Title: The Life of Sir William Hartley
Author: Arthur S Peake, D.D. (1865–1929)
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Title: The Life of Sir William Hartley
Author: Arthur S Peake, D.D. (1865–1929)



HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED
LONDON
First published 1926




PREFACE


Soon after the death of Sir William Hartley I was invited by his
family to write his Life. It was not possible for me to decline the
invitation, though I was already committed to a heavy programme of
literary work. We had been united by a long and intimate friendship;
we had been fellow-labourers in a common task; I held him in the
highest esteem and cherished for him a loyal affection. More over it
was due to his initiative that I left Oxford to enter the service of
my own Church. I could do no other, then, than respond to this last
obligation of friendship. Yet I was conscious that in some ways I
might be unfitted for the task. The world of business, in which he
achieved so resounding a success, is territory which I have left
almost unexplored; and the technicalities of manufacture are, if
possible, even more unfamiliar. But it was the wish of the family, as
it was in harmony with my own instinct, that the emphasis of the
biography should lie on the personality of the man and on his
activities so far as they disclosed it, rather than on the mere facts
in themselves or the steps by which he rose till he became one of the
merchant princes of our land.

In fulfilment of this design I have not attempted to write a
continuous record of events. The thread of biography would have
failed me again and again. For while the life of Sir William was rich
in action far beyond the common measure, it was not the kind of
action which could readily be recorded in a connected narrative. I
quickly recognized that the material must be handled according to
subject rather than forced into a chronological scheme. The facts, so
far as it was possible to ascertain them, could still secure a place
in the record; but they are more appropriately grouped on this
method, and their significance is more clearly revealed. Nevertheless
it has been possible to throw part of the material into the more
strictly narrative form, especially the story of his earlier and of
his closing years, together with a summary of the part he played in
the affairs of his Church.

In any account of his career a large place must inevitably be given
to his work for his own denomination. Not one of his Church's many
activities failed to secure his sympathy and co-operation. An ample
proportion of the book has accordingly been devoted to the service he
rendered in this sphere. And since many will be interested in his
life to whom the history of the denomination and its institutions and
the conditions under which its work is done will be unknown, it has
been necessary to insert a brief account of the origin and
characteristics of early Primitive Methodism and to supplement this
by statements on the various aspects of denominational life, apart
from which the story of his contribution would not be correctly
understood or estimated at its full value. The numerous readers who
will be familiar with this already will excuse the prominence given
to these explanatory sections.

My thanks are due in the first place to members of Sir William's
family. Lady Hartley and Miss Hartley gave me much help at the
beginning, especially as to Sir William's earlier days. They also
took me over to Colne, where, under their guidance, I visited the
Cottage Hospital, the Hartley Homes and the new Hospital which has
recently been opened. Mr. J. S. Higham, Sir William's son-in-law, has
been unfailing in the help he has given me. It was he who conveyed to
me the invitation to write the book. He sent me all the material he
could discover, welcomed me to Aintree and facilitated my inspection
of the Works. Both he and Miss Hartley have read the proofs; and I am
sincerely grateful to them for this additional guarantee of accuracy.
I am indebted to my colleague, the Rev. H. J. Pickett, for the same
service. I have also to thank Mr. Allan Rigsby, the manager at
Aintree, both for the time he devoted, at a very busy season, to
taking me over the Works and for information about Sir William and
his impressions of his personality. I received similar courtesy from
Mr. Hewson, the manager of the London Works, who freely gave his time
to conducting me over the various departments. Another conversation
which was very illuminating I had with Mr. Handley, who was for
thirty-three years Sir William's secretary. The Rev. J. T. Barkby
discussed various points in connexion with the preparation of the
book with me at an early stage and he sent me some reminiscences and
a personal impression which I have included in their place. Mr.
Gibbens, a son-in-law of Sir William, also took the trouble to
prepare genealogical tables for my use.

Several friends have sent me letters or reminiscences, of which some
are acknowledged in the book itself. For others which have not been
directly used I wish to express my thanks; they have contributed to
the total impression which lies behind what I have said, though in
several cases they have simply illustrated what was abundantly
illustrated already. Among the friends who have thus helped me I
desire to mention the Rev. Joseph Ritson and the Rev. George Trusler
for reminiscences, the Rev. J. G. Bowran, the Rev. B. A. Barber and
the Rev. G. W. Meadley for letters, also the Rev. Thomas Jackson for
letters sent to the late Rev. R. S. Blair. Fortunately I had
preserved a very large number of Sir William's letters addressed to
myself, and these have been of material service in the preparation of
the book. I have drawn not a little on my own recollections which
were both full and vivid.

I am conscious that some explanation is due for the delay in the
appearance of the book, but it has been prepared and dictated under
the pressure of many other urgent claims on my time. Even so it was
my hope to have completed it a year earlier, but this was made
impossible by medical prohibitions which robbed me of two months in
the summer of 1924. Weeks and even months have not infrequently
passed in which the work has been untouched.

In saying farewell to a task which it has been a privilege to
perform, I may be permitted to add a few closing words. The memory of
Sir William Hartley will be cherished, not because of his wealth or
even his commercial genius, but for the lofty use to which his wealth
and his genius were consecrated. His deeds of splendid generosity are
impressive when taken singly, they are overwhelming in their mass. I
have sought to uncover the roots from which so rich a fruitage issued
and disclose the forces which found so magnificent an expression. He
rose to affluence and then to vast wealth; he had exceptional
capacity for toil, amazing energy and driving power, the genius to
conceive, the strength to execute lofty designs, the gift of rising
to the level of an occasion and doing great things in a great way.
His rich and many-sided personality had been captured by a religion
enlightened and ethical, but redeemed from cold intellectualism or a
frigid legalism by the emotion which glowed at the centre. He looked
out upon the world, he saw its misery and was filled with compassion.
His sympathies were strong and deep; he was pitiful in the presence
of sorrow and pain. "There is much misery in the world," he once said
to me, "and few know so much of it as I do." Disease and poverty were
enemies to be fought. The ignorance and the vice which were
responsible for so much physical and moral defect must be attacked
not simply in themselves but in their roots. The spread of knowledge,
the destruction of barriers, the creation of a social conscience, the
quickening of a sensitiveness to social and moral evils which was
numb through habit and conventionality, these were the means by which
our sorely wounded social system might find relief. And so he fought
disease by hospital and sanatorium and the endowment of medical
research. He fought ignorance by the ample provision he made for
University and College and the circulation of the best books. He
alleviated the evils of poverty by a just and even generous wage, by
profit-sharing and provision for old age, by almshouse and by
orphanage, by loans to tide people over critical periods, or by gifts
to those from whom no repayment could ever be expected.

And grateful tribute must be paid to the work which he did for his
own denomination. He was not a narrow ecclesiastic, his sympathies
were broad as they were deep. But he recognized that the communion in
which he had been placed had the first claim on his loyalty and
service. His gifts of money made much possible which could not have
been other wise achieved. But they were rendered far more valuable,
partly by the use he made of them to elicit help from others, partly
by the extreme care he took to secure that the money should be used
to the best advantage. Above all, his statesmanship was one of the
most precious assets of his Church. He had the vision to see great
opportunities, the resourcefulness and skill to utilize them, the
energy to carry the causes he advocated to triumph. He struck with
unexampled force into the stream of denominational activity, lifting
its quality to higher levels, accelerating the pace of its progress,
making possible otherwise impracticable enterprises. Splendid as were
his gifts, his leadership was even more far-reaching in its effects.
Long years were granted to him, and he filled them to the uttermost.
He raised our ideals as he expanded our resources; he was to us at
once an inspiration and a conscience. In his many-sided gifts taken
singly there have been few to emulate him, while in his combination
of gifts he was unique.

  ARTHUR S. PEAKE.

  Manchester,
    _September 10, 1925._




CONTENTS


      Table of Leading Events
    I Early Years
   II The Manufacturer
  III The Employer and his Workpeople
   IV Profit-Sharing
    V Systematic and Proportionate Giving
   VI Relations with his Church
  VII Reunion and Interdenominational Co-operation
 VIII Mission
   IX Church Property
    X The Education of the Ministry
   XI The Support of the Ministry
  XII Temperance
 XIII Hospitals
  XIV Almshouse and Orphanage
   XV Public Life
  XVI Closing Years
 XVII Personal Qualities


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Sir William Hartley
Lady Hartley
Sir. William's Father
Sir William's Mother
Sir William's Grandfather
Sir William's Grandmother
Sir William as a Boy of 14
1908
Lady Hartley. Taken probably about the age of 65
Hartley Hospital, Colne
The Hartley Homes, Colne
Sir William and Lady Hartley being presented to King George V
Miss Hartley as Mayor of Southport, 1921-22


TABLE OF LEADING EVENTS

Born at Colne, February 23, 1846.

Educated at the British School and the Grammar School, Colne.

Left school at the age of fourteen. Started in business for himself
in Colne at the age of sixteen.

At the age of twenty married Miss Martha Horsfield of Colne on
Whit-Monday, May 21, 1866.

Death of his mother at the age of forty-six on May 18, 1870.

Removed to Bootle, 1874.

Vow to devote a specific proportion of income to religious and
charitable purposes made January 1, 1877.

Offer of £1,000 if the debt of the Primitive Methodist Missionary
Society was paid off, 1884.

Presided at the meeting of the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society
at which the removal of the debt was announced, May, 1885.

Communicated to the Primitive Methodist Conference the suggestions
which led to the formation of the Chapel Aid Association, 1885.

Built works at Aintree, 1886.

Chapel Aid Association registered, January 2, 1890.

Elected General Treasurer of the Primitive Methodist Missionary
Society, June 7, 1890.

Removed from Inglewood, Birkdale, to Aintree at the end of October,
1890.

Visited Oxford, where he celebrated his silver wedding, May, 1891.

Proposed new departure in ministerial education to the Conference of
1891.

Death of his father, January 27, 1892.

Elected Vice-President of Conference, June, 1892.

Jubilee Fund inaugurated at this Conference. On his suggestion sum to
be raised fixed at £50,000, towards which he promised £5,000.

Addressed meetings all over the country on behalf of the Jubilee
Fund, 1892-3.

Appointed Justice of the Peace, August 18, 1893.

Member of the Liverpool City Council, 1895-8.

Elected on the Walton School Board, January 14, 1895.

Aintree Institute and Cafe opened, 1896.

Founded Hartley Lectureship, 1896.

First extension of Primitive Methodist College, Manchester, 1897.

London business started, 1900.

Cottage Hospital opened at Colne, April 20, 1900.

Botanical Laboratory, University College, Liverpool, opened May 10,
1902.

Removed from Aintree to "Sea View," Southport, 1904.

Second extension of Hartley College opened, June, 1906.

Primitive Methodist Centenary Celebrations, 1907-10. He was appointed
Treasurer of the Centenary Fund and contributed £15,000.

Knighted, 1908.

Purchased Holborn Town Hall for £31,000 in 1908. The Hall was greatly
enlarged and a new Publishing House erected. The enlarged premises
were bought from him at cost price (about £50,000) by the Primitive
Methodist Church. To this he contributed £17,500.

President of the Primitive Methodist Conference held at Southport,
June, 1909.

Freedom of Colne conferred, November 9, 1909.

Pension Fund inaugurated, 1909.

Hartley Homes opened at Colne, 1911.

Unveiled windows presented by him to Hartley College, June 11,1914.

Seventieth birthday, February 23, 1916. Gifts in commemoration to
Hospitals, Pension Fund, Grocers' Charities.

Golden wedding, May 21, 1916.

Address of congratulation from the Primitive Methodist Conference,
June, 1916.

Removed from Southport to Birkdale, 1919.

Business converted into a Limited Liability Company, 1919.

Declined to accept Mayoralty of Colne, 1919.

Laid foundation-stone of Colne Hospital, September 3, 1921.

Miss Hartley became Mayor of Southport, November 9, 1921.

Death of Sir William Hartley, Wednesday, October 25, 1922.

Funeral service at Church Street, Southport, and interment at
Trawden, Saturday, October 28, 1922.




CHAPTER I

_Early Years - Part I_


The most exhaustive scrutiny of ancestry and environment cannot fully
explain the secret of even the most commonplace personality; much
less can it account for men of outstanding gifts and achievement. Yet
it may help us in a measure to understand even a character and a
career so rare as that of Sir William Hartley, if we consider the
stock from which he sprang and the conditions which moulded him in
the most plastic period of his life.

