Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (35 page)

In time the new agricultural techniques introduced into the Gold Coast in Africa by Cadbury and Fry brought improvements in production. In 1910 the Gold Coast farmers harvested 26,000 tons of cocoa, more than the notorious islands of São Tomé and Principe. The following year this jumped to 40,000 tons—more than any other country in the world. The food of the gods from the New
World was becoming established as an Old World crop.
Theobroma cacao
made its way west along the high grassland savannahs of the Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, east into Nigeria and the Cameroons and south into the great Congo Basin, paving the way for Africa to become the world’s leading producer of cocoa.

With demand for chocolate soaring in the west, cocoa manufacturers were urgently seeking new sources of beans. Dutch colonialists had already taken seedlings to Java and Sumatra; the British were establishing plantations in Ceylon and India. The seeds of the ubiquitous cocoa tree, carried by eager missionaries and colonists, even graced the shady beaches of far-flung coral archipelagos of the Pacific such as Vanuatu and Samoa. The exotic plant, once a precious currency of ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica, was spreading around the world, following the shadowy blue fringes of the great equatorial rain forests.

G
eorge Cadbury Sr. had a stubborn streak. Although there were some in the family who believed that the
Daily News
investigations into labor abuses had goaded the Tory press into making libellous accusations, George regarded it as money well spent. He wanted to use his wealth not just to help his workers and the Bournville community but also to influence society at large—especially now. Since the launch in 1906 of HMS
Dreadnought—
the new terror weapon of the day—the naval arms race between Britain and Germany had accelerated. Military spending by the leading European powers had escalated rapidly. With Europe caught in the grip of a dangerous arms race, George saw it as his duty not just to champion liberal reform at home but also the cause of diplomacy and peace overseas.

Shortly after the court case, George Sr. learned that two Liberal papers, the
Morning Leader
and the
Star
, with a circulation of half a million, were for sale, and he did not want to see them fall into Conservative hands. He confided in his son Laurence, “It seemed a very serious matter to let them go into the hands of those who might seek to promote war with Germany and would oppose measures of social
reform.” George approached the Rowntree family to discuss the possibility of the two Quaker families buying the papers together. Joseph Rowntree’s nephew, Arnold, who already had experience running the
Northern Echo
and the
Nation
for the Rowntree Social Services Trust, was keen to work with George Sr.

When they took over, however, they faced a serious dilemma. Both the
Morning Leader
and the
Star
published gambling news, which provoked condemnation from their Quaker friends. Joseph Storrs Fry’s brother and a successful barrister, Sir Edward Fry, led the Quaker charge of hypocrisy. The very men from the Cadbury and Rowntree families who supported the National Anti-Gambling League, declared Edward Fry, were encouraging gambling in their sporting press!

George Cadbury Sr., however, had already tried removing the betting news from the
Daily News
and the
Echo.
In both cases it had led to a catastrophic fall in circulation. There was a real possibility that if he removed the racing from penny and half-penny papers like the
Morning Leader
and the
Star
, the papers might go under. “It was evident that the
Star
with betting news and pleading for social reform and for peace,” he explained to Laurence, “was far better than the
Star
with betting and opposing social reform and stirring up strife with neighbouring nations.”

It was not long before the Tory press picked up news of the split in Quaker thinking. Journals such as the
Spectator
took up arms against the apparently ever-expanding “Cocoa Press.” Quaker virtue was once again on the line. George Sr. was “held up to execration as an odious example of the sleek hypocrite who profited by the degradation and vice of others.” George Cadbury was particularly troubled by the continued accusations of fellow Quakers such as Sir Edward Fry, who bluntly implied that he had taken “the devil into partnership to aid the Almighty.” It reached the point, declared the
Manchester Guardian
in an editorial, that the Cadburys and Rowntrees “are assailed with such severity” that anyone might suppose “that they had introduced a gambling newspaper for the first time into the white robed company of the London daily press!”

On November 14, 1911, with a view to streamlining the organization of the papers and retiring from active management himself, George Sr. set up the Daily News Trust. In transferring his ownership of the papers, he articulated how he hoped the trust would be run. The document is a testament to his desire to apply Quaker beliefs and Christian thinking to the world of business and journalism:

For George Cadbury, the verses of the New Testament had a beauty and simplicity that he had used as a guiding principle throughout his life. For him it was simple: If everyone followed the teaching of Christ, people and nations could live in peace together. His faith anchored his thinking and unified all spheres of his life. It speaks volumes for the times that his editors endeavoured to support his view.

Ironically, the political will was already in place that would make such a close marriage of religion and business less urgent—for some, even redundant. That very year, a law was enacted that brought fundamental reform to at least one social issue that had troubled the Quaker conscience for generations: poverty. The impetus for change had come in part from the Quaker community itself, through influential writers such as Seebohm Rowntree.

