Clarks: Made to Last Read online

  It’s all among workhouses and Coffin Makers and Pickpockets … I don’t like these things. I wish to avoid them; I don’t like them in reality, and therefore I don’t wish to see them represented.

  At C. & J. Clark, production was increasing month by month, but this was stretching the business’s resources. As George Barry Sutton described it in C. & J. Clark, 1833–1903: A History of Shoemaking:

  The 1834 Stock Account is notable for its lack of any reference to cash assets. The size of the net profit suggests that business had been extremely brisk and it is therefore not surprising that cash assets had been fully utilised in helping to create the large current assets shown in the account. The money due from debtors was a large sum which would all be required for the heavy outlays in the footwear trade during the following months. It soon became clear that at the business’s present rate of expansion, and taking into account other heavy spring expenditures, alternative sources of cash assets must be looked to.

  A large amount of cash was needed each autumn to acquire sheepskin, but money was also needed for the shoe business in late spring and early summer in order to produce enough footwear for the busy autumn period of sales. In January 1835, Cyrus, who had banked for ten years with Reeves, Porch & Co. in Wells, arranged an overdraft facility as a temporary measure while working on securing long-term loans. The businessman in him might have had few qualms with this strategy, but the Quaker beating in his breast was uncomfortable. In a letter to James, who was travelling in Ireland, he said:

  We are much heavier at the bank than I calculated upon and I do not see an end to our shortness unless we transfer (probably, replace) the bank debts by adding sufficient capital to fully meet these difficulties. I have been considering this matter and I have thought there is much difficulty occasioned by our having separate trades. I should therefore be willing, say for fourteen years, to unite the wool trade [which Cyrus had retained] with our business. We may then do little or much as circumstances may occur, that is when required we can shove our capital into our mat trade … we ought to average £100 in sales a week and this I think we may do by pushing the last five months of the year. I see we must drive close and we must not spend a shilling that can be avoided until we have paid off some of these debts … give this thy calm consideration.

  Such a predicament might have made some people take refuge in liquor. But in Cyrus’s and James’s case, it coincided with their involvement in the Temperance Society, which was founded in 1832 by Joseph Livesey, a cheese-maker from Preston. James Clark believed he was ‘the first to sign any Temperance Pledge anywhere south of Bristol’ and Cyrus had taken great pleasure in smashing bottles of wine and liqueur that were then mixed in with mortar to build James’s marital home.

  The Quaker take on drink was unequivocal. A flyer endorsed by Livesey was entitled ‘Drinking Is All Lost’ and it aimed to shock. Consume alcohol, it said, if you are happy with the:

  … loss of hard earned money; loss of food and clothing; loss of happiness; loss of home comforts; loss of mind; loss of health; loss of life. You seek for pleasure in drink, and find ruin. You seek to drown your troubles, and you drown yourself.

  It went on to explain how there is:

  … no such thing as wholesome beer, or good cider, or pure wines and spirits. All these drinks deceive and mock you; rob and starve you. Don’t take the first glass!

  Early temperance societies were inspired by a Belfast professor of theology named John Edgar, who in 1829 poured his stock of whisky out of his window, claiming it would destroy any lingering bad spirits. Livesey, the Temperance Society founder, opened the first temperance hotel in 1833 and the next year founded the temperance magazine, The Preston Temperance Advocate (1834–7). In 1835, the British Association for the Promotion of Temperance was formed to save the working classes from drink and it went on to become one of the biggest mass movements in British history. By the late nineteenth century, one in ten people had pledged to avoid alcohol.

  James was an early convert, as he writes:

  When about 19 years of age I became a member of a Temperance Society – which led to the formation at Street of a Society on the Moderation principle and brought me into association with other Philanthropic work … This proved a source of blessing and profit to myself, for which I have had cause to be very thankful, as it has brought me into association with many good and earnest Christian men.

