Through the Mill

Commissioned by the Joseph Rank Trust to mark the 150th anniversary of Joseph Rank's birth 11A Station Road West, Oxted Surrey RH8 9EE 01883 717 919 [email protected] www ranktrust org loseyh Rank 2mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm~mmmmmmmmm~mmmmmmxmmmmHim~m~m~mmm P I m TLe LiL ofJoseph RanL ITB mIEl m I m 1 m Ba x m m 1m ZROLK~HTIM~LL Eim m B m m R m 1 I I B E ma m m t m LE B Im E m E B E E 2 Man shall not live by bread alone E Ei B m B m ! m m E! m E fi 4 E m2 Ei m E m E Bi E mB E ,a E LONDON ! I I i i mEB THE EPWORTH PRESS fI m i m 1 m I ~~~mmmmmm~mmmmmmm~mmmmmmmmmm~~mmm~mmxmmmm~mm~~~~m. First Published in 1945 Second impression 1946 Third and special impression 1969 150th anniversary Edition (2004) Contents PROLOGUE . 8 Part One Hull-1 854-1904 I, BIRTH, ANCESTRY, AND BOYHOOD 2. HIS FIRST MILL . 3. FOUNDATIONS OF FORTUNE 4. BREAK WITH THE PAST 5. EXPERIMENTS IN ROLLER MILLING 6, THE CLARENCE MILL . 7. SUNDAY OBSERVANCE . S. THE MILLER'S METHODS . 9. PHRENOLOGY AND BUSINESS . 10. ZEAL OF THE METHODIST . I I. THE ASSURANCE OF SUCCESS . Part Two 12, DAYS OF CRISIS . 13. VIEWS ON TARIFF REFORM . 14. NEW ENTERPRISE 15. THE TOOTING MISSION . 16. THE PORT MILLERS CHALLENGED 17. WAR: 1914-1918 . IS. 'VALLEY OF THE SHADOW' . 19. FOIBLES AND CHARACTERISTICS 20. POST-WAR EXPANSION . 21. HIS HANDLING OF MEN 22. 'GIVE ALL YOU CAN' . 23, THE FREEDOM OF HULL . 24. THE CLOSING YEARS . EPILOGUE Author's Note HE AUTHOR wishes to thank the many friends and business associates of Joseph Rank who have offered recollec- Ttions or lent letters. He is indebted especially for counsel to the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Gregory and Mr. L. F. Sheppick, the Editor of Milling; Mr. Sheppick's guidance on technical questions concerning the milling trade, and his reading of the proofs, have been invaluable. List of ll~ustrations THE FIRST MILL AT HULL . End paper ONE OF THE MODERN MILLS . $9 9) KINGSTON METHODIST CHURCH, HULL (Interior) ff 9) ,, , f f f ,, (Exterior) fj $9 Drawn by Horace Knowles JOSEPH RANK (Photo by Van DY~) Frontispiece faring page JOSEPH RANK'S BIRTHPLACE . 3 3 THE FIRST MILL AT HULL . 48 AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE . 97 MRS. EMILY RANK . I12 JOSEPH RANK WITH HIS SONS. Photo taken on his eightieth birthday (Van Dyk) . 192 OSEPH RANK'S last visit to Hull was overshadowed by tragedy. Those who stood beside him as he gazed upon the ruin of the mills he had built in his prime were deeply aware Jof it, So, no doubt, was he. But he gave no sign. He was always at his best when facing difficulty. The Clarence Mills, his first great achievement and the symbol of his life's work, had been destroyed by German bombs. True, the high stacks and the lofty outer walls still stood beside the murky river, but they were no more than a gaunt and broken shell. Where the heavy rollers had ground the grain, where the mighty engines had throbbed night and day, all was silent as a tomb. Some men would have looked upon it as a tomb, the final grave of valiant and high-hearted enterprise. As Joseph Rank looked at those blackened walls, a man far in the eighth decade of his life, only a few months from its end, his mind must have returned to the days when he first planned these mills. It was his boldest venture. It marked his emergence from the mass of men. It laid the foundations of his fortune, and of many another's. All that he became, all he was able to do for his countrymen, was there in embryo. The mill became a landmark. It may be said to have done much to establish the commercial prosperity of Hull. It was the apple of his eye. Now-only desolation remained. Yet of the little group about him in the yard he asked only one question, in his blunt, Yorkshire way: 'Did you get the horses out?' Yes-they had got the horses out, Every one of them. That satisfied him. He had always loved horses, and could not bear to think of any of them suffering. As for the mills, turning back to the car, he exclaimed: 'What's done can't be undone. It's no good thinking of the past. It's the future that matters. A few bombs can't destroy our work. After the war we shall build new and better 'mills.' And he drove away without a backward glance. Part One Hull, 1854-1904 Chapter One Birth, Ancestry, and Boyhood 0 UNDERSTAND the life of Joseph Rank it is necessary to see it in perspective, in the frame of the Victorian age in Twhich he grew to maturity. Born