice’ of using workhouse boys as young as five as chimney sweeps. Some chimneys were as narrow as seven inches square, and the children could only be induced to climb up inside by straw being lit beneath them, or being prodded with ‘pins’. Many suffered twisted spines or damaged joints, or were maimed by falls or burns. After years of campaigning John was delighted when legislation was eventually introduced banning the use of climbing boys.
George and Richard also saw their parents become passionately involved in another major social issue of the time: alcoholism. The consumption of gin had become widespread in the eighteenth century. Reports of children dying of neglect from their drunken parents were commonplace.
As a member of the Board of Street Commissioners in Birmingham, John Cadbury saw at close hand the squalid reality, and he and wife Candia became keen supporters of the Temperance Movement, vigorously taking on the town’s drinkers. In meetings across the town, John told his fellow citizens that the money they saved by giving up alcohol could buy a better diet, and compared the hearty meals of roast meat and a quarter loaf that an abstainer could afford to those of a drinker on the same wage, who could bring home little more than a penny loaf. As for the barley in a gallon of beer, he told them, it could be used to make something much more nutritious. At this point he would pass round some of Candia’s barley puddings.
Candia too became personally involved, and saw it as her ‘duty to seek a personal interview with the landlords of public houses, spirit and beer shops’. These visits were not always appreciated: sometimes ‘she was met by rude and coarse remarks’. She almost certainly picked up the consumption that killed her from these trips, but even as her health was declining she continued her crusade. Richard and George, her sons, remembered her interest in the children of the poor, who suffered from the consequences of having drunken parents.
When John arrived at the old Birmingham workhouse for his first meeting as an Overseer of the Poor, he was dismayed to find that the distinguished committee, in true Dickensian style, met once a month for a ‘sumptuous repast’ before ‘attending to the shivering paupers outside’. Bubbling over with righteous anger, John set out to expose the ‘illegality and iniquity’ of such banquets. Evidently this was met with some disfavour. Needless to say, John managed to get the practice stopped.
He also served on the Steam Engine Committee, which was responsible for tackling what he saw as the ‘serious evil’ of smog and smoke. And he won funds as governor of the Birmingham General Hospital to develop its facilities. There was, according to the Daily Gazette, a widespread belief that the poor were operated on to advance medical knowledge, and John would periodically attend surgeries ‘to prevent any unnecessary cruelty to patients of the poorest class’.
Their parents’ example was a mantle that George and Richard accepted as an absolutely normal Quaker duty. Not only did they see it as their moral responsibility to improve the plight of those living in the industrial slums, but saving the chocolate factory also held out the promise of providing employment, thus helping the whole community. Even more fundamental, by developing and promoting cocoa as a drink that everyone could afford, they aimed to provide a nutritious alternative to alcohol.
George and Richard persevered with their efforts to keep the company afloat. George saw the relationship with the employees as key. Sitting in the stock room at 6:00am over breakfast, he encouraged workers to discuss issues in their lives, and tried to help with their education, reading aloud to them and exchanging views on topics of interest or stories from the Bible. By today’s standards such actions might seem paternalistic, but at a time when many people could not read, they were greatly valued. Many staff members spoke of their enjoyment of these small meetings, which were ‘more like family gatherings’.
In spite of their losses, George and Richard pressed ahead with plans to increase wages, with a new payment structure that tripled women’s pay. The brothers introduced the novel idea of a ‘Sick Club’ to help pay the wages of staff who had to take leave for illness. There was an evening sewing class once a week at the factory, during which George read to the group. Richard and George were among the first employers in Birmingham to introduce half days on Saturdays and bank holidays.
They even took the staff on leisure outings. According to the Daily Post of 21 June 1864, ‘On Thursday last, Messrs Cadbury brothers took the whole of their male employees on a delightful trip to Sutton Park.’ At five o’clock the whole company ‘sat down to a substantial tea which was duly appreciated’. There was cricket in the summer, and during the winter, ‘the appearance of Mr George with his skates was a sure sign that we were to be the recipients of his favour in the shape of a half day’s skating’.
The welfare of the staff was woven into the brothers’ lives. The factory was not just a business, it was a world in miniature, and an opportunity to improve society. In the middle of the great big sinful city, George would create a perfect little world, a ‘model chocolate factory’.
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