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Title: The Life of Sir William Hartley Author: Arthur S Peake, D.D. (1865–1929) * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0701091h.html Language: English Date first posted: September 2007 Date most recently updated: September 2007 Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html
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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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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.
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 great