during the Crimean War, when Palmerston was still a force, he absorbed the characteristics of that period, during which unprecedented changes took p lace in the social and industrial life of England. Queen Victoria had been on the throne only seventeen years, and the Prince Consort was still at her side. ' The first sixty years of Joseph Rank's life were spent in the halcyon period for enterprising individualism that now seems so remote and ended with the first World War. That river of blood has few bridges over which later generations can pass. The whole Western world was changed. Standards of value collapsed. Con- ditions of life and commerce that had been commonly accepted began to seem not only unjustified but inexcusable. It is difficult now to realize that they were taken for granted by all but a few. When Joseph Rank started in business for himself the electric telegraph was a novelty. The railways were still primitive. It was the age of the bustle, the muff, buttoned boots, the Noah's Ark, plush sofas, the aspidistra, the 'growler' and the hansom cab, Moody and Sankey, the Hyde Park Crystal Palace, stuffy 'with- drawing' rooms and stuffier social customs. The acme of commerce was to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest. Labour was ill paid. The prevailing economy was that of scarcity. Factory welfare was almost unheard of; Lord Shaftesbury's reforms had yet to win their way. 'The captain of industry', though sometimes benevolent, remained an autocrat. The critical voices of social reform were 'as one crying in the wilderness'-even John Ruskin and young Bernard Shaw. Success, the god most men worshipped, was understood only in terms of acquisition. Those features of the England in which Joseph Rank grew up set I I their stamp upon him. However much a man may differ from his contemporaries, he is inevitably influenced, if not wholly fashioned, by the age into which he is born, and Joseph Rank was not in that respect an exception. To achieve what he did achieve he needed a driving force that was perhaps more typical of Victorian industry than that of a later day; he was a pioneer, and pioneers have to be resolute or they would never cut their way through to success. Do the times mould the unusual man, or does he bend them to his will? Doubtless both influences are at work, and it is in the long-drawn-out conflict that progress is achieved. Joseph Rank contributed not a little to social and industrial change, as will be seen; but he in turn bore the marks of that exacting and inescapable struggle. It was his lot to emerge in what has been described as 'an age of unprecedented development'. 'Within the lifetime of a single man we passed from general illiteracy to democratic suffrage, from stage coaches to railways and telegraphs.' British Imperialism was at its height, 'The Victorian Englishman felt that he was a member of the greatest nation in the world at the most important epoch of human history, and that he must rise to the occasion.' Only 'the fittest' had any right to survive; the weak must go to the wall. Thrift and hard work were the twin guardians of the straight and narrow road, That was the background of Joseph Rank's life, and it explains much that otherwise would seem obscure and inexplicable. Joseph Rank was born in a cottage attached to his father's wind- mill on the Holderness Road, Hull, on 28th March 1854, half an hour before midnight-which, according to superstition, is a lucky hour for a birth. The mill, though without its wide-flung arms and no longer in use, still stands on the old site, but the cottage was pulled down when the road was widened many years ago. Milling may be said to have been in Joseph's blood, for both his father and his grandfather owned and operated windmills and had a reputation for selling good-quality flour, His father, James Rank, son of John, was born in 1829, the eldest of a family of eight- four sons and four daughters. In 1851 he married Mary Ann Parrott of Saltmarsh, who was four years younger than himself, and, to their great sorrow, their first child, a boy, an infant of four months, died, on 31st December 1852. The ache in his mother's heart was assuaged by the coming of ~ose~htwo years later, and it will be readily understood that she yearned over him with a yearning that established between them an intimate relation- ship of which he was conscious to his last days.

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