Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (16 page)

The damp and the cold were not the only difficulties. Orders picked up before Christmas, and George and Richard “were at their wits end to know how to execute them,” said chocolate worker Fanny Price. Eventually they decided there was no alternative but to add an early shift starting at six in the morning. Although George had negotiated special rates with the railway company for workers’ fares to Stirchley Street Station, the company refused to provide an early train. Many staff on the early shift walked out from Birmingham across fields and muddy lanes in the dark—some rising as early as 4:00 AM to be sure to arrive at work on time.

As the critics had predicted, getting home was also a problem. At the time, the station was just an open platform with no shelter. Fanny Price recalled a unique system the brothers adopted to prevent the ladies from getting wet. The staff waited under a temporary shelter near the old station lodge. “Mr Richard used to blow whistle to intimate that the train was coming,” she said, having waited in all weathers by the signal. For those unable to catch the last train, getting wet was the least of their worries. Crème room worker Bertha Fackrell remembered “rough times” that winter. The women walked through quagmires in the pitch dark “in twos and threes, arm in arm, groping our way along.” There were no street lamps for much of the route to Birmingham. These difficulties “were remedied as soon as
possible,” Bertha said. A foreman with a lantern sometimes escorted the women home. Once the works’ cottages were complete, the brothers set up impromptu sleeping arrangements with bedding and pillows for more than twenty girls. Rooms were also found in the surrounding villages. “We were all very happy,” concluded Bertha, “for everything that thoughtful kindness could do for our comfort was done.”

Despite his kindness, however, Richard occasionally had a hot temper, “which was a natural part of his energetic nature,” said his daughter Helen. Although no one was “more alive than himself to this weakness,” Helen insisted, flashes of anger could break through in testing times. In the early days of Bournville, her father took to wearing a jaunty little black cap. For some reason this became “a well known weather vane through all the works as to whether things were going right or not.” If the cap was placed correctly on his head, “Everyone knew that things were going smoothly and well.” But if the cap was hurriedly tucked under his arm, “It was a sure sign that something was brewing.” Worst of all, said Helen, “was if it was being screwed and twisted in its owner’s hands.”

And there was plenty of cause for the cap to be wrung dry during the early days of Bournville. Apart from the expected teething troubles of installing new machinery and managing the transition, the sheer altruism of the two brothers could present problems. Since they managed their own building program, local slum builders had no chance to benefit from the large venture. Their plans to introduce a temperance zone around the works also cut out prospective pub owners. But what really fuelled the ire of Birmingham’s slum landlords and publicans were the brothers’ continued efforts to help people living in the inner-city slums through the Adult School. When George received a summons from a local policeman while on his way to the Adult School, many at Bournville believed the policeman was in league with local rack renters. George’s offence was no more than to lead his horse on to an empty footpath because the frost made the road treacherous. In due course, the policeman was himself linked to serious crime and imprisoned, and it was easy to connect the two events.

George was keen to push through another huge gamble, which doubtless was the cause of much cap wringing. Although their adulterated cocoas were still making money, they cancelled some of their most popular lines, such as Homeopathic, Pearl, and Breakfast. They were handing their rivals a huge advantage. But George was clear: He wanted the Cadbury name to stand for quality. The debate about purity triggered by Cocoa Essence showed no signs of slowing. But by cancelling strong-selling lines, would he have enough orders to support his cavernous new factory? The skeptics saw it as another irresponsible step.

And there was still the issue of the factory itself. No amount of altruism and good intentions could get around the fact that there was nothing quite like Bournville in England and no evidence that it would work. Cynics and skeptics alike watched the bold experiment in quality, fresh air, and wholesome living, waiting for any sign of failure. Most thought it was only a matter of time.

In Bristol, with Francis Fry and his brothers at the helm, Fry’s business continued to prosper. They adopted a different approach to expansion and saw no need for the radical innovation of their Birmingham rivals. As they outgrew their sprawling premises in Union Street, rather than gamble on the huge investment of a brand new factory, they chose to expand piecemeal, acquiring outlying premises, often at some distance from the main factories in Union Street. Little by little, they acquired some twenty-four separate buildings of varying suitability, and chocolate goods in varying stages of manufacture were taken by horse-drawn vans from site to site through the busy, narrow streets of Bristol.

Francis Fry’s team also saw no rush to find an answer to Cadbury’s pure Cocoa Essence. Cadbury’s invention had made it possible for the public to create a chocolate drink at home as easily as tea, but
the Frys followed suit at a leisurely pace. Two years elapsed before they installed Van Houten presses. When they finally launched their pure new product, Fry’s Cocoa Extract, they failed to see the need to promote it heavily. It was only when Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence was outselling Fry’s brands, which had been established over generations, that Fry’s board began to ponder how they might seize the initiative in the adulteration debate. As the Cadburys were moving into Bournville and taking the bold step of eliminating their adulterated cocoas to focus their efforts on one superior brand, the Frys were still making almost fifty different types of cocoa, all of which had to be transported at least a mile to various premises during its manufacture.