  Cyrus and James’s stance against alcohol may have been admirable, but it was also practical. Its enforcement was one means by which the production of shoes could continue unimpeded by cider-induced, drunken brawling, which was a regular event in Street. The brothers were particularly concerned about the young apprentices, whose lives were made that much harder when their masters were on the bottle. The problem is described in Clarks of Street, 1825–1950:

  Each shoemaker would employ apprentices who made threads, sewed on the soles and did other minor parts of the work while learning their trade. The system did not work badly when, as in the majority of cases, the masters were sober, steady men and kind and considerate to the apprentices, but when, as sometimes happened, the masters were given to drinking and irregular hours of work, the apprentices suffered great hardship. Such a shoemaker would ‘shop’ his work on Friday or Saturday, would be drinking on Sunday and again on Monday (known as ‘Saint Monday’), would be quite unfit for work on Tuesday, and would only start in earnest on Wednesday or even Thursday in some cases. To get his week’s work into two or three days, he would then work half of one night and the whole of the next. This meant of course that the poor boys, of twelve, thirteen and fourteen years of age, and even younger, were brought up to waste and idle the early part of the week and then made to work day and night the latter part, and sometimes kept at their toil by doses of what was known as stirrup oil.

  Working hours in the factory were from 6 am to 7 pm, with an hour’s break for lunch and half an hour each for breakfast and tea. On Saturdays, the day ended at 5 pm. One man, James Marsh, used to walk eight miles to work from Wells in the morning and eight miles back home again at night – and was reported never to have been late.

  A year after Cyrus had written bleakly to James about the company’s finances, a number of advances were secured. Stuckey’s Banking Company came up with £500 secured on land owned by the two brothers and then two years later, in 1839, the bank made a second loan of a further £500.

  At that time, Joseph and Cyrus were planning to expand their corn business and tried to persuade James to join them. The two older brothers were buying corn mainly from their cousins, Joseph and Charles Sturge, who were trading in Birmingham. According to the History of the Business of C&J Clark Limited, written by William S. Clark in 1914, James Clark

  … thought the business far too speculative for their [Joseph and Cyrus] limited means … he also considered that the growing business of C. & J. Clark needed all the undivided energy of the two partners [Cyrus and James] and that it suffered through the greater part of Cyrus Clark’s time and so much of his interest being absorbed in the corn trade, and he rather strongly pressed his brother to draw out of it.

  Joseph and Cyrus would have done well to heed James’s advice. In the winter of 1841–2, the net assets of both the corn business and the shoe company were not enough to meet the firm’s liabilities. In addition, James had been borrowing money from the company for his own private purposes, a clear departure from Quaker ethics and in many ways inconsistent with his own high standards. This was something he conceded when writing to his children many years later in 1881: ‘We were unfortunately tempted, whilst still working with a large amount of borrowed capital, to spend too much on our dwellings, and this eventually brought us into great straits.’

  There is no evidence to suggest that the brothers fell out or even came close to falling out during the early years of austerity. It may have helped that Cyrus and James were markedly different characters. William S. Clark described his father James as ‘of a more
hopeful turn of mind’ compared with Cyrus, but to those working with James

  … it may have sometimes seemed as if he did not fully realise that such Divine help usually worked through human instrumentability [sic] and that such help should be sought to prevent getting into difficulties as well as to find a way out of them.

  Cyrus was a worrier. At times, he was perfectly capable of seeing the problem and would speak mournfully about it – but he did not always implement a remedy. In June, 1841, he wrote to James, full of gloom:

  I am sorry to say it will turn out worse than I anticipated and worse with me than thyself. My own expenses have been so very heavy … We must still retrench and I see plainly we must get quit of one of our two cutters … we must lessen our stock at least £2,000, say from £6,000 to £4,000 – an abundant stock even then … I don’t wish to discourage thee but I thought it was better to write … when thou hast read this letter burn it.

  The losses in 1841 amounted to £1,400 and a year later the situation was little better. Stocktaking in April 1842 made clear that, after paying the interest on loans, there was precious little left out of the profits for future investment. The mood of encroaching despair was such that Isaac Stephens, a relative of James’s by marriage, suggested to Cyrus and James that they should consider emigrating to Australia:

  Much better it would be to leave while you have something to take out with you … the times are so awfully bad … and I would strongly advise thee – at all hazards – to get out of thy present business.

