Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2003 Imagining corporate culture: the industrial paternalism of William Hesketh Lever at Port Sunlight, 1888-1925 Jeremy David Rowan Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Rowan, Jeremy David, "Imagining corporate culture: the industrial paternalism of William Hesketh Lever at Port Sunlight, 1888-1925" (2003). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4086. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4086 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. IMAGINING CORPORATE CULTURE: THE INDUSTRIAL PATERNALISM OF WILLIAM HESKETH LEVER AT PORT SUNLIGHT, 1888-1925 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Jeremy David Rowan B.A., Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 1992 M.A., Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1995 May 2003 Acknowledgments I first want to thank my dissertation committee. I am especially grateful for the encouragement and guidance given by my dissertation director, Meredith Veldman. Even while living across the Atlantic, she swiftly read my drafts and gave me invaluable suggestions. Additionally, I am grateful for the help and advice of the other members of my committee, Victor Stater, Maribel Dietz, Charles Royster, and Arnulfo Ramirez. I would also like to thank my family and friends for their support. Special thanks goes to my father and mother, Frank and Carol Rowan, who were supportive in key ways, providing both emotional and logistic support for my trips to the local archives. I would also like to thank my undergraduate mentor, John Taylor, who provided intellectual and professional advice as well as friendship. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Kimberly Harrison, for her unending support, patience, and companionship. She also read the manuscript several times and gave encouragement and editorial advice. ii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ii ABSTRACT . iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION . 1 2 SETTING THE STAGE: EARLY INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION, 1750-1870 . 21 3 THE LATE VICTORIAN CONTEXT: MASS CONSUMERISM, ADVERTISING, AND MIDDLE-CLASS CULTURAL CRITIQUE . 47 4 IMAGE, ETHOS, AND CORPORATE CULTURE . 75 5 PORT SUNLIGHT: LEVER'S ARCHITECTURAL RHETORIC . 106 6 "LORD LEAVE-A-HOLE" AND "PORT MOONSHINE": LEVER'S IMAGE UNDER ATTACK . 152 7 CULTIVATING LOYALTY: CORPORATE IDENTITY, PATRIOTISM, AND EMPIRE . 188 8 CONCLUSION . 243 REFERENCES . 248 VITA . 261 iii Abstract At Lever Brothers soap company in Port Sunlight, U.K., William Lever, between 1888-1925, instituted employee benefits that preceded the welfare state. Yet, in addition to providing tangible benefits for the employees (including free medical care, pensions, an employee profit-sharing scheme), Lever also created a strong corporate identity for his employees by cultivating a strong company and personal image, one constructed in response to national discourses surrounding industrialization, empire, national identity, and economic decline. Lever offered his company as a solution to national concerns and thus posited his workers as participants in patriotic efforts and empire-building. He forged an effective company culture by constructing a positive image of himself, his company, and his factory town. Lever constructed and defended this image through various channels. In public addresses, he carefully constructed his own ethos. In Port Sunlight, architecture was a rhetorical method for constructing and consolidating a company image that looked to an idealized past. Media events, Lever's art collection, advertisements, and company, local, and national publications further promoted the company culture and the employees' roles in it. This carefully constructed image was an important element in the development of an overall corporate culture that helped thrust Lever Brothers (later Unilever) into multinational status. This dissertation shows that analysis of paternalist companies such as iv Lever Brothers must be conducted through a wide lens to account for the influence of cultural factors on the company's success as well as to recognize the role of such factors in the successful construction of company identity. v Chapter 1 Introduction On November 28th, 1891, William Gladstone paid an official visit to the Lever Brothers factory in Port Sunlight, Cheshire. The great Victorian statesman accepted an invitation by William Lever--the founder and chairman of the company and acknowledged admirer of Gladstone--to formally open Gladstone Hall, a new village building that included a men's dining room and recreation room. At the opening ceremony, Gladstone praised Lever and his new factory by suggesting that Lever had found an answer to some of the social problems caused by modernization. Gladstone began his speech by quoting