The impression that his ancestors belonged to the poorer working
classes is incorrect; and to heighten the marvel of his career, too
much has often been made of his early disadvantages. "The Hartley
family," we learn, "are typical Lancashire yeomen. They can trace
their ancestry back to the early seventeenth century; indeed, one
branch of the family--Sir William's uncle, Richard Hartley--lived at
Barley, under the shadow of Pendle, in a house which, as the
date-stone shows, had been in the possession of the Hartley family
since 1620. There is also an East Lancashire tradition that the
family is of Huguenot stock, and it is associated by marriage with
the well-known East Lancashire families of Lister, Pickles, and
Horsfield."[*]

[*] _Southport Guardian_, October 28, 1922.

Sir William was born at Colne, a small but pleasant little town in
East Lancashire on the edge of Yorkshire, a few miles north of
Burnley. It is situated on a high ridge and is affectionately called
by its inhabitants "Bonnie Colne-on-the-Hill." Tourists often take it
as their starting-point when they are visiting the Bronte country.
How deep were the ties which bound him and Lady Hartley to their
birthplace will be clear from this biography; but it will be fitting
at this point to quote from the speech he delivered on the occasion
when he laid the foundation-stone of the Hospital they presented to
Colne, September 3, 1921. "I am now in my seventy-sixth year, and it
is forty-seven years since I removed from Colne; but my wife and I
never forget that we were born in Colne, and in the erection of this
hospital we have endeavoured to show in a practical manner our
affection for our native town."

The qualities which made him so successful as a man of business were
probably derived in large measure from Christopher Lister, his
great-grandfather on the father's side. He had the largest
ironmongery in Colne. His death was sudden, and occurred in his
carriage at the gates of Horsfield Cottage, his residence. His
daughter became the wife of William Hartley, a schoolmaster at
Trawden. He was a man of considerable ability, great religious
fervour and moral passion. At first a Wesleyan local preacher, he
later joined the Primitive Methodists, and was urged to enter the
ministry. This, however, through diffidence, he declined to do,
though he lamented his refusal in after years. He became in later
life a town-missionary in the Isle of Man, and died during an
epidemic of fever which claimed him as its victim, as with
self-effacing devotion he ministered to the needs of others. His
eldest son, Robert Hartley, Sir William's uncle, was a man of very
handsome presence and exceptionally fine character. He became a
Primitive Methodist minister at an early age, and after spending a
quarter of a century in England, went to Australia and laboured for
thirty-two years in Queensland. One feature of his many-sided
activity was his kindness to the emigrants from England whom he met
at the landing-stage. His home was at Rockhampton on the coast; but
he covered a wide field, reaching from Brisbane nearly to the Gulf of
Carpentaria. He was apparently too much occupied to send home reports
of his work; so Dr. Samuel Antliff, when he was sent to visit
Australia, was instructed to make investigations. He found him the
leading man in Rockhampton. His fellow-citizens celebrated his
ministerial Jubilee and presented him with a purse of gold; and after
his death dedicated a public fountain to his memory. A Hartley
Memorial Chapel also commemorates his work. A letter from Dr. McLaren
may fitly be quoted at this point. It was written on July 23, 1892.


"Mr. Hartley was in Southampton during several years of my pastorate
there, when I learned to esteem him very highly for his earnestness,
warmth of heart, bright temperament, diligence and self-forgetfulness. I
had the pleasure of a visit from him when he was in England some years
since, and have always cherished warm feelings of friendship for him. I
share with your denomination the sense of loss by his death, and should
be glad if you would tell Mr. Hartley of Aintree how truly I esteemed
and honoured his uncle."


John Hartley, the second son of William and the brother of Robert
Hartley, was the father of Sir William. He was born on July 13, 1824.
He was a kind, good man, a Primitive Methodist local preacher and
class leader, but he had no special aptitude for affairs. In his
later years he assisted in his son's business. He was the medium of
communication between the work people and the Chief. His sympathetic
nature found abundant exercise in the help he gave to people in
trouble. He died on January 27, 1892, at the age of sixty-seven. He
married Miss Margaret Pickles, who was born on April 20, 1824. She
was very tall and not strong, and died on May 18, 1870, at the age of
forty-six. From her Sir William derived much of his brain power. He
was her only child who survived early infancy. He was born February
23, 1846. His first Christian name was that of his grandfather, his
second was the maiden name of his mother.

At that time it was quite usual for children to be taken from school
and sent to work at a very early age. But his parents, recognizing
his exceptional qualities, gave him an unusually good education for
boys of his class. He was sent to the British School till he was
thirteen and then for a year to the Grammar School. One
accomplishment, for which he was distinguished, was ornamental
penmanship. His uncle, Robert Hartley, left England about the time
when his nephew's education was nearing completion and expressed the
opinion that William would not make much out of life. Others formed a
truer judgment of his qualities. When he was quite young a Roman
Catholic priest at Colne tried to have him educated for the
priesthood It was also suggested that he should be trained as a
lawyer; but his mother, who shared the pessimistic estimate of the
legal profession which is all too prevalent, objected that the
untruthfulness it tended to foster would be damaging to his spiritual
interests.

His own wish, on leaving school at the age of fourteen, was to become
a chemist. But there was no opening in Colne, so he began work by
helping his mother in the grocery shop which she kept. So tiny a
sphere offered him no scope, and when a suitable shop became vacant
in the main street of Colne he urged his parents to take it. They
were aghast at the suggestion, believing that nothing but financial
ruin could be the result of so rash an enterprise; and the boy might
not have gained his opportunity had not a business man in the town,
of larger experience and prescience than the parents, warmly
commended his proposal. Lady Hartley still vividly remembers across
the intervening sixty years a visit of his mother to her home and her
gloomy forebodings that William's headstrong rashness would ruin them
all. But her fears were falsified. Starting at the age of sixteen in
business for himself, he quickly justified his refusal to move in the
old ruts. He combined a dry saltery with his grocery business at
Colne. But he was quick to see that a wholesale department would help
the retail business and at the same time give him the opportunity for
widening the range of his operations. Accordingly he built up a trade
in grocers' sundries in the villages and towns round Colne. At the
outset the way was very difficult and only the most strenuous
determination and unfaltering perseverance could have made this new
venture a success. Long after-wards when he acknowledged the
presentation of the Freedom of Colne on November 12, 1909, he said:
"My pleasant visit to Colne to-day awakens memories of the past. When
the Mayor brought me to his house this afternoon on Keighley Road, it
reminded me that forty-six or forty-seven years ago I walked the same
road, and on through Laneshaw-bridge over Lancashire Moor to
Stanbury, journey by journey, starting from my home in Colne Lane
before five o'clock in the morning, calling upon my first customer at
about seven o'clock. I walked to Haworth, Oak-worth and to Keighley
Station, so tired that I was very glad to sit down in the station. I
walked about twenty miles, I had called on twenty customers, and on
many a journey I did not make a shilling. It took a good deal of
resolution to keep that up."

When he was twenty he was married to Miss Martha Horsfield, the
daughter of Henry and Ann Horsfield, grocers of Colne. Her home, as
Sir William recalled when he received the Freedom of his native town,
stood on the site on which the Town Hall in which it was presented to
him, was subsequently erected. She was the youngest of thirteen
children. Her father was a Wesleyan; but she with some of her sisters
attended the Church of England. She became attached to the Primitive
Methodists when she was fourteen because they had been so kind to her
sister in her illness. When they celebrated their golden wedding in
1916, Sir William gave a very interesting account of their honeymoon
to the staff of the businesses in Liverpool and London, at a dinner
on May 27. He said: "We were married on a Whit-Monday morning, which
in that year (1866) was May 21. Holidays were then a very rare thing
in our native town of Colne. Indeed, we scarcely knew that the word
'holiday' was in the language. However, we were quite as happy with
half a day on that Whit-Monday as we have been since with a month's
holiday. On that afternoon we spent our honeymoon in processioning
the town of Colne with the Sunday School scholars and singing the
special Whitsuntide hymns in the principal streets of our native
town; and I was at business as usual next morning as though nothing
had happened."

All who know in any degree the happiness of that union will recognize
how fortunate he was in his choice; and if deeper and higher
instincts were not involved than wisdom in the conduct of affairs, it
might truthfully be said that he never gave a finer example of his
sagacity than in the selection of his wife. Of all that they meant to
each other and to their family it would not be fitting to speak save
with reticence; and what must be said should be reserved for a later
point in the story. But in all his business career she was his
constant and his wisest adviser. She firmly supported him in his
splendid service to religion, philanthropy and education, though
striving to temper his enthusiasm when she felt that it carried him
beyond the bounds of proper regard for his own health and comfort. In
this respect, it is to be feared, that he was sometimes less amenable
to her restraining influence than she desired. Her caution and her
coolness, her foresight and sound sense, were invaluable qualities.
She had a firm grasp of his business in its many ramifications and an
intimate familiarity with it. It meant much to her husband that he
could always turn to her for sagacious counsel and candid criticism.

It was through an accident that Mr. Hartley became a manufacturer of
jam. He entered into a contract with a local grocer to make jam for
him. The grocer did not fulfil his contract; and the case was
submitted to friendly arbitration, which went in Mr. Hartley's
favour. He decided, however, to terminate the arrangement and to
manufacture jam on his own account. He felt this to be the more
necessary that he was already gaining a reputation for this class of
goods and he was determined not to disappoint his customers. He
resolved from the first that the quality should be the best he could
produce, no matter what the price he would be compelled to charge.
People thought this principle was much too optimistic and that he
would not hold out long enough for the public to discover the
excellence of his wares. But he was resolute in his fidelity to this
ideal and adhered to it throughout his business career. The materials
he used were of the best, he watched every detail of manufacture and
insisted that the whole process should be conducted with the utmost
care to secure perfect cleanliness. The people were quick to
recognize the excellence of the product; and as it was sold at a
reasonable price the business rapidly developed. At last the problem
forced itself upon him whether it would not be wise to remove his
business from Colne, especially as it was desirable to lessen the
cost of the carriage of fruit and sugar. He finally decided to leave
Colne and build a jam factory at Bootle. His friends and family were
unanimous against the project. He had an excellent business in Colne
and the prospect of steady development; and he seemed to them to be
sacrificing a secure and promising position for what might prove to
be a mere mirage. When he was President of the Primitive Methodist
Conference in June, 1909, he spoke of his decision to leave Colne and
build a small works near to Liverpool as a most important, decisive
and far-reaching step. He added: "This was against the advice of my
family and friends, who viewed the step as an expression of vaulting
ambition. They all believed I was flying in the face of Providence
and prophesied disaster. There was no exception to the adverse
criticism. Whenever I look back upon that stirring period of my life,
I often think how careful we should be in forming adverse views as to
the conduct of others for fear that our criticism should prove to be
wrong. It was so in my case."

He passed through a period of great distress and anxiety, he felt his
isolation keenly, all the more that his friends were convinced that
the disaster would be irretrievable. But he had the courage of his
convictions and in 1874 the business was removed to Bootle.

It must be admitted that he ran a very big risk and that the
prospects at the outset were such as to discourage the most
optimistic. He had sunk the whole of his capital in the new building
and nothing was left for fruit or sugar. For this he was relying on
money which had been lent to him. At this juncture the lender
threatened to withdraw the money unless Mr. Hartley would make him
his partner. His wife wisely warned him that he could not do with a
partner; and the condition on which the loan was to be continued was
refused. It was necessary for him to borrow money and he had to make
a hard bargain with necessity. The money was advanced to him on very
onerous terms. The loan was to run for seven years and the interest
swallowed up seventy-five per cent. of the profits. Long before the
date fixed upon for its expiration Mr. Hartley would have been glad
to repay it; but those from whom he had borrowed it refused to
release him earlier.