  Cyrus began to entertain the idea and it was left to his wife, Sarah, to enlist the help of James to persuade him otherwise. At one point, she wrote to her brother-in-law, saying that Cyrus was looking to ‘escape from the storm, wind and tempest’.

  The national situation was just as grim. Poor harvests brought virtual starvation to some parts of the country, followed by riots in town and rick burnings in the countryside. In Street, a cry for help went out from C. & J. Clark towards the end of 1842 – and the Quakers rallied round. The chief benefactor was Edmund Sturge, a cousin and one of James’s closest friends. He was instrumental in soliciting the generosity of others, including Joseph Eaton and Robert Charlton from Bristol and Jacob Player Sturge, another Clark cousin. George Thomas, a family friend from Bristol, came up with £750 and Thomas Clark, a first cousin of Cyrus and James who had made money from a wholesale provisions business in Bridgwater, contributed £400 and became a key figure in keeping Clarks solvent over the next twenty years. In total, loans of £2,950 were promised, but before accepting the money, the partners had to gain the approval of Stuckey’s Banking Company, easily the Clarks’ largest creditor.

  These delicate negotiations were left largely to Cyrus to handle because James was travelling. In August 1844, Cyrus wrote to his brother saying that he had provided the bank with full and proper disclosure and that Stuckey’s wanted to know what the brothers were worth after paying their debts.

  I think I said £1,000 or £1,200, that is jointly. I let them know that Joseph had lost all [on the corn business] and that we had to make considerable sacrifices on his behalf.

  The bank then gave Cyrus ten days to provide a written statement of C. & J. Clark’s affairs and in September it agreed to the loans. Stipulations were attached. The bank insisted on being kept closely informed about the business’s finances and the Friends who had lent money made it clear that they wanted Thomas Clark and Edmund Sturge to supervise all future annual stocktakings. This became a heightened priority after it was discovered that for two years Cyrus had not even drawn up a proper set of accounts.

  Many years later, after Cyrus had died, James reflected:

  The years following 1840 to 1848 were very trying ones, a very increasing business and great shortness of capital. My brothers Joseph and Cyrus were engaged in the corn business, which led us into many difficulties from which we were only rescued by the intervention of my cousin Edmund Sturge and other kind Friends … our business improved after 1848, our shoe trade steadily increasing.

  There were indeed improvements and trade did steadily increase – although it also needed a further loan of £450 from Thomas Clark in 1848 to help with a cash deficiency. A year later, Thomas became a sleeping partner in the business and earned the respect – and gratitude – of both Cyrus and James. Thomas was married to a sister of Cyrus’s wife and was eight years older than Cyrus, eighteen years senior to James. Born at Greinton and the son of a farmer, he served as an elder at Quaker meetings. In the 1840s, he had worked as an accounts supervisor at C. & J. Clark and so knew about the business. He was also a highly knowledgeable botanist.

  During the five years Thomas remained a partner, the firm made net profits totalling £15,364. 15s. 5d., of which his share was £2,561. 3s. 2d., with the remainder split between Cyrus and James so that each received £6,401. 16s. 7d. This arrangement with Thomas continued until 1854, even though the company was in no position to repay the original £2,000 he had invested, let alone any of the additional £5,276 he had put in during times of emergency. Thomas was a benevolent contributor. At one point during 1854, he was asked to make a further urgent investment of £2,000 and although he did not have the cash, he secured a loan on land which he was in the process of selling. He even went as far as apologising to the partners for the ‘inconvenience caused by his difficulties’.

  Later that year, it was agreed that Thomas would be paid interest on his loans at a rate of 7.5 per cent a year, some 2.5 per cent more than the bank rate. Fortunately, between 1849 and 1854, the value of Clarks’ total assets almost doubled from £21,700 to £42,900, sales increased from £20,000 to £31,600 and the average annual net profit was £2,800.