Thomas Carlyle on the effects of economic and social "polarization" in modern Britain. "A very powerful writer," said Gladstone, whose name has become widely known, especially since his death--I mean Mr. Carlyle--in one of those robust and penetrating phrases of which he was a greater master than any other English author of the nineteenth century-- said we were approaching a period when cash payment was to be the only nexus, the only link between man and man. In this hall I have found living proof that cash payment is not the only nexus between man and man.1 At Port Sunlight, Lever created a model community and became an important voice in the national discourse on what Carlyle referred 1 Viscount Leverhulme, Lord Leverhulme (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927), p. 56. 1 to in his essay on Chartism in 1839 as the "Condition of England Question." This debate was joined by other Victorian intellectuals such as John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold and during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, by businessmen and cultural critics including William Morris, George Cadbury, and Lever. My study looks at the paternalism of William Hesketh Lever (1851-1925) at Port Sunlight, Cheshire, between 1888-1924, arguing that Lever constructed a positive and effective image of himself and his company that allowed for a vibrant company culture to develop at Lever Brothers. Lever's image was constructed in response to national discourses surrounding industrialization, empire, national identity, and economic decline. Lever constructed and defended his image through public addresses, architectural rhetoric, and by using company, local, and national publications. This sophisticated company culture helped to thrust Lever's company into multinational status. Lever was born in Bolton, Lancashire, on September 19, 1851. He was the eldest son of James Lever, a successful wholesale and retail grocer, and Eliza Hesketh, the daughter of a cotton-mill manager from Manchester. James Lever was a nonconformist who instilled both William and his brother James Darcy with a strict Calvinist upbringing. William was educated in the Bolton Church Institute school at thirteen. Although the Church Institute was an Anglican operation, James Lever had been impressed with the "high moral character and lovable personality" of the Institute's 2 headmaster, William Tate Mason, and thus allowed William to attend school there.2 In 1867, however, at the age of sixteen, William Lever entered the family grocery business instead of continuing his studies to become a medical doctor, as William's mother had wished. He first worked as an apprentice for a shilling a week, providing menial labor such as sweeping the floors, cutting blocks of refined sugar into cubes, and, significantly, slicing and wrapping the soap (in those days, soap came from the wholesalers in long bars which had to be cut and wrapped for the customer). He then worked in the office as a bookkeeper, and later, learned the sales side of the business by working as a commercial traveler. Also, importantly, on his sixteenth birthday, Lever was given a copy of Self-Help (1859), written by Samuel Smiles (1812-1904), the Scottish writer and social reformer. Self-Help was Smiles' most popular work, selling 20,000 copies in its first year, 50,000 after five years, and a quarter of a million copies by the turn of the century.3 Smiles' object in this work was to stimulate the young and impressionable to "apply themselves diligently to right pursuits . to rely upon their own efforts in life, rather than to depend upon the help or patronage of others."4 According to this typically Victorian doctrine of hard work, one did not need genius to succeed, but instead one should always persevere, 2 Ibid., p. 16. 3 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, ed. Asa Briggs (London: John Murray, 1958), p. 7. 4 Ibid., p. 33. 3 "evoking his best powers, and carrying him onward in self-culture, self-control, and in growth of knowledge and wisdom."5 This was the essence of Smiles' message, and his book compiled an impressive list of contemporary examples--such as James Watt, Richard Arkwright, and Robert Peel--showing the success and value of hard work and perseverance. Smiles' book made such an impression on young Lever (this makes sense since one could argue that Smiles' doctrine is nothing more than secularized Calvinism) that he would make a habit of giving a copy to any impressionable young man in whom he was interested. Lever believed that the key to individual success could be extracted from Smiles' treatise. Lever's advice to young men was "to act on the principles taught in Smiles' philosophy. He will go further than his competitor who does not."6 Lever became a junior partner in 1872 and received a very high salary of £800 per annum.