Confronted by grave difficulties, hampered by insufficiency of
capital, carrying the burden of his heavy indebtedness, he found his
energies taxed to the uttermost. Long hours, during which his great
powers of work and his magnificent organizing abilities were strained
almost beyond endurance, and the inevitable financial worry told upon
his health. That he achieved so much in later life was the more
amazing that he permanently bore the scars of those earlier years
upon him. In the address he gave to his staff on the occasion of his
golden wedding he said: "For a number of years in our early days we
had great difficulties, and our first struggles were severe indeed."
But it was in those days of strain, struggle and anxiety that the
foundations of his vast business were well and truly laid. The
quality of his manufactures became more and more widely known and the
works he had built at Bootle proved too small. Extension became
necessary. In due course a second enlargement was required, and once
more the volume of business outgrew the capacity of the building.
Since the limit of expansion had been reached he decided to build new
works at Aintree and this project was carried into effect in 1886. He
resided at Bootle for six years, then at Southport and subsequently
at Birkdale. He removed to Aintree at the end of October, 1890. From
Aintree he removed to "Sea View," Southport, in 1904, and then to
Birkdale in 1919.

During their residence at Colne the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hartley was
enriched by the coming of four daughters and in the Bootle period the
family was completed by four daughters and one son. In the year after
the business was transferred to Bootle the fourth daughter died at
the age of eighteen months. The rest of the family survived their
father, though the grief occasioned by the loss of the husband and
father was renewed only a little later by the death of the son and
brother.


_Early Years - Part II_

So far nothing has been said of what must throughout be one of the
most prominent features in a biography of this kind--his relation to
religion and the Church.

He came of Primitive Methodist stock and was, in fact, a Primitive
Methodist of the third generation. William Hartley, his grandfather,
passed over from the Wesleyans to the Primitive Methodists and died
in that communion as a town missionary in the Isle of Man. His father
and mother belonged to it, his father being a local preacher and a
class leader. At the time of his birth the denomination had been in
existence thirty-five years. It had originated in the Potteries
during the closing years of the first decade of the nineteenth
century. Stimulated by the accounts of the success which had attended
the American camp meetings, two fervent Wesleyan local preachers,
Hugh Bourne and William Clowes, with some of their friends, held a
camp meeting on Mow Cop, in 1807. The Wesleyan Conference, believing
that camp meetings, however suitable to America, were undesirable in
England, passed a resolution forbidding such gatherings to be held.
Since their promoters, full of evangelistic zeal, refused to comply,
first Hugh Bourne and then later William Clowes were removed from the
roll of membership. As the work continued it became necessary to form
Society classes and soon a new denomination was formed. The feeling
of its leaders that they were recovering the methods employed in
original or, as it was not infrequently termed at an even earlier
period, primitive Methodism, found expression in the title by which
it was officially designated The Primitive Methodist Connexion. It
spread with amazing rapidity, though with some set-backs; and at the
time of Mr. Hartley's birth the membership stood at over 87,000. The
evangelistic spirit was still strong, but the period of consolidation
had set in; and the membership was recruited, not only from the
masses who were unattached to any form of religious organization, but
from those who had been born in Primitive Methodist homes. The
organization was framed on the Wesleyan model, though with a much
greater emphasis on the rights of the laity. The forms of worship
were also similar to those of the Mother Church, but they were more
spontaneous and less restrained and spiritual raptures not
infrequently found a corybantic expression. Theology was, as almost
everywhere in English Christianity at the time, rigidly orthodox.
Verbal inspiration, a substitutionary theory of the Atonement, the
unalterable determination of future destiny at death, eternal
punishment including physical torment in fire, were accepted without
question. But the theology was also specifically Methodist with great
stress on experience. While gradual conversion might not be denied,
it was normally expected to be instantaneous and catastrophic; and
the shock of contrast betwen the old and the new also led to much
emphasis on the inner witness of the Spirit. Entire sanctification,
to be received by faith, was also presented as the privilege of all
believers, which might, like justification, be instantaneously
achieved by an act of faith. The preachers proclaimed "a free, full,
and present salvation, obtainable now." Much stress was laid on
testimony, to be given in the open air or in the love feasts, or in
the factory. The most characteristic Methodist institution was the
class meeting in which each member related his spiritual experience
to his fellow-members and received from the leader such warning,
encouragement or counsel as his case seemed to demand. Personal
evangelism had from the first characterized the movement. Great
importance was attached to the training of children. But the rules
required a certain age to be attained before any could be accepted
into membership. When Mr. Hartley was Vice-President of the
Conference he strongly criticized the postponement of membership in
the case of young people reared in Christian homes. Speaking in June,
1892, he said: "I have been a member of our Connexion for about
thirty-two years, ever since I was of the proper age; and I might
have been a member sooner had the rules of the Connexion allowed. I
have long been of the opinion that we lose the membership of
thousands of our young people who are reared in Christian homes
through not having some system of enrolling their names as members at
an early age. We have too long acted as though it was necessary for
our young people to indulge more or less in worldliness and sin, and
after a certain time to be converted and received into the Church. I
have little sympathy with this view. I think the children of godly
parents should be received into Church fellowship, and taught to
adorn the doctrines of our Saviour from an early age, and gradually
grow up into strong Christ-like characters." He repeated this protest
in 1909 when he was President of the Conference.

It was expected of all Church members that they should exhibit a walk
and conduct worthy of the Gospel. Regular attendance at the religious
services, very strict Sabbath observance, abstinence from what were
styled "vain and worldly amusements," in which dancing, the theatre,
and card-playing were included, regular contributions towards the
expenses of the Society with which the member was connected, and of
the circuit to which the Society belonged, were required from all
members, together, it goes without saying, with strict obedience to
the weightier matters of the moral law. The consequence was that the
social life of the members was concentrated on a small scale in their
homes, while on a larger scale it had its centre in their chapel.
There was a great spirit of cameraderie. Work, of course, was hard
and the hours of labour were long; but the week-night preaching
service, the class meeting, the tea-meeting followed by the public
meeting, the sewing-meeting for the sale of work or the bazaar, the
choir practice, the occasional entertainment or lecture, the
anniversary of the chapel or the school, provided very rich
opportunities for the cultivation of the spiritual life and the
satisfaction of the religious instincts. Sunday was, of course, a
very full day. On this I am glad to be able to quote Sir William's
own testimony given in June, 1909, when he was President of the
Conference. He describes his typical Sunday while he was at Colne.

"In those early days I paid the closest attention to my business, but
on Sundays I always devoted the whole day to work in connexion with
the chapel. At the present time some of our young people think that
the services are too frequent. Fifty years ago my Sunday duty was:
Sunday School 9 o'clock, service at 10.30, school at 1.15, afternoon
service at 2.30, evening service at 6, prayer meeting at 7.30, and
occasionally an open-air mission at 5.30 previous to the evening
service. I attended all these services at the time, and it never
occurred to me that I was doing anything exceptional. I took it as a
matter of course as I did my business duties on the week-day."

There was a clear line of demarcation between those who were members
of the Society and those who were simply adherents. The qualification
for membership was in the first instance, as with the Wesleyans, "a
desire to flee from the wrath to come"; and a member had to be on
trial at least three months before he was admitted to full
membership. As he had to attend the class meeting, where inquiries
were regularly made as to the progress of his religious life, it is
obvious that the elementary qualification required for membership on
trial had to be completed by a definitely Christian experience.
Normally it may be said that conversion was taken as the
indispensable qualification for membership. The distinction between
the member and the adherent, however, was not necessarily a
distinction between the converted and the unconverted. There were
those who regularly attended the services and supported the Church
and its institutions, who might have claimed that they were true
members of the Church of Christ but for some reason or other stood
outside the membership of the Society, and hence were not enrolled in
the membership of the denomination. But the distinction did in large
measure hold good. Of course the adherents were not subject to the
discipline of the Church or taxed for its support. Nor did they
participate in its fellowship meetings. The Society naturally took no
responsibility for them; but it was the constant hope that they might
cross the decisive line which separated the saved from the unsaved.

Since one very important side of Mr. Hartley's denominational
activities was concerned with the easing of financial burdens and the
financing of new developments, it should be pointed out that the
denomination at the time contained extremely few wealthy people, that
the number of members in easy circumstances was not large, and that
the vast majority belonged to the working classes, earning slender
and often precarious wages. The converts had frequently been drawn
from the ranks of the thriftless, the drunken and the lazy. They had
become thrifty, sober and industrious; some of them began to rise in
the social scale, and if they remained loyal to the Church which had
raised them there was often a tendency for the children to drift away
into a social environment more congenial than was provided by the
little chapel. Thus the very success of the denomination led to some
measure of impoverishment. On the other hand, the membership, which
in 1846 stood at nearly 88,000, had twenty years later risen to over
150,000, and in 1884 when Mr. Hartley made his challenge offer, which
brought him into denominational fame and initiated his great career
of service for the whole Connexion, the membership stood at over
191,000. It would have been 200,000 but for the fact that in 1883
nearly 9,000 members had been transferred to the Canadian Methodist
Church when Methodist Union was consummated in Canada. It is obvious
that with a membership so enlarged and reinforced by so considerable
a number of adherents the financial resources of the denomination
were far more ample than they had been in the early days of poverty
and struggle. But liberality, which was often great and even costly,
tended to flow too much in local channels. To these Mr. Hartley was
in no way indifferent, indeed through out his career much of his time
and financial assistance was devoted to local needs. But he did a
great deal to stimulate Connexional interest. His offer in 1884
struck the denominational imagination and not only removed the
missionary debt but deepened the interest in missions. And his
unwearied exposition of the principle of systematic and proportionate
giving, of which he was himself so shining an example, did much to
diffuse a more generous temper and to create the habit of regulated
rather than spasmodic liberality.

It should be added that, contrary to a widespread opinion, the
constitution of the denomination was not democratic. A number of
Societies were grouped into a circuit, which was governed by the
circuit Quarterly Meeting. A number of circuits were united in a
District, which held an annual district meeting. The whole of the
Districts were united in the Connexion; and the annual Conference,
which was the supreme governing body of the Church, was composed
almost entirely of representatives appointed by the District Meetings
in the proportion of two laymen to one minister. The non-official, or
"private member" as he was called, could not be sent as a delegate to
Conference. And indeed, he had practically no voice even in the
management of his own circuit. The invitation of the minister, for
example, was in the hands of the Quarterly Meeting and the rank and
file of the Church members had no voice in the selection. We are not
concerned with the wisdom and justice of the system; but as the
Primitive Methodists are often described as a very democratic Church
it is desirable to make the real position clear. And it has an
interesting bearing on our immediate subject. For some time after Mr.
Hartley had become the most prominent layman in Primitive Methodism
he was not eligible for election as a delegate to Conference, even
when he had become the Missionary Treasurer of the denomination. As
his presence in the Conference was of great importance, the situation
would have been much more serious if the rigid constitution had not
allowed one little loophole. The Deed Poll made provision for four
other persons than the twelve permanent, or Deed Poll, members and
the delegates from the District Meetings to be appointed by the
preceding Conference. One of these places had to be taken by the
General Committee Secretary, who was charged with the conduct of the
business, so that only three places, and these much coveted, were
available. For several years Mr. Hartley, being ineligible for
membership in any other way, had to be sent as one of the "Four
Persons." At length the difficulty was met by the arrangement that
the Missionary Treasurer should be one of the delegates for the
Missions District. The principle which lies behind the constitution
is that the members of the Conference should owe their position to
direct appointment and each time have to be nominated and run the
gauntlet of an election. This finds expression in the fact that the
representatives of institutions, while they must attend the
Conference and speak on their reports, and are entitled to intervene
in the debate when business affecting their department is before the
Conference, nevertheless are not members of the Conference in virtue
of their office and can become members only if they are appointed in
one of the ways already indicated. In actual practice the system
works unfairly, because some officials are secure of appointment
while the great majority are not. And it is open to grave question
whether a deliberative assembly, which has to conduct the affairs of
the Church, is not seriously impoverished when, with few exceptions,
those who have the most intimate knowledge of its institutions and
whose appointment ought to be some guarantee of capacity are shut out
from voice and vote in the supreme court of the denomination.

Such then was the religious atmosphere and environment into which
William Hartley was born. In the address he gave as Vice-President of
the Conference in June, 1892, he said: "My parents and grandparents
were godly people. I was always under the deepest religious
impressions, and I never remember a time when I had not an earnest
desire to be good." He was taken by his mother to the class-meeting
when he was five years old. At the age of thirteen he offered himself
for membership. When he presented twenty cottage homes to Colne in
October, 1911, he said: "Lady Hartley and I are to-day on familiar
ground. We were both born in Colne. We passed our early days here. We
were both under the influence of good parents and teachers here,
especially at Sunday School, whose wise counsel had a lasting effect
upon us. Although we left Colne about thirty-eight years ago, we have
never forgotten the helpful influences that surrounded us in our
early days."