  The earliest surviving price list is that of 1848. It comprises 334 items, with prices ranging from 13s. 6d. for Gentlemen’s Pump Boots to 3s. 9d. for Ladies’ Best French Morocco shoes to 1s. for Children’s Enamel Seal Ankle Straps. And despite those difficult early years there were some notable triumphs and some moments of reassurance for the two founding brothers. At the Great Exhibition of 1851, C. & J. Clark was visited by royalty and the company was awarded medals for its galoshes and sheepskin rugs. Cyrus was in London to receive the awards, after which he wrote to James:

  My Dear Brother,

  I came up here at eight o’clock, had a little difficulty in passing my parcels, but succeeded, there being new rules since the 17th.

  The Queen, the King of the Belgians, walking together, arrived soon after nine o’clock, two of the Royal Children, two of the children of the King of the Belgians, and Prince Albert.

  They passed rather rapidly, it seemed more a matter of ceremony, scarcely any examination of the goods. They first came in from the centre, and then came a second time and passed the other side. The guide directed the Queen’s attention to the curried leather opposite, and walked before the Queen backwards and crablike.

  I had a gracious bow from her, and met her the second time, when I had a very decided bow; the gent, who went round with her, said: ‘Model of a Factory’, and the Queen said: ‘Very pretty’, but neither particularly looked at the shoes or rugs … I found I had as good, if not more, notice than some of my neighbours, but there was no time, without appearing rude, to push one’s articles into notice, so to conclude I have had a very courteous bow from the Queen and a conversation with Prince Albert.

  3

  Friends in high places

  So many items in the balance sheet turned out to be worthless, and there was so much confusion in the way the capital accounts had been entered in the ledger that even after the decision to struggle on had been taken it was found that things were worse than had been supposed.

  THAT WAS THE BLUNT ASSESSMENT of William S. Clark, James’s son, writing in 1914 while reflecting on the period leading to the firm’s second financial crisis in 1863, a catastrophe that would have proved fatal without the help, once again, of Quaker friends and cousins.

  Business had picked up after the 1851 Great Exhibi
tion and continued on an upward curve almost until 1859. These were the golden years of Cyrus’s and James’s stewardship of the company – albeit a stewardship that was largely overseen by outside investors and by the bank. In 1857, C. & J. Clark produced 234,000 pairs of shoes – far exceeding Cyrus’s expectations back in 1840 when he said the company would be able to sell a maximum of 9,000 pairs in any twelve months. Turnover from 1851 to 1859 was on average five times what it had been in 1833, with shoes now representing three-quarters of sales. The average annual profit during that period was £2,683, compared with £1,230 during the years from 1843 to 1847. There was a doubling of sales between 1849 and 1858, spurred by demand for ready-made footwear, which was widely regarded as both modern and better value than bespoke. Business was also helped by the country’s recovery from economic depression and the beginnings of the age of ‘Victorian Prosperity’.

  There were some false starts, one of which was the production of so-called ‘elongating goloshes’, for which C. & J. Clark had been awarded a Gold Medal at the Great Exhibition. Goloshes (the spelling changed to galoshes during the 1920s) were made from gutta percha, a natural latex produced from the sap of the tree of the same name. They were introduced to Britain in 1844 and greeted enthusiastically by manufacturers up and down the land. An encyclopaedia from the time said:

  The immediate effect of its discovery may be compared with that of the gold fields in California and Australia; and perhaps no commodity, except the precious metals, has been more eagerly sought after or more highly appreciated.

  Cyrus and James were acutely interested in this ‘discovery’ because the price of leather was forever fluctuating and, moreover, it was becoming hard to achieve a uniform standard in leather. The quality of the hides was inconsistent and the leather sorters and cutters varied in their expertise. C. & J. Clark was selling a number of gutta percha products as early as 1848, prompting James to take out a patent on boots, shoes and clogs made with this new material, and such was the focus on gutta percha that in the 1851 census two employees of the company described themselves as ‘gutta percha workers’ rather than shoemakers.