Taking advantage of the docks at Bristol, Fry excelled at overseas expansion. There is evidence that Fry sent a traveller to Johannesburg in southern Africa as early as 1800. Fry’s chocolate tins reached Queen Victoria’s troops during the Crimean War during the mid-1800s. The Navy found that Fry’s brands, without the benefit of the defatting machine, fitted their requirements perfectly. They were easy to transport, filling and nutritious, and worthy accompaniments to the ship’s biscuit. Fry had long-established trading links between Bristol and Ireland. And the company pioneered sales in Britain’s fast-growing empire.

In 1867 the British North America Act established Canada’s role as a dominion within the British Empire. This same act also made provision for the Intercolonial Railway in Canada, which would make rail connections possible from the eastern port of Halifax on the Atlantic coast inland to the St. Lawrence River. From here goods could reach the vast interiors of the North American continent via the grand highway of the Great Lakes. This unknown territory was finally opening up. Francis Fry hired agents to investigate.

He learned that there was little in terms of chocolate production in Canada in the 1870s. Local, family-run confection businesses were producing penny candy in glass jars and earning barely $3 million a year between them. With Canadian grocers willing to try Fry’s products, they began to ship goods from Bristol across the Atlantic. From Medicine Hat to Moose Jaw, Grand Falls to Niagara Falls,
bright yellow tins of Fry’s Breakfast Cocoa waved the flag for English manufactured chocolate goods. For British immigrants and loyalists, it brought great comfort during the bitter Canadian winters.

For the Fry management team leading this change, “the Fry spirit,” built on centuries of Quaker values, remained all-important. Concern for their workers’ welfare was paramount. Unlike Bournville, they had no space around the factories to provide recreation grounds, but their wages were generous compared to many local firms, and they organized choral and dramatic societies and clubs to provide games, libraries, and night-school teachers. Although Francis Fry continued his work for the community, his religious convictions took a more esoteric form compared with his Quaker counterparts in Birmingham. Gradually, “as the years rolled by and his business cares devolved on others,” wrote his son Theodore, he dedicated himself to his consuming passion to understand different versions of the Bible. This interest went well beyond that of an antiquarian, observed Theodore, for the Bible was his father’s “daily companion” in a “far higher sense.” His belief in it “as the revealed will and love of God to man was bright and strong.” Francis’s long-nurtured dream was to understand the most faithful version of the actual “word” of God.

As Francis Fry’s reputation as a biblical scholar spread, his correspondence mounted. He was in touch with an ever-expanding list of like-minded collectors. One day a copy of the
Codex Sinaiticus
arrived from the Russian czar, Emperor Alexander II. This fourth-century Greek manuscript, containing the earliest complete version of the New Testament, had been found at the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai and leaves were removed for publication during the 1840s and 50s. Francis Fry was “so gratified” to have such a precious tome to study that he thanked the czar with a complete set of all his biblical works.

Fry’s efforts to trace early English translations of the Bible threw up some puzzling findings. His quest to track down the original “Great Bible” produced in 1539 by the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was thwarted by the fact that King Henry VIII had ordered 21,000 copies, one for every church in England. Despite
his attempts to track down the master version, Francis Fry found “copies bearing the same date differed from each other in various parts,” according to Theodore. He located 146 copies, and sometimes “as many as forty lay open on the table at one time,” continued his son. No one “so critically examined them, or recorded his labours with such exactness.” Watermarks and even “all such differences in spelling” were carefully recorded. In Matthew 10, line 38, “saying” could also be “sayige,” “sayinge,” “saying,” “sayenge,” and “sayig.” In his forensic quest to find the true word of the Lord, Francis Fry’s collection of 1,300 Bibles and testaments rapidly became one of the best in the world. It is perhaps hardly surprising, given where his energies were focused, that Francis Fry gave scant attention to the swiftly moving chocolate market.

Around the time that the Cadbury brothers moved to Bournville, both of Francis Fry’s brothers died. In 1878, Francis retired and followed the custom of promoting to chairman the oldest son from the next generation—in this case, his nephew, Joseph Storrs Fry II. This Joseph was cut from the same cloth as his Uncle Francis. Shy and introverted, he did not marry and dedicated himself almost exclusively to the chocolate business and the Society of Friends.

As a child, Joseph Storrs Fry II had been mocked at school for his plain Quaker dress, an experience that did not appear to shake his adherence to the strict rules and values of the Society. Like his uncle, he was keen to keep Quaker tradition at the center of the business, and his daily routine was, in the words of a relative, “extraordinarily conservative.” Rather than strike out in a bold new direction, he obligingly followed his uncle on many issues.

So the chocolate factory continued to operate in various sprawling buildings across town, irrespective of their suitability. The packing department moved to an old Baptist chapel. Numerous other departments jockeyed alongside each other for space. Although new products were produced, there were no notable innovations. The Bible study and hymn singing continued. Joseph Storrs Fry II was a keen champion of causes such as the Bristol City Mission and the campaign for the suppression of opium traffic. According to Fry company
records, “his charitable gifts were almost numberless.” Like his uncle, he was an enthusiastic follower of the British and Foreign Bible Society. And also like his uncle, he remained convinced there was no need for change.