Next to the influence of his parents, and especially his mother, we
should probably place that of his Sunday School teacher, Jonathan
Catlow. In later years he often acknowledged the deep impressions
made upon him by the character of this man who in humble
circumstances yet displayed not a little native talent and width of
theological outlook, combined with transparent goodness and deep
religious experience.

In the natural order of things Mr. Hartley would have become a local
preacher; but his failure to follow the family tradition was an
illustration, of the well-known saying that the good is often the
enemy of the better. The story is best told in his own words,
addressed to the Conference at Southport, of which he was the
President.

"I am a Primitive of the third generation, and became a member as
soon as the rules of the Church allowed. I have been a member more
than fifty years...I never remember a time in my life when I had
not a real genuine desire to serve the Lord. My father and
grandfather were both local preachers, and when I was a small boy, I
often accompanied my father to his country appointments and also into
his pulpit. I have given out a hymn many a time when I was a small
boy. At that time I had an honest desire to be a local preacher, but
this was frustrated. When I was about twelve or thirteen years of age
it was decided to have a harmonium in the chapel at Colne, my native
town, and it was the earnest wish of my parents, especially my
mother, that I should learn to play; and with some financial strain
they placed me under a music teacher and purchased a small harmonium
for my use at home, with the sole and only object of my officiating
at the instrument in the chapel. I have this harmonium now in my
house. My idea of being a local preacher was of necessity completely
abandoned owing to my duty at the harmonium...I was organist in
the Colne chapel for sixteen years until I was twenty-eight."

The training he would have gained as a local preacher would have been
very valuable to him in later life. Apart from its system of lay
preachers, Methodism would have been severely crippled in its
activities. The whole system lends itself to practical training in
public speaking. By easy stages the initial difficulties are
surmounted, the prayer-meeting and the class-meeting give constant
opportunities at which, in early youth, the natural shyness and
awkwardness, which are so effective a barrier, are overcome. At first
two or three sentences may be put together, for no set speech is
required; and at the class meeting the members had not to face the
very real trial to a beginner of standing on his feet to address his
fellows. As time goes on, other opportunities are afforded, such as a
brief Sunday School address. Gradually confidence is gained, signs of
promise are observed, the suggestion is made that the higher work of
the local preacher should be attempted. But the candidate is not left
to himself; he is placed in the care of an experienced local preacher
who takes him with him to his services and gives him the benefit of
his advice. He is not burdened by the sense that failure on his part
will involve the ruin of the service. If for ten or fifteen minutes
he can acquit himself creditably, then he is on the highroad to
success. But if he cannot sustain so long a flight, no harm is done;
his mentor will easily fill the void which his premature collapse
would otherwise have created. Thus he begins his work under the most
favourable conditions and in particular he is not paralysed by the
dread that any failure of nerve on his part will involve disaster to
the service. And practice will soon enable him to make good his
deficiencies and undertake the whole service himself. But even then
he has more than one stage to pass through before he becomes a fully
accredited local preacher. It is easy to see what an advantage it is
for a man who has to play his part in public life to have gone
through a training of this kind. The gift of speaking with ease and
confidence, without the painful pauses, the halting delivery, the
inarticulate ejaculations which form the stepping-stones from one
coherent phrase to another, the self-consciousness and embarrassment
which ought to be, but are not always, the accompaniment of so
distressing a performance, is a gift which is in many cases a natural
endowment, but which may be acquired by such gradual processes as
those that have been described. In later life Mr. Hartley had to
speak on many public occasions and with his high conscientiousness
and very careful preparation he always acquitted himself worthily.
But public speaking was a great nervous strain to him; and if
circumstances had permitted him to train his gifts and gain facility
in early life, much expenditure of time and nervous energy would have
been spared. But naturally the work of an organist, who undertook
also the duty of training the choir, was very exacting. His presence
was required at all the services in Colne; and this was true also of
his Bootle period. He bought the organ for the Primitive Methodist
Church at Bootle and acted as organist.

He went to the Sunday School at an early age and in due course became
a teacher. He was in other respects a very active Sunday School
worker and filled several offices beside that of teacher. He was also
treasurer of the Chapel trust and, while still quite young, was
appointed to the responsible office of circuit steward. His rise into
denominational fame came in 1884, when, as will be related in
connexion with his work for the Connexional Missionary Society, he
made his challenge offer for the extinction of the debt.

Since the most distinctive feature of Mr. Hartley's career was his
stewardship of wealth, and the first step which led to such momentous
consequences was taken at a very early point, it is appropriate to
speak of it here, although the chief developments must be unfolded in
the sequel. On January 1, 1877, Mr. and Mrs. Hartley made a vow,
which they committed to writing, that they would set aside a specific
portion of their income for religious and philanthropic purposes. A
fuller exposition of his principles and their application must be
reserved for the present, but at this point it will be appropriate to
make one or two quotations from speeches of his own. In his
Presidential Address to the Conference (1909) he said: "Probably the
greatest event of my life occurred on January 1, 1877. On that day my
wife and I made a written vow that we would devote a definite and
well-considered share of our income for religious and humanitarian
work, and that this should be a first charge, and that we should not
give to the Lord something when we had finished with everything else.
Up to that time I had never heard a sermon or an address upon
systematic giving; but I was much helped in my decision by reading a
small pamphlet entitled 'Uncle Ben's Bag' by the late Rev. John Ross.
This is nearly thirty-three years ago, but since that date we have
often increased the proportion, so that the original percentage is
now left far behind. As our income has increased, we have felt that
religious and humanitarian work had a greater claim upon us. The
distribution of the Lord's portion has been the greatest joy of my
life, and a real means of grace; it has kept me in constant touch
with the promotion of Christ-like work of all kinds; and anything I
have been able to do for our Church and humanity (including
profit-sharing with my workpeople for over twenty years) has grown
out of the vow that my wife and I made thirty-three years ago."

Seventeen years earlier in the address he gave as Vice-President of
the Conference (1892) he said: "The real, deep, lasting, and genuine
happiness of my own Christian life began about sixteen years ago,
when I was led to see how dishonouring to God it was to give money
for His cause in a spasmodic manner, and how much more satisfactory
and honouring to Him it must be to give help just in the proportion
He gave to me. Let me urge you to take Him into partnership and give
Him cheerfully and ungrudgingly His share. I started sixteen years
ago with setting aside ten per cent. of my total income (I make no
deduction for household expenses, or any other expenses) and several
years ago I increased it to fifteen per cent. At the present time I
am setting aside twenty per cent.--say one-fifth of my total gross
income for Christ-like work."

The cynic, who prides himself on never giving people credit for good
motives when he can discover bad ones, or who is perpetually
belittling noble conduct which rebukes his own mean and paltry
nature, will say that it was quite easy for Mr. Hartley to give away
large sums of money, for he was a very wealthy man. To this it is
enough to reply that the vow was deliberately made and scrupulously
kept when he was anything but wealthy. When he and his wife decided
to set aside ten per cent. of their gross income, before they touched
it for their own necessities, they had a family of six children and
an income of £5 a week. But that is not all. This was in the period
of acute struggle, when capital was urgently needed for his business.
And yet the resolution to give God the first share was strictly kept.

When we think of all that has come out of this resolution, which was
adopted in no impulsive mood under the stimulus of some sudden but
transient glow of feeling, but had been carefully pondered and calmly
and deliberately made, we cannot help feeling that that New Year's
Day was a red-letter day, and not in their lives only.




CHAPTER II

_The Manufacturer_


The removal to Aintree was determined not simply by the need for
expansion but in order to secure connexion with the railway. The new
works were opened in 1886, a large warehouse was built in 1891, a
second in 1899-90, a third in 1923, while a fourth is now in process
of construction. The factory is self-contained in every respect, and
every trade that is necessary is represented in it such as coopers,
joiners, box-makers. The jars are made at Melling or St. Helens. All
the water needed is pumped by machinery. The factory has its own
railway sidings with two locomotives which do all the shunting. In
the busy season six trains come in during the day and two hundred
waggons are handled. Mr. Hartley chartered his ships and had his own
bonded ware houses. Two thousand boxes are often made in a day; the
timber, sawn into the requisite sizes, is imported from Norway.
Twenty-eight thousand boxes had been sent out during the week before
my last visit. The works cover ten acres, and every part has been
carefully planned for its own special function and its relation to
the whole. It is interesting to record that one of the last additions
which Sir William made was intended to facilitate the motor loading.
A plot used as a garden was turned into a loading berth which has
made the loading of the motors much more easy and convenient for the
workers.

Before reference is made to the work carried on in the factory it
will be well to complete what has been said about Aintree by
reference to the London works. For a long time Mr. Hartley's trade
was almost entirely restricted to the North and the Mid lands, and he
did not seek to extend it into the South of England. But the demand
came, partly through his growing fame, partly through the refusal of
his devotees to be put off with anything but his products. It grew so
much that the necessity had to be faced either of ampler
accommodation at Aintree, or new premises in London or the
neighborhood. The latter solution was adopted. The buildings covered
two acres. There were 370 tan pits and a linoleum factory on the
site. These had to be dealt with, and at a later period, before the
war, a whole street of offices had to be pulled down. The factory was
much larger than the London County Council allows any single building
to be. To minimise the risk from fire no building is allowed to
contain more than 250,000 cubic feet. Mr. Hartley's new works
contained more than 1,500,000 cubic feet. They had accordingly to be
built in several sections connected by passages, but guarded from the
spread of fire by thick walls and fireproof doors. The factory was
designed to produce over four hundred tons a week which, with the six
hundred produced at Aintree, made a total of over a thousand tons a
week. Storage was provided for from 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 jars. It
was opened on June 25, 1901.

It was a great venture of faith. The cost was naturally enormous and
for several years no profit at all was made. On this I may quote a
letter he wrote to Mr. Meakin, a Primitive Methodist minister in
London on January 12, 1905.


"Yours of the 6th has had much more than usual consideration. We have
made no money in London yet. Our works are very large and the cost of
the freehold site and of the works plant, stock and working capital,
together with the excessive rates and taxes in London, make it
difficult to make any profit for a while. We shall make some profit I
hope after another year or two, because we are gradually getting the
ear of the London buyers, who will in time know the fine quality of
our stuff.

"After what I have said you will feel that I cannot help London work
as I would like, but it will be a pleasure to me to give the last
£100 of the present debt on the mission premises.

"I wish your work every success."


As this letter anticipated, the venture of faith was soon justified
and the business having established its reputation in the South moved
forward at ever-accelerating speed.

From this general statement about the buildings I pass on to the
process of manufacture, reserving some points for special mention in
connexion with the treatment of the workpeople. Believing that the
people would rapidly appreciate real excellence, he set before
himself from the first the highest standard of quality. In a letter
he wrote to a correspondent in 1906 he said:


"I trust that I may be pardoned for saying that in my own business I
have tried for forty years to make the best possible article, and to
turn it out in the best style, believing that high-class quality will
not only bring reputation, but dividend, and it is on this basis that
I venture to make my suggestion."


He kept a vigilant eye on the quality of the materials. When the
London works were opened he gave a description of the materials
employed, in which he said: "Our preserves and marmalade are all made
direct from the fresh fruit, some of which we grow on our own farms;
the remainder is either grown specially for us or carefully selected
from the London markets. All the raspberries and strawberries we use
are English; we never have any foreign whatever. This is not a recent
decision, but has been our invariable practice for thirty years. The
fruit is generally gathered and preserved on the same day, and filled
direct into the stoneware jars where it remains intact without
further disturbance until it is actually consumed. Perhaps I ought to
say that all the preserves and marmalade made at these works will be
from fresh fruit and lump sugar and no other ingredient whatever. We
do not use glass jars because our method is to fill the jam into the
jars immediately it is boiled, so that glass jars would not stand the
heat without constant breakages and most serious risk of pieces of
broken glass getting into the jam, therefore for twenty years we have
practically used only the highly glazed stoneware jars."

When the fruit was unloaded at the private railway siding it had to
be cleaned. Mr. Hartley was specially interested in machines for
cleaning fruit, and I can testify to their efficiency from actual
observation. The fruit was then placed in large pans and boiled by
steam. The steam was drawn away by electric fans, working at 650
revolutions a minute. The pans were suspended on sockets and were
therefore easy to tilt when the jam was ready to be poured out. It
was then poured into copper-lined troughs and wheeled away to be
transferred to the pots, which, after an effective cleansing, were
invariably inverted until the time came for them to be used. When
filled they were taken to the warehouse. In July, 1906, three eminent
physicians inspected the whole process of manufacture and made this
report.