After publishing
Poverty
, Seebohm had toured the country promoting a new vision of social responsibility. His research inspired prominent politicians such as Lloyd George, the chancellor from
1908, and Winston Churchill, a Liberal MP. “This festering life at home,” Churchill wrote of the British poor, “makes world-wide power a mockery, and defaces the image of God upon earth.”

Such influential thinking coincided with another forceful voice coming from the workers themselves. Still laboring under the harsh regimes of the previous century, the vast majority of laborers felt alienated. Many endured low pay and poor working conditions that had scant regard for health or welfare. Across Britain, workers were waking up to their own power. Enlightened employers like the Rowntrees had voluntarily set up their own pension scheme in 1906 and provided a host of benefits including free medical care and education, but they found their workers joining unions and making more demands. For Joseph Rowntree, who had put up £10,000 of his own money to start the pension fund, it was an unsettling time, reflecting an uneasy shift in the relationship between an employer and his staff. But his sons joined the growing number of employers who believed union membership was the way forward. Across England, the Labor Party was gaining support, and membership in the new trade unions reached 2.6 million in 1910. All this reflected a widespread recognition that the Victorians’ tolerance of poverty had no place in twentieth-century Britain.

This momentum for change led to a series of groundbreaking Liberal reforms. After vigorously lobbying in the
Daily News,
the
National Old Age Pensions League
, and the
Anti-Sweating League
, it was rewarding for George Sr. and Edward to see that change was finally possible. The Old Age Pension Act of 1908 provided a means-tested income of between one and five shillings per week for people over seventy. The majority of those eligible in the first year were women earning less than £31.50 a year. The Trade Board’s Act of 1909 created boards that could set minimum wages in trades that were notorious for sweatshop labor such as tailoring. That same year saw Lloyd George’s revolutionary “People’s Budget,” which set out a redistribution of wealth, with higher rates of tax for those earning above £2,000 to fund further reform. With the National Insurance Act of 1911, the state had to provide a basic level of unemployment
and sickness benefits. At last, the law of the land decreed that those struggling at the lowest economic rung would be recognized and supported. By today’s standards, the amounts they received were modest—but the ambition for reform was huge.

In time these sweeping Liberal reforms would pave the way for abolishing the Poor Laws, which carried the shame of miserly welfare dispensed by the parish under laws that had their origins in Tudor times. Workhouses, thought by many to punish people for poverty, survived until 1930; even then many remained—renamed as Public Assistance Institutions—until 1948. But the grinding poverty and pittance for a wage on which a family could not possibly survive was relegated to the past.

The specter of a Dickensian world, of a large and downtrodden underclass for whom there was no way out other than debtor’s prison or workhouses, would become a thing of the past. The need for charitable Quaker businessmen like Joseph Rowntree to provide for workers out of their own pockets became less urgent. The Liberal reforms helped to forge a framework for modern social welfare. What was once the domain of men of God was becoming the official business of the state. It was a step along the road that helped to distance the world of business and religion.

H
ostility to Cadbury’s and Rowntree’s “Cocoa Press” may have been exacerbated by the resounding success of the chocolate firms in the early part of the twentieth century. Far from being damaged by the court case, Cadbury was an increasing threat, even to its Quaker friends and rivals at Fry in Bristol. In 1905 Cadbury’s sales of £1,354,948 were only just behind Fry’s at £1,366,192 while Rowntree had sales of £903,991. For Cadbury’s staff, overtaking their old ally and rival became a realistic goal.

Cadbury at last had a chocolate bar that was a fitting contender in the chocolate wars. The titanic struggle between the Swiss and British milk chocolate producers was being fought in confectioners and
grocers throughout the country. The weapons were irresistible chocolate confections backed by travellers in motor cars, poster campaigns, price wars, and publicity stunts. Swiss chocolate was so prized that at first George Jr.’s Dairy Milk had trouble meeting the board’s target of two tons per week. Word spread and by 1910, it was the clear favorite among the British chocolate brands and well on its way to becoming Cadbury’s best-seller as chocolate sales began to catch up with cocoa. It was a wonderful vindication for George Jr. as sales approached twenty tons a week. The taste proved so popular that Cadbury introduced the same Dairy Milk chocolate in other lines such as the Fancy Box and as a coating on Easter eggs. George Jr. supervised the creation of a dedicated milk-condensing plant at Knighton in Staffordshire to satisfy demand. His Bournville Cocoa was also a great success, overtaking their long-established brand Cocoa Essence by 1911.

Cadbury’s export trade was also growing exponentially under the meticulous supervision of George Jr.’s older brother Edward. According to his colleagues, Edward worked “at high pressure, made swift decisions and was not always easy to work with.” Yet there was no doubting his business acumen. When he took over the export department, entire continents were managed by a single traveller. In just a few years, after extensive trips around the British Empire, Edward established sales forces in China, South America, Canada, and the West Indies. Shrewdly exploiting the potential of the British Empire, with its colonies serving as a convenient catalyst for commerce, exports soon made up 40 percent of Cadbury’s total sales.