"We are pleased to testify that we have gone through the whole
building and watched the processes of manufacture from beginning to
end, and I must say that we are exceedingly well pleased with the
entire arrangements. The fruit was most excellent; its condition
could not have been better, and everything used in the manufacture of
the jam was all that we could desire. We were very much impressed
with the sanitary arrangements and the perfect system of ventilation
which you have here. Everything was clean and fresh, the workers were
neat and tidy, and your whole system, apparently, is so devised that
there is the minimum handling of the fruit. Another point which
occurred to us was the thoroughness with which the fruit is
preserved. The great boiling heat in those cauldrons which we saw
would sterilize anything. It would be impossible for anything to come
out of the pans which was not perfectly sterile after being subjected
to that fierce heat."


It will be observed that the whole process was completed without
delay. It is not unusual in the manufacture of jam for the fruit to
be turned into pulp and kept in that state for a considerable time.
The reason for this is that the rush of fruit is so great (the
strawberry season, for example, lasts three weeks), that all
attention is paid to the preserving of it, the subsequent stages
being postponed till the workpeople can be spared to complete them.
The disadvantage of this is that fermentation may set in and
preservatives are accordingly introduced. On the method which was
followed in Mr. Hartley's factories the fruit was potted with all its
valuable qualities intact and fermentation could not be set up.
Moreover, nothing but fresh fruit and sugar was used.

In this connexion attention may be called to a letter he wrote on
August 7, 1906, to the Right Hon. John Burns, who was at the time in
charge of the Government department concerned, in which he said:


"I am satisfied that all the high-class jam manufacturers, the entire
body of public analysts, together with over 95 per cent. of the
medical profession are earnestly desirous that these recommendations
should be passed into Law.

"As the Law now stands jam manufacturers who make the best possible
article, without any preservative, are much handicapped by the
competition of inferior houses who still continue to use salicylic
acid. There should be a common basis for all manufacturers.

"The use of salicylic acid is prohibited in America and I believe in
several continental countries, and I think it ought to be either
allowed by Law and the quantity limited and defined, with its
presence named upon the label, or it should be absolutely
prohibited."


In accordance with his principle of examining everything himself, not
only did he exercise careful supervision over the quality of the
fruit and the sugar and the process of preserving, but on the day
after the fruit had been boiled he personally tested every sample of
every boiling of jam. He would be at the factory at six in the
morning and often examined a thousand jars. Nine jars were placed on
a stand at a time and brought to him. He touched the paper covering
of each in order to test the consistency of the jam. His great
delicacy of touch was a valuable asset. This occupied an hour and a
half, during which he was standing most of the time. The result of
his examination would determine his policy for the day and the
formula used. In this way the boilers started right at seven o'clock.
More scientific methods have since been introduced. As illustrating
his care of the fruit, it may be added that flags were used in place
of concrete wherever fruit had to be stored. The regulation in the
factories is that all fruit, if it has to be stored, even if only for
a few hours, has to be placed on flags, not concrete. The Aintree
manager, Mr. Rigsby, tells me that he has tested the matter for
himself with oranges and found that it makes 25 per cent. difference
in value in a week according as they are stored on concrete or flags,
the reason being the natural porosity of stone as against concrete.
The regulation suggests that Mr. Hartley must have been struck by the
fact that the old people always kept milk on flags and was thus led
to adopt the practice.

The quality of the product itself may be indicated by reference to an
editorial article in _Science Siftings_. It contains an analysis of
the jam and the editor adds: "Both the bottled fruit and the jams
under the most rigorous scrutiny proved to be equally beyond
reproach."

There was no detail in connexion either with the business or the
workers that he was not himself fully-prepared to discuss, and he
expected his managers and his secretaries to be equally ready.

The correspondence was naturally very large, and he was usually free
for letters after breakfast. The letters were arranged in a certain
order--the business letters first and the more important of these on
the top. He dictated his replies, and while he was not naturally a
ready public speaker he had remarkable facility in dictation. His
language was good and his thought unfolded in regular form. He never
took a holiday, except it was on the Continent, without being
accompanied by a secretary for purposes of the business. Towards the
end of the last century he had an attack of rheumatic fever in the
South of France and, to the vexation of the doctor, his confidential
secretary used to go to his bedroom for work. Although he was so ill
and suffering so acutely he issued his own bulletin.

As the business grew to enormous proportions much care had to be
taken in the financing of it. As he was far too good a business man
to leave a large amount of capital standing idle so that it might be
ready for use in the business season, it was necessary for him to
have a very large overdraft at the bank during this period of the
year, which would be reduced till it was wiped out as the payments
for his goods came in. Of course when new works or warehouses were
erected the capital expenditure was enormous and might involve a
prolonged overdraft. For example, there is an interesting entry in a
diary on January 27, 1890, to the effect that his banking account was
that day in credit and he had given notice that he should not require
any overdraft for some time to come, if at all. Then he adds: "I have
been looking forward to this day for 3-1/2 years since I built the
Aintree works, and am much pleased to see it." A letter he wrote on
September 15, 1903, two years after the London works were opened, may
be quoted appropriately at this point:


"I regret that I cannot send you any more money as I owe my bankers
to-day £106,000. My business in Liverpool and London is very large
and takes an enormous sum of money. I consecrate a definite and
liberal portion of my total income for Christlike work and use the
money as a steward, and although I owe my bankers £106,000 I need not
owe them that large sum if I was content with a smaller business, or
if I had not built the new works in London, and I cannot allow
humanitarian work to suffer until I pay the bank off. I must serve
the Lord every day to the best of my ability."


I must touch elsewhere on the difficulties created by the war and
conditions after the war, but I may quote at this point from a letter
he wrote to me on March 23, 1920.


"Money is very scarce, and the Banks are very tight and have more or
less considerable objection to lend money even for good business
purposes, and now that sugar, fruit and everything we use is three or
four times as dear as it was in pre-war times, it takes an immense
amount of extra capital, many hundreds of thousands to work the
business."




CHAPTER III

_The Employer and his Workpeople_


The reputation of an employer of labour largely stands or falls with
his treatment of those whom he employs. No munificent gifts to the
Churches, no lavish expenditure on philanthropy, can atone for
failure here. It is therefore vital to ascertain how Mr. Hartley
stood this test. Our answer may start from a statement of his own. At
a Young Men's Class a paper was read in which it was stated that he
paid wages to some of his female employees of such a character that
in order to make a living no option was left them but to lead immoral
lives, Mr. Hartley was naturally both distressed and indignant at a
statement so criminally reckless and so spitefully untrue. His reply
was as follows:

"1. I pay from 20 per cent. to 40 per cent. more for female labour
than the general payment by my competitors or others in Liverpool and
neighbourhood.

"2. In July, 1903, I voluntarily increased the wages of all my
workpeople both male and female. I had not a single complaint from
any person, but being desirous to crush selfishness in some measure,
I voluntarily increased the wages, and this cost me at the rate of
£2,000 a year. This is the third time that I have made a voluntary
increase in the past ten or twelve years.

"3. I have practised profit-sharing for seventeen years. The total
amount distributed from the beginning up to last January was over
£37,000, and all my people get a share of the profits, both men and
women.

"4. I provide a fully qualified medical man who has resided in
Aintree more than ten years, to attend upon all my workpeople free.
There is no club and no charge is made. I pay the doctor an annual
fee for his services.

"5. I have a large number of superior houses in the village with
exceedingly low rents, the largest proportion of them being 3s. 6d.
and 4s. 6d. per week, which includes rates, taxes and water.

"6. My reputation in Aintree and Liverpool as a generous employer is
so great that every year in July when our fruit season comes round we
have such an enormous number of women desiring to work for us, a
thousand or more, that every year we have to employ a county police
officer for several weeks to keep order, so great is the desire of
the women to work for us, a large number of whom make application
season after season. This shows that the women are well pleased with
the conditions of their employment."


The gravity of the gross accusation to which Mr. Hartley made so
complete and so crushing a reply was enhanced by the fact that owing
to the character of the business the preponderance of female over
male labour was so enormous. Profit-sharing must receive separate
attention. But some of the other points mentioned in his reply will
bear further elucidation; and in addition special attention must be
directed to the conditions under which the work of the factory was
done.

As in other cases, so in his relations with his work people, his
conduct was controlled by the Golden Rule. Speaking to an interviewer
in 1898, he said: "I have always had the happiest relations with my
people. If you ask me how it is to be accounted for, I can only say
that it has been my aim from the first to do to them as I would wish
to be done by. Three times within recent years the wages have been
advanced unasked, and the last advance cost me £1,400 a year."

He felt that their interests were identical with his own and that
they had a claim to share in the prosperity of the business. He was
constantly on the alert to devise schemes for their welfare and to
make the conditions of their work easier. One of his favourite maxims
was that the work should be made attractive to the worker. In view of
the great preponderance of female labour, the number of women and
girls being in proportion to the men and boys as four to one, it was
natural that special attention should be paid to the lightening of
physical strain. If a piece of work seemed to be at all difficult he
would say: "What can be done to take the hardness out of this job?
Never mind the cost." Many hundreds of pounds were frequently spent
in saving labour, when the expenditure brought no financial return.
His altruistic policy was expressed in the pithy maxim, "Leave the
money in the bones of the worker." Graduated slopes with very easy
gradients were provided for the girls to push the trucks of which
there are 800 in the Aintree factory. Miniature tram lines were laid
down to facilitate the work. There are six miles of these tram lines
in the factory and one mile in the new warehouse. On one occasion
some tram trucks were sent and were found to be unduly heavy. He saw
them work, he tried them himself and said, "Scrap them." In the
specification for the new trucks roller bearings were ordered to make
them run as easily as possible. Nor did the work of the men go
without similar attention. In the early days the wheeling of the
sugar was an arduous task; now in both factories ingenious machinery
has been installed to save this labour. After the opening of the
London works the _Croydon Chronicle_ made a comment which may be
fitly quoted here.


"Of course the requirements of modern life are such that a great deal
of work has to be done by machinery; but, to the credit of Mr.
Hartley be it said, he has seen that his men have become the masters
of the machines instead of their slaves, and thus has made of
industrialism a blessing and not, what it is in many cases, an
unmitigated curse."


The best proof of the excellence of the conditions under which the
women and girls work was afforded by an inspection carried through by
women who would have been very competent to detect any oppressive
treatment or unduly severe conditions of labour. Miss Gertrude
Tuckwell, who was at the time honorary secretary of the Industrial
Law Committee, lectured in Liverpool on sweating and insanitary
workrooms. She had specially in mind certain small London laundries,
but as she mentioned jam factories and the lecture was delivered in
Liverpool, Mr. Hartley felt it necessary to take up the matter. He
invited Mrs. Allan Bright, who presided at the lecture, to inspect
the Aintree works, accompanied by Miss Tuckwell or anyone else, and
assured them that they would have the opportunity of asking any
questions they wished from any of the female workers. As Miss
Tuckwell had then left for a visit to Spain, Mrs. Bright was
accompanied by Miss Forman. They thoroughly inspected all the female
workrooms. They watched the various processes in actual operation,
they stepped into the pits in which the girls stand when they are
filling the jam pots to save stooping and to relieve the feet from
fatigue. They cross-questioned the women and girls in the works and
at the surgery. They explored the village with its model dwellings
and its bowling green, and carefully examined a cottage, the weekly
rental of which with rates, taxes and water was only 2s. 6d. Mrs.
Bright's own statement at the close of the inspection may be given in
her own words: "With regard to Mr. Hartley's factory, everything here
is most perfect. I regret that the factory is not still larger so
that even more hands could be employed under such excellent sanitary
conditions. Miss Forman and I asked the many women and girls with
whom we conversed whether there were any fines, and we were informed,
in every case, that no fines were known. One woman, with nearly
twenty years' service, said she had never heard of any such thing as
fines at this factory. We asked the patients at the surgery, and they
replied to the same effect. We did not see any ground for supposing
that there is heavy weight-lifting by females. The ventilation of the
factory is admirable. We saw the electric fans working, and were
struck with the extremely effective ventilation and the drawing off
of the steam."

On several occasions Mr. Hartley took the opportunity afforded by his
address at the Profit-Sharing to encourage his workpeople to come to
him if they were in any trouble--"and undoubtedly," he said, "many
are often in distress from various causes"--and he would always be
pleased to do his best to help them. But he made the qualification
that he would not on any consideration help anyone who spent his
money in drink, because he had no sympathy with drink in any shape or
form. The plan which he adopted for allocating the money to be
distributed at the Profit-Sharing necessitated personal knowledge of
the workers. His own words are worth quoting on this point: "This
means that I must be in personal touch with practically every one of
my workpeople, and I am sure it works well. They all feel that they
are not lost in the size of the business but are in direct contact
with me, and they like this, while, of course, it stimulates them to
do their best. There is nothing like it for cementing good feeling
between employer and employed, and I really think it would be better
for both parties if the system were generally adopted."

In this connexion it may be added that a Benevolent Fund was started
at the works and it was managed by a committee elected by those
employed in the business. On one occasion (May 21, 1894) Mr. Hartley
placed £1,000 to the credit of this fund. In addition to the
engagement of a doctor to attend upon all the workpeople free he also
provided a trained nurse for the same purpose. One year he took all
his employees who were over eighteen years of age for a five days'
trip to the Glasgow Exhibition and a long sail to the Isle of Arran.
He paid them their full wages during the holiday and defrayed their
travelling, hotel and exhibition expenses.

At the opening of the year 1909 Sir William announced at the annual
profit-sharing an important new departure. He had for some years, he
said, been thinking of establishing a pension fund for his
workpeople. He had long felt that workers of good character who had
rendered long and excellent service ought to receive such
recognition. He would have spoken to them on the subject at least two
or three years earlier but felt that he must wait until the
Government bill had been settled. He was now satisfied that this need
not interfere with the scheme he had in his mind but would on the
contrary be of assistance to it. His own earnest desire and endeavour
would be so to shape it that no deserving man or woman who had spent
the best of his days in their service and lived a consistent,
respectable, and thrifty life need be worried as to their means of
livelihood in their declining days. No absolute age limit would be
fixed, but all would be eligible, both men and women, whether their
need arose from old age, accident or infirmity, provided they met the
conditions named. He desired them all to have savings of their own so
far as circumstances permitted and this would be considered no
barrier to their receiving a pension or reason for lessening the
amount, but rather the reverse. To give the pension fund what he
considered to be a fair and moderate start he had decided to transfer
to it from that night the sum of £5,000. No contributions would be
asked from the workpeople; it would therefore be free from actuarial
calculations; and since he proposed to contribute the whole himself
no complications could arise. When the £5,000 was used up, the fund
would naturally come to an end; but there was at present no serious
demand upon it and in case of need both principal and interest could
be exhausted, so it would last for a considerable time. The
administration would be in the hands of trustees appointed by himself
well-known to them and trusted by all. The granting, withholding or
continuing of pensions would be at their absolute discretion. The
trustees would act with him during his life and would continue to act
after his death. His view was that, speaking generally, workpeople
should contribute to a pension fund where such a fund was in
existence; but he had adopted a non-contributory scheme so as to
avoid actuarial calculations. He expressed the hope of increasing the
sum in future years.

In 1910 he added £500, and £1,000 in 1911. At the profit-sharing of
1915 the fund had been raised to £11,119. At that gathering he
announced that he had executed a document putting the fund into legal
form, thus making it absolutely certain that, whatever happened, the
money could be used for pensions alone. In March, 1916, soon after he
had celebrated his seventieth birthday, he explained that when the
War Loan was issued in July, 1915, he invested in it the sum at which
the Pension Fund then stood, £11,200. On his seventieth birthday he
decided to put this fund on a satisfactory basis; he therefore
transferred £10,000 of his own War Loan investment to the fund, which
thus stood at £21,200. He thought that he would not have to pay
anything more to it as he believed that it was now adequate for all
purposes. Moreover, he had transferred the whole of the amount from
his own name into the names of trustees. He pointed out that the
money he had contributed to the London and Liverpool hospitals, along
with that given to the Pension Fund, had exhausted the whole of his
War Loan investment amounting to £30,000.


Employers are now compelled to provide dining accommodation for
workers who cannot get home in the middle of the day. Here also Mr.
Hartley was a pioneer. He was one of the first, probably the first,
to provide a dining-room for his workers. The men and women have
separate accommodation. The dining-hall for the women measures 82
feet by 42 feet. The men's dining-room is naturally much smaller; it
measures 36 feet by 17 feet. In these rooms 750 can dine at once.
They are on the ground floor together with the stores, pantries, etc.
The provision for cooking, which includes a large bakery, is on a
very elaborate scale since, in the height of the season, 1,000 to
1,500 dinners have to be prepared every day. As the rooms are in use
for several hours in the day and during this time 3,000 to 4,000
meals are served, the question of ventilation is of great importance.
Mr. Hartley wished the party that dined at one o'clock to have the
benefit of an atmosphere as good as the party that dined at twelve.
Immense trouble had been taken to secure the best system, and Mr.
Hartley, in company with the architect, visited a considerable number
of buildings, so as to secure not only the best general system but to
avoid regrettable mistakes in detail. The atmosphere can be renewed,
if necessary, thirteen times in an hour, and it is purified before it
is forced into the rooms and warmed in cold weather to whatever
temperature is required. I was present when the dining-hall was
opened and had personal opportunity of observing the efficiency of
the system, and indeed have an entertaining recollection that some
who were not used to over-much fresh air found the system, if
anything, too efficient. At the close of the tea and the speeches Mr.
Hartley announced that the temperature of the room was only one
degree higher than when the room was empty. It was his desire that
every thing in the cooking department should be both nice and cheap.
Accordingly, while all arrangements were made that the food should be
as well prepared as possible, the meals were provided at cost price,
since he would make no profit out of them. It should be added that
although this dining-room was erected several years after the Aintree
works were opened, Mr. Hartley had not waited so long before
providing for the needs of his work people. But the original
dining-hall had proved too small and the accommodation generally had
been found insufficient.

Close to the works Mr. Hartley also erected a model village. Rental
including rates, taxes and water was from 2s. 6d. a week. A
five-roomed cottage was let for 3s. 6d. a week. He also built a
number of better houses to be sold at cost price to working men, who
might include others than his own workpeople. His method was to
charge 3-3/4 per cent. on the amount of the purchase money and for
part of the principal to be paid off each month, the repayment being
complete within a period of twenty years. The purchaser could pay it
off in a shorter period if he so desired. So far back as his early
Aintree period Mr. Hartley was keenly interested in the question of
housing which has now become so acute. He had a very good opinion of
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's Housing Act and made suggestions to him when
it was being prepared. He wished that it could be more generally
adopted. The cottages for the workpeople were provided with gardens,
the streets were wide, there was a central bowling green and a field
for football and hockey. At the rear he preserved a passage of 12
feet. This was a point in which he was interested when he was a
member of the Liverpool City Council. He fought strenuously to secure
the improvement in the city regulations by which a minimum passage of
9 feet was required.

His system of Profit-Sharing also illustrates his relations with his
workpeople, but it is best reserved for separate description. A
further point, however, should be mentioned here. One of the great
difficulties which arose out of the nature of the work was that of
finding employment for the full number of workpeople in the slack
season when no fruit could be obtained. The number of women and girls
employed accordingly varied at Aintree from about 600 to 2,000. This
was necessitated by the fact that the process of jam-making was
completed at one time and not, as in many factories, left incomplete
in the busy season for completion in the slack period. Marmalade, of
course, could be made in the winter, but here again the quality of
the product determined the date. He would have been willing to open
his marmalade season some weeks before Christmas but he felt
compelled to adhere to the use of Seville oranges alone, and as these
are grown near the coast and on high ground the fruit did not reach
him till about December 20.

He maintained very cordial relations with his staff. He picked his
own men and trained them in his own methods. He would provide
necessary technical training also. Since Chemistry was an essential
factor in the business he would give a manager a full Chemistry
course at his own expense. He exercised such an attraction on members
of his staff that it was a pleasure for them to do what they could
for him. He knew how to get the best out of every man. Once, after an
additional boiler had been built in thirteen weeks, he said to one of
his managers, "I want you a minute." To show his appreciation of the
way in which the work had been done he had some heaps of sovereigns
on the table. He put one of the heaps, containing £50, into an
envelope, handed it to the manager and slipped away before he had the
opportunity to thank him.

At the profit-sharing, January, 1910, he acknowledged a presentation
given to his wife and himself at Christmas, On his arrival home from
the office on Christmas Eve he found a large and beautiful silver
table-centre accompanied by an illuminated address. This read:


  "Dear Sir William and Lady Hartley,--

"The officials, travellers, office staff, and works' employees of the
Aintree establishment ask your acceptance of this piece of plate in
acknowledgment of much kindness received by them during many years,
and unite in sending you and your family the season's greetings,
praying that you may have continued health and prosperity.

  "Aintree, _Christmas_, 1909."


He expressed his own and Lady Hartley's appreciation of their
kindness and their admiration for the artistic design but, more than
all, their thanks for such a token of goodwill. He added that it was
always a pleasure to do anything he could for their welfare, and it
was a source of much gratification to himself and his family to know
that for a number of years they had been able to work together in
that satisfactory manner.

A few words may be appropriately added at this point on his relation
with those from whom he purchased his fruit. His usual principle was
to determine the price himself after the fruit had been delivered.
One grower who felt that this was "not business" insisted on the
price being fixed beforehand. Mr. Hartley acquiesced; but the price
was much less than he would have actually given had the matter been
left to his discretion. I remember how more than thirty years ago a
friend of my own was talking to a Herefordshire fruit grower who
supplied Mr. Hartley with strawberries. Quite unaware that my friend
knew something of Mr. Hartley in another connexion, he told him that
he had such confidence in him that he left the fixing of the price
entirely to him and found it altogether satisfactory. Another friend
tells me that on one occasion Mr. Hartley had engaged to purchase
black currants at a fixed price. It turned out that there was a great
scarcity that season, but this man fortunately had a very good crop.
Mr. Hartley paid him the market price, which was far higher than that
which had been agreed upon.

A much more remarkable example has been communicated to me by the
Rev. J. T. Barkby. He was dining one night at the National Liberal
Club with a number of friends. Sir Henry Holloway said to him: "I
heard a lovely story about your father-in-law a little while ago. I
was up in Scotland and was in the company of a cultured gentleman who
was a fruit farmer. I asked him what he did with his fruit and he
said, 'I send all of it to Sir William Hartley, and I shall not send
any to anyone else.' 'That is a great thing to say,' I replied. 'Yes,
and I mean it,' the farmer said, 'and if you had experienced at the
hands of another the kindness that Sir William has shown me, you
would say the same. Last season was a bad season. I had arranged with
Sir William about the price as usual and had sent on my stuff to him.
Unfortunately the farms produced much less than was expected. There
was a shortage of fruit and the price went up, so that I was losing
heavily. Without my saying a word to Sir William I one day received a
letter from him in which he said, "I am sure you must be losing money
on the fruit you are sending to me; tell me frankly the position." I
wrote and acknowledged the receipt of his letter saying how good he
was to me and at the same time laying before him the facts of the
situation. He replied, saying how sorry he was for me, and quite
spontaneously sent on a cheque for a large sum of money to help to
cover my deficiency. Do you wonder that I say what I do in relation
to sending to Sir William?'" Mr. Barkby tells me that he believes the
cheque sent by Sir William was for some thousands of pounds. He wrote
to Sir William, thinking that the story would cheer him in his
illness, but the letter reached his house on the morning of the day
on which he had passed away.

Although it is not strictly relevant to our present topic this may be
the most convenient place in which to relate a similar incident which
Mr. Barkby has communicated to me. In conjunction with Mr. John
Bunting, Sir William had purchased several mills in Oldham. These
mills had been partially erected in the time of prosperity by some
who were engaged in different businesses, for example as
machine-makers, engineers, boiler-makers, with a view to getting
business and furnishing the mills with such things as they made. They
took part of the cost of things in shares, only partially paid up.
Trade became bad; they were unable to finish the mills and were
called upon to pay up much of their share capital. Some of them were
unable to do this and had to compound with their creditors. Sir
William and Mr. Bunting acquired the mills at a public auction. Trade
improved and the mills made money. Sir William said to Mr. Barkby
that he felt it was not right for him to be making money out of these
mills while some of the men who had built them had lost their all.
One week he sent for one of the men, a boiler-maker or engineer, who
came with not the slightest idea of Sir William's reason in sending
for him. Sir William told him that he did not feel that he could
pocket all this money out of the mills whilst his visitor had lost so
much. To his bewilderment and overwhelming gratitude Sir William gave
him a cheque for a thousand pounds. Mr. Barkby adds that he believes
that some time later Sir William gave him another thousand pounds. He
says that these incidents are only typical of what Sir William was
doing for many years. I am glad to have the opportunity of relating
them--they were quite unknown to me--since Mr. Barkby as Sir
William's son-in-law and his minister in Southport for twelve years
had exceptional opportunities of knowing what the giver himself would
have been the last to publish abroad.

Sir William once told me that some of his foreign growers had
suffered heavily owing to some natural catastrophe and that he was
sending them a considerable sum of money to alleviate their disaster.
And it is worth while to quote a letter which he sent to me in 1907
which is incidentally a striking revelation of the man. The condition
of things described created great difficulties for himself, but it is
not on these that he dwells. He wrote.


"Up to the present we have had a most anxious and pessimistic season
and all my strawberry growers are exceedingly depressed. The
strawberries are there, but the sun is not there, therefore they only
ripen at about one-sixth the usual speed, and in a word the weather
is so cold, wet and sunless, that the strawberry crop is now certain
to be well below the average--indeed only the very best of the fruit
can survive the weather conditions. Unless there is an almost
immediate change in the weather the crop will be nearly ruined, which
means that my growers can hardly survive the financial shock. I name
all this to show the great difficulties under which my strawberry
growers are working; in a word, every heart knows its own
bitterness."


I have left to the last perhaps the most crucial of all the tests,
the rate of wages. On this it will be enough, in addition to what has
been already said, to select two of his utterances, each delivered on
the occasion of his profit-sharing. Speaking at the close of 1897 he
pointed out that most of his workpeople were engaged in ordinary
unskilled duties. He had always paid the full rate of wages current
in Liverpool, and indeed much more, as he had voluntarily advanced
the rate of wages, especially for women, during the last seven years.
The last advance which had been made on June 22, the day of Queen
Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, had cost £1,400 a year. Such was his
desire for his workpeople to be properly paid that if it could be
shown to him that in any department of his works his wages were not
as high or higher than in the works of his Liverpool competitors, he
would not only be willing, but pleased, to increase such wages
immediately.

Speaking at the London profit-sharing fourteen years later, in
January, 1912, he said: "We have also gone carefully over the duties
and the wages of each person in our employ. After considering the
merit and the work of each of you we have decided to voluntarily
advance the wages of 277 of our work people. It is not only our duty,
but it is a real pleasure to endeavour to crush selfishness and to
voluntarily advance your wages without being asked to do so. The
advance includes most of the permanent day workers, and we have
endeavoured to do justice to you all. We have desired especially to
watch the interests of our women workers. We looked into your wages
carefully at the last profit-sharing, so that the advance you will
receive at the next pay day will be over and above the increases that
were made a year ago."




CHAPTER IV

_Profit-Sharing_


Among the best-known features of Mr. Hartley's business was his
system of profit-sharing. He saw the account of a Frenchman who had
adopted the system, and this first set him thinking on the subject.
But in his own opinion he would never have adopted the practice but
for the training he had given himself in systematic and proportionate
giving. The Rev. George Trusler has told me that he said to him that
the greatest battle of the kind which he had fought turned on the
question whether he should introduce profit-sharing into his
business. He added: "No one asked for it, no one expected it, no one
had a claim upon it, it might be resented by some in the trade. I
paid a little more than others for the work done, but I felt it my
duty and privilege and shall continue to do it."

Before I describe his method it will be well to indicate his views on
co-partnership. He dealt with the subject most fully in an address he
delivered in 1921.


Co-partnership, he said, was an excellent idea. It was strongly
recommended by thousands of the best people in the country.
Theoretically it was perfect. He was afraid, however, it would not
work out so well in their special case. He had given much thought to
it, and his view was that if there was co-partnership between his
workpeople and himself it would be worse for the workpeople. He did
not think there was a single man or woman in his employ who would get
the same financial benefit under co-partnership as they now did in
their present liberal system of profit-sharing. Suppose he invited
his people to invest their savings in the Aintree business, he did
not believe that the most thrifty, the most economical, and the most
saving among them could invest as much money as would bring them in
more than half the amount in dividends as they now got in
profit-sharing, because the total capital required would be so very
large compared with the small amount that each of their workpeople
would be able to put in. Even at the best in their case, there could
only be a limited co-partnership because of the extra casual labour
unfortunately needed in each fruit season. In addition to these there
was the large preponderance of female workers, a large number of whom
could not stay long enough in their employ to enter upon a
co-partnership scheme. At the same time he repeated that there was
nothing but good to be said about co-partnership between masters and
men, and he hoped it would spread far and wide.


In the same speech he quoted with warm approval what Sir Christopher
Furness said to the shipbuilders in his employ when he offered them
co-partnership. In this the speaker dwelt on the true conception of
partnership and the principles he expounded were warmly endorsed by
Sir William.

A quotation of what he said to a journalist in January, 1909, will
show that his views at this date were identical with those he
expressed twelve years later.


"Theoretically co-partnership is best, but in practice I do not think
I am exaggerating when I say that it would not work out anything like
so well for the employee as my system. Not even the most thrifty
could save enough money to put into the business to bring them in as
dividend what they now get as their share of the profits. As it works
out, of course, my method is a sort of co-partnership, only the
capital the employee puts in is not money but energy, and he gets
rewarded according to the amount of energy he invests."


He was quite ready to admit that his method might not be universally
suitable. When the question was put to him whether it would be
possible to follow it in other business concerns he replied: "That is
a difficult question to answer. I understand my own business, but
cannot pretend to be as well acquainted with other people's. The
system I adopt could not be applied in every case; but the principle
should be capable of application in most business concerns. The
spirit of profit-sharing is to my mind the great thing."

He dissented from the practice which was adopted by most firms which
practised profit-sharing. Nearly all of them reserved one-half or
two-thirds of the money, if not the whole, and invested it either in
a bank or in the firm itself or in some other way so that it might be
useful to the owners in time of need. He had considered the matter
from time to time and always reached the conclusion that it was
better to give the money at once to the workers and depend upon their
discretion for making the best use of it. He lamented, however, that
so few firms adopted the system. He had many inquiries from other
employers of labour requesting him to furnish particulars on the
subject. Almost invariably the question was asked if profit-sharing
paid. His reply was always that he did not look closely into that,
but it was evident that if the profit was less then the
profit-sharing would also be less. He simply asked himself was it
right, was he doing as he would like to be done by. Having settled
this, he began it and continued it. It is perhaps no cause for
surprise that the correspondence usually terminated at this point. In
an interview he gave in 1898 he said: "Profit-sharing is over and
above a fair and just wage, and is given, not because I think it pays
commercially--for I never ask myself that question--but because it
seems to me right and doing as I would be done by." Ten years later
he expressed himself much more definitely on this point. In reply to
a representative of the _Westminster Gazette_ he said that the system
had justified all his hopes. He added: "Some twenty years ago I had
to take the idea entirely upon trust, but since then it has proved
such a success that I may say now that I believe it to be in all
respects commercially sound and humanitarian."

He always drew a sharp distinction between profit-sharing and the
payment of wages. It was natural that the people who reveal their own
characters in the maxim that there is no such thing as disinterested
generosity and assume that wherever it seems to be displayed there
must be a trick somewhere, asserted that what was distributed at the
profit-sharing had previously been saved out of wages. It has already
been shown that this was entirely untrue, that the standard rate of
wages was not only maintained but exceeded, and that voluntary
advances had again and again been made. There was no legal claim to
any share in the profits nor any business tradition or convention to
create a legitimate expectation. His conviction from the outset of
his career had been that the interests of employer and employed were
mutual and not antagonistic. Of this profit-sharing was an
expression. He said on one of the occasions when the money was
distributed: "I cannot carry on the business without your
co-operation, and I venture to think that in my capacity as your
employer I render some service to you. Whatever pleasure it gives you
to receive the profit-sharing, I can say with perfect sincerity that
it gives me equal pleasure to hand it to you."

His method was as follows. After each yearly stocktaking he set aside
the sum to be allocated for the purpose. The proportion of the total
profit given to the workpeople steadily increased as his ideas
broadened; so that, as he said at the profit-sharing in 1897, an
amount which would have been impossible at the first had now become
comparatively easy. The simplest and most obvious method would have
been to base the amount paid to individuals upon the wages that they
earned. The whole matter could then have been one of calculation to
be carried through by the clerks. The method actually adopted was far
more laborious and it cost the management, and above all, the head of
the business, prolonged and anxious consideration. In the individual
allocation the amount of wages received was, of course, taken into
account. But it was modified by the principle that those should
receive the largest share who in his opinion had put the most
thought, heart, and conscience into their work. This, of course,
involved constant observation throughout the year and delicate
discrimination. He conferred with the heads of departments on the
case of each individual. When he had secured their opinion as to the
amount of energy and interest displayed he went over the names
himself. And that not once only but several times. Not only did he go
personally into every individual case but he entered every amount in
his own hand. I may at this point quote two letters. On January 8,
1906, he said in a letter to the Rev. R. Blair: "I was tired
yesterday and I am tired this morning, and on Saturday I could not
bear to get up until five o'clock, and I was dictating my letters in
bed across at Inglewood. Last week I had long and anxious work
preparing for the profit-sharing, which takes a great deal to do; to
go through all the names of our people and allot to each with
accuracy and almost religious strictness the amount is really too big
a job for me in addition to my ordinary daily duties."

The other letter he sent to me on March 28, 1919, explaining that he
could not attend a meeting of the Methodist Union Committee on that
day. It should be remembered that Sir William had completed his
seventy-third year at this time.


"It is my thirtieth Annual Profit-sharing on Saturday next, and I
could not possibly attend the Committee and also prepare the
profit-sharing details, which is a very big job for me. Having the
claims of about 800 persons to assess personally it takes hours and
days of work to do it."


Exacting though the work was from the first, it was greatly increased
when the London business had sufficiently developed to make a profit
and justify a profit-sharing. Precisely the same method was followed
here as at Aintree, though naturally he had not the opportunity of
constant observation such as he enjoyed at Aintree. He felt that his
method had the advantage that it involved personal contact between
the employer and the employed which helped the workpeople to feel
that they were counted as personalities in whom a human interest was
taken and not as mere parts of a complex inhuman machine.

The annual profit-sharing was always an interesting occasion. The
distribution was naturally the core of the proceedings; but music was
always provided and there were speeches. The Chairman was often a man
eminent in civic or national life whose speech was worthy of the
occasion. The speech delivered by the head of the business was always
an interesting feature of the ceremony. Something would be said in it
of the system itself, the motives behind it, its influence in
cementing friendly relations between employer and employed. He would
urge the recipients to use the money wisely, sometimes putting in a
plea that none of it should be spent on intoxicants or used for
gambling. He would announce new developments which affected the
interests of the workpeople. Occasionally he would offer his opinion
on larger issues. Frequently he would express the conviction that
even if voluntary profit-sharing was not a solution for all labour
problems, the spirit of it would put an end to the conflicts between
labour and capital. Nor would he shrink from touching on the
religious root of his attitude and conduct in this matter. I may
illustrate this from his address at the profit-sharing of December,
1894.


"I do not say that voluntary profit-sharing such as you will see
to-day is a solution for all labour problems, neither do I claim for
myself any special credit. I simply try in some measure to carry out
the teaching of Jesus Christ. This much I perhaps may be allowed to
say, that, if any persons are inclined to criticize my plan
adversely, I would ask them to give it a trial in their own business
and with their own employees; and they will find that by the time
that they have reached the point of distributing the money they will
have had hundreds of struggles with their natural selfishness."


He would also urge the recipients to put what energy they could into
the business. Speaking at the London profit-sharing in January, 1912,
he said: "I earnestly appeal to every one of you who receive
profit-sharing to-day to put your whole heart into the business.
There is no doubt that every one of us can put some initiative and
originality into our work and in that way do something to help to
make a profit. This will react on the profit-sharing from year to
year. It took some years for our excellent quality to become known.
The London public now know and appreciate our goods."

At the Aintree profit-sharing he said: "We have now reached our
thirtieth distribution and can claim that profit-sharing has worked
well with us. Our interests are mutual; I cannot get on without your
assistance and I trust that I render some service to you. I want to
appeal to you to do your best in the business interest. Be punctual
at your work, and see that there is no waste of time or material
either on your own part or on the part of others. Don't need
supervision, but use your best efforts to make a profit. We have
great competition and very properly the house that makes the best
article at the most reasonable price should win. I want us to be that
house. I rely on your co-operation."

Sir Edward Russell, the editor of the _Liverpool Daily Post_, more
than once took the chair, and it will be fitting to add an extract
from his speech at the gathering in January, 1912.


That profit-sharing alone--if they regarded the figures of it--was a
great climax of generosity, and a continued climax of generosity from
year to year. There was again the pension fund, which seemed to be
Sir William's proposition, entirely generous on his part, and without
doubt a great benefaction to their particular community. Then they
were reminded of their own obligations to the community in which they
lived by the gifts they made to the hospitals. Sir William had told
them that the spirit of that profit-sharing was the absolute cure for
labour evils. That he entirely agreed with. It was a spirit of mutual
understanding. It was the spirit of each party placing itself in such
a position as to take the point of view of the other.


It only remains to state that the total amount distributed in
profit-sharings at Aintree and London up to the time of Sir William's
death was £145,000. In the three years which have passed since his
death an additional £27,000 has been distributed, making a total of
£172,000 up to the end of 1924.




CHAPTER V

_Systematic and Proportionate Giving_


The root of Mr. Hartley's amazing career of philanthropy and support
of Christian work was found by himself in the vow made on New Year's
Day, 1877, to which reference has already been made. When the
proportion was determined, that amount of his gross income was set
apart, as he once put it, not in his head but in his books. He spoke
on the subject again and again, and in view of the place it filled in
his thought and the controlling influence it had in his life I have
thought it well to quote his own utterances with exceptional
fullness. But I may first summarize the grounds on which he based the
necessity of systematic and proportionate giving. Only so, he urged,
can we really know what we are giving and save ourselves from fond
delusions as to our liberality. Many people imagine themselves to be
far more generous in their gifts than they really are. For want of
such a principle members of religious communions normally give no
more than is extracted from them by the financial machinery of their
Church. This method alone will enable us to solve successfully the
grave financial difficulties which constantly hamper our Church work.
But its reaction on character and religious experience is of the
highest value. He felt that business men in particular needed some
avenue of escape from the whole atmosphere of commercialism, and
systematic giving provided it. It was the most effective instrument
for securing the victory of the higher over the lower self. He said:
"Nothing raises money to a higher plane and gives it a higher
interest than systematic giving. I sit on my money; I don't let it
sit on me. To distribute my money is a harder and more anxious task
than making it." He once said to me when he had experienced very
heavy losses that he was not troubled by them. "No one holds his
money with a lighter hand than I do." He found in systematic giving
the supreme means of grace, and believed that only in this way could
the deepest joy in co-operation with God be attained. He never
concealed from himself or from others the fact that his principle
cost him hard struggles. The gift for making money was not by any
means easily reconciled with the impulse to give it away. His
commercial instincts would have led him not only to create the wealth
but to hold it fast. Speaking at the end of 1897, with twenty-one
years' experience of systematic giving behind him, he said that it
had taught him to regard money as a talent to be used in some degree
for the good of others--not as a beautiful theory only, but in the
actual business of life. To serve humanity as they should they ought
to be ready to give up some portion of what they would naturally like
to keep. It was not easy to do that. On the contrary, it was
extremely difficult. The lower self at once asserted its claim, and
said, "I have it, and it is mine." But the higher self, if it was in
full sympathy with the teaching of Jesus Christ, would rise above the
temptation and be ready in some reasonable degree to share with
others. That spirit could only find ample scope with the greatest
possible determination. He once said: "If a man has crushed his own
selfishness to any considerable degree, he has had something to do."

The obstinate resistance of the selfish nature he insisted upon many
times. But as a practical man he recognized that the acceptance, once
for all, of a guiding and inflexible principle protected him from the
wear and tear of constant debate as each new appeal was made to his
generosity. On this point he said: "If a man has to have a fight with
the devil over every half-crown or five-pound note he gives away, he
will often be worsted; he will imagine, too, that he is giving far
more than he really is.[*] With my system the struggle only comes
once a year and you know exactly where you are."

[*] Dr. J. H. Jowett made the same observation: "I have noticed that
some people assume they are very generous, but it is simply because
they have no system in their giving, and no record of their gifts."

But his experience was that the difficulty lessened as time went on.
Speaking, in 1898, of the consecration of a definite share of his
income to religious and philanthropic work he said: "This I conceive
to be one of the best checks to that natural selfishness which is
inherent in human nature. The man who resolutely carries out that
principle will find that as he grows in wealth his ideas broaden and
his liberality increases. Personally I find it easy comparatively to
give a sum annually which would have been impossible to me, even if
the money had been at my command, twenty years ago. This practice was
to me a sort of moral education, a culture of conscience, and enabled
me some years later to adopt my principle of profit-sharing."

Somewhat earlier he said: "Every succeeding year my ideas have
broadened, so that what would have been impossible at first is now
comparatively easy." What he felt to be the underlying principle was
confessed in these memorable words: "The adoption of an enlightened
policy is generally a gradual process, but the more we cultivate the
spirit of Jesus Christ, the easier the thing becomes; and what
appeared to us quite impossible at the beginning becomes not only
possible but absolutely a joy."

When he had occasion to speak of the unwillingness of wealthy people
to help good causes in a degree proportionate to their means, I have
heard him quote the maxim: "Much will have more." On May 14, 1903,
when he was ill with rheumatic gout, he wrote to Dr, F. B. Meyer who
had asked him to help in raising a fund, which he thought ought to
have been raised by rich London Free Churchmen. He told him that he
felt very sad at the request, which should have been unnecessary. He
added: "The fact is that unless men begin to give the Lord a share of
what they get when they are comparatively young, the money becomes
their master, and they are no happier for it, but much more stingy
and miserable."

He held strongly that, as the income grew, the percentage of the
money set aside for religious and philanthropic purposes should be
increased. He observed with distress that the tendency was frequently
in the other direction. If a man gave £40 out of an income of £400 he
was often inclined to feel that to give £400 out of £4,000 would be
very extravagant generosity. This would be because he contrasted the
gifts rather than the capacity to pay and the amount left when the
gifts had been subtracted. When these considerations were put in the
foreground it was obvious that a percentage, which was adequate for a
small income, might be quite inadequate when the income had become
much larger. He recognized, with rare humility, that there were poor
people who gave more than he did if measured by the qualitative
rather than the quantitative test. Few things touched him more deeply
than the sacrifices made by some of the very poor to help a worthy
cause. His percentage was altered several times during the course of
his career, and always to a higher level. Soon after I came to know
him he told me that it was only a short time since he had emerged
from his earlier business difficulties and that he had advanced
cautiously in raising the percentage. He was anxious not to be
compelled to recede from the highest point he had previously
attained. Beginning with 10 per cent., he went forward by gradual
stages till a third of his gross income was set aside as "the Lord's
money."

While the distribution of this money was the greatest joy of his life
it often cost him far more trouble and anxiety than the making of it.
The number of applications was enormous and since not a few were
marked "Confidential" the personal labour involved in dealing with
them was greatly increased, especially when they were badly written
on flimsy paper and with poor ink. But much of the correspondence
dealt with trivial matters which ought never to have been permitted
to consume the time of so busy a man. Leaving these aside, there was
still a great mass of applications which deserved consideration. Many
were humanitarian in character and occasioned by sickness,
bereavement, poverty or disaster--distressing cases which appealed to
his sympathies and merited his help. Others were definitely religious
or ecclesiastical--the erection of new churches, reduction of Church
debts, assistance to needy societies or circuits, bazaars, forward
movements, church institutes. Many of these applications arose within
his own denomination; but a great many also came from outside. In
dealing with these he had certain principles to guide him. He felt
that places with which he was specially associated had an exceptional
claim upon him. His birth-place, the towns in which he resided,
health resorts that he visited, and the towns and cities where the
volume of his business was largest, all seemed to him to have unusual
claims. Similarly places with which members of his family were
connected made an appeal to him. Thus in a letter containing an offer
of help, addressed to Rev. J. S. Buckley (September 24, 1903), he
said: "In making this offer I do not of course forget that Penzance
was one of the circuits on which my late uncle, Rev. Robert Hartley,
laboured." Then he realized a peculiar duty to his own denomination.
Most of the other denominations were much wealthier and had a larger
proportion of rich men. He was in warm sympathy with their work and
often helped them; but he felt that in his own church the need was
greater and the duty was more compelling.

In certain enterprises, especially those of great magnitude, he bore
the entire cost. But the appeals of the kind I have just enumerated
were commonly dealt with by the offer of a definite percentage,
raised within a specified time, which was in fact frequently
extended, and with definite conditions attached. He gave in such a
way as to stimulate other people to give. If, for example, a hundred
pounds was needed he might offer 10 per cent. on all sums raised up
to the required amount, or he might offer to give the last ten pounds
if the sum was raised by a given date. And while he acted in this way
with appeals made to him, he frequently pursued the same policy with
schemes he himself initiated. He would draw attention to the need
that some piece of religious or philanthropic work should be done,
and then make a challenge offer on a large scale designed to elicit
large donations in order that the total sum might be reached. If he
established any fund, he preferred to fix a time-limit. For instance,
when he founded the Hartley Lecture, which is delivered at the
Primitive Methodist Conference, he provided the sum required for a
period of ten years. This was in order that the experiment might be
tried. Later he extended the period but would not create a perpetual
endowment. He wrote to the General Committee Secretary, the Rev. W.
Goodman, on April 20, 1896, saying: "I have an objection to endowing
anything in perpetuity, because I think future generations should
more or less provide for themselves." In some cases where a new
departure was desirable but it might have been difficult to get it
started, he would finance it himself entirely for a term of years and
then the responsibility would be taken over by the organization
concerned. In this way, for example, new tutorial appointments were
made possible at Hartley College. When large capital sums had been
raised, his policy was that these, principal and interest, should be
exhausted within a certain period, and then the responsibility of
carrying on the work should be met by the creation of new funds.

It was perhaps not unnatural, in view of his widely scattered and
generous gifts, that quite extravagant misconceptions were
entertained as to the extent to which help might be forthcoming for
objects in which people were interested. I was once approached with
an inquiry as to the probability of his helping a quite worthy cause
and asked whether he might be willing to contribute £1,000. My answer
was that I doubted whether he would contribute anything at all; and
thought that at the outside his gift would not be likely to be more
than £25. There were hundreds of other causes which were equally
worthy and most of them likely to appeal to him more as in the line
of his personal duty. He gave princely sums for great and costly
enterprises with far-reaching possibilities of good. But over wide
areas of Christian and humanitarian work he had to choose either the
alternative of helping a comparative few with munificent gifts or
that of spreading the money available over a great number of cases.
He was not carelessly generous. He had to do even-handed justice to a
multitude of competing claims. Excess in one case was bound to mean
defect in another. It must always be remembered that this was not a
question of generosity. The total amount to be distributed was fixed,
it was the allocation which remained to be determined; and if £ 1,000
was devoted to an object for which £25 would have been an average
donation, it meant that this particular cause was favoured at the
cost of £975 to some thirty-nine others, all perhaps equally worthy.
He was deeply annoyed when it was suggested to him that he should
contribute half of the total debt to an organization which owed
£1,500. It seemed to him so extravagant that so much should be asked
for one object, which he was quite prepared to help in reason, but in
which he had no special interest and for which he felt no special
responsibility, that in speaking of it to me he said: "They must
think that I steal the money." No doubt many with a rather defective
imagination were sometimes disappointed that no more was given for
their own particular institution, when this could not have been done
without injustice to institutions with equal claims.

It was his custom to exercise careful discrimination and to
investigate the circumstances of each case. He had a vivid sense that
the money when it had been set apart, no longer belonged to himself;
it was definitely "the Lord's money" and he was simply a steward. He
had ac