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JUNE 2014, Bridget Morris, talk given at the York Festival of Ideas.And was Jerusalem Builded Here?In the early 20th century the Rowntree family in York looked with hope and optimism towards an ordered world of social justice and peace. Nowhere was their vision better exemplified than in New Earswick. Join Bridget Morris as she tells how many of their dreams were shattered by the chaos of the Great War and how that changed the course of their aspirations for? decades to come.(IMAGE) Jerusalem - from Hubert Parry and taken up by the suffragettes in 1917, through to the Conservative Party conference, the Liberal Assembly, the Labour Party conference, the Last Night of the Proms and Wembley Stadium; through to Emerson Lake and Palmer and Dire Straights, through the Rugby League Challenge Cup to Test cricket; from the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William; to the opening of the Olympic games -- just how well is William Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’ known to us today?Written in 1804 and part of a longer epic poetic work called ‘Milton: a Poem’, Blake’s poem tells the apocryphal story that Jesus - the mystical lamb of God - in his childhood came to earth with Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, and travelled to England and visited Glastonbury. “And did those feet in ancient times/and was the holy lamb of God/ on England’s pleasant pastures seen”. The legend is linked to the idea from the Book of Revelation in which Christ’s second coming is described, establishing a new Jerusalem on earth. It also links to the old Christian metaphor of Jersusalem as the heavenly city, as the embodiment of the church on earth, as a place of love and peace. The dark satanic mills of Blake’s poem are most commonly interpreted as an allusion to England’s industrial revolution, with its cotton mills and collieries, its people enslaved to the rigours of mechanical progress in the heart of an English dark and clouded landscape. But another view (by the non-conformists) sees the satanic mills as synonymous with an oppressive established church, and interprets the poem as a call for change, for the right to imagine, desire and fight for something better – to create a new Jerusalem, here and now, and on England’s own green and pleasant land.Such visionary language and theological zeal is not alien to the Quaker Rowntrees (contrary to what you might think about Quakers, who in fact knew their hymns and frequently quoted them in their writings), though I’ve never seen the Rowntrees quoting Blake’s poem. But there is a more explicit link to the subject of my lecture here, for the four closing lines of Blake’s hymn also form the opening of a groundbreaking book published in 1891 called Garden Cities for Tomorrow by Ebenezer Howard, the father of the Garden City Movement. Howard was interested in working class housing and social welfare, and a critic of laissez faire attitudes, especially amid the rapid urbanisation and population growth in towns, and all the problems of sanitation, public health, and overcrowding that brought with it. He inspired three of the most influential model village schemes which included first, New Earswick (1902) followed by Letchworth (1904) and then Hampstead Garden Suburb (1906).At the same time as Ebenezer Howard was looking at housing, Charles Booth had shown that 35% of London lived in poverty in the worst housing conditions. Soon afterwards Seebohm Rowntree made the same type of findings for York, of 27%. Rowntree was able to show more clearly than ever before that poverty was endemic to any English town, and was not just exceptional to London. Alongside the Victorian liking for statistics and practical action, there was also a growing movement in the late 19th century that was shaped by a Hegelian confidence in progress, and the Benthamite maxim of the greatest good to the maximum number, together with the Utopianism of the arts and crafts movement, all of them setting down the prerequisites for a “fuller” life – e.g. William Morris. (SLIDE This new movement was not without its critics – this is a cartoon in “The Letchworth Citizen” called “The Letchworth Cranks”… setting out the new village as a zoo. With Raymond Unwin in the centre with his draftsman’s equipment, Ebenezer Howard on the right as a balding, be-smocked, sandle-wearning, pot-bellied man digging with his spade, the man on the left has a town plan so complex that it’s like a maze, saying garden city plots to let, and showing that none have been let; A single life hotel; danger, here without a guide; and the notices inviting people to go and look at the bald-headed nut-peckers, to the hairy-headed banana munchers, this way to the non-tox pub, visitors are requested not to teaze the citizens, to the long nebbed sandle-footed raison shifters, and the little boy in the middle daddy I want to see them feed.)Seebohm Rowntree, then aged 28, attended the first Garden Cities Conference in 1899 at Bournville, the Cadbury model village in Birmingham. There he met two key figures in this new movement, cousins and brothers-in-law Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, who afterwwards were engaged on by Joseph Rowntree and Seebohm to work on a model village in New Earswick – in what became a prototype for community and architectural design and the embodiment of some of the new ideas being tried out. (SLIDE Book of essays – covering a whole range of subjects to describe the ideal small home, each chapter developing an emphasis on simplicity, art, décor and style.) (SLIDE – VILLAGE TRUST) Just a few years after the Garden City Conference and after the publication of Seebohm Rowntree’s groundbreaking study, a Deed of Foundation was signed in December 1904 by Joseph Rowntree which created three trusts out of a large part of the fortune he had then amassed from his prospering Rowntree & Co confectionery business. One of these was the Village Trust (today which matches the JRHT) which had the objective of (I quote) “improvement of the condition of the working classes..by provision of improved dwellings with open spaces…[and] rents were to be fixed so as to attract a wide range of tenants from “crowded and insanitary tenements.” Note (contrary to popular opinion) that Joseph Rowntree’s intention was not to restrict the tenancies to company employees (unlike the Cadbury village). He was responding to Seebohm’s work in what was essentially an example of social engineering. From the beginning the village of New Earswick was experimental: it was a testing ground where ideas were worked out, and then put into practice. (SLIDE New Earswick Seven views in 1911 – Hawthorn Terrace, Pyrmont Terrace – Poplar Grove Poplar Gardens, Folk Hall, playground, Bridge Gardens etc.) The layout of the village followed the river Foss, and it dictated the natural lay of the land that the architects favoured. Short terraces of houses were built at various angles to the roads that were for the most part gently curving; narrow carriageways and footpaths led off main thoroughfares into grassy plots behind the houses. Parker and Unwin were also keen for there to be ample space for gardening, and so a limit of 10 houses per acre was agreed with the Rowntrees to allow for this – that’s why there is still so much green space there today. To create a sense of community they set aside land for a village green that was eventually surrounded by shops, schools and a church. (NEW EARSWICK SCHOOL SLIDE- Utopian picture echoes also the revival of the folk history tradition with maypoles)This then is the beginnings of a whole new vision for decent housing as a response to the analytical work of Seebohm Rowntree and his peers. For this reason New Earswick is intrinsically of interest far more widely that just in York; and it links York to a wider network of garden cities nationally. (And of course, this discussion is back in discussion today with Ebbesfleet in Kent and other places, the same sort of template for the 21st century has been created by the JRHT today at Derwenthorpe.)Now, it’s not my intention to go into any detail about New Earswick as an architectural success-story or its place in the history of 20th century public housing, although I will return briefly to it at the end of this lecture.What I’m going to have a look at more broadly is some of the ideas that were embraced by the Rowntree family in York in the light of the gathering storm and social uncertainty of the years leading up to the first world war. What I want to show is how individual members of the Rowntree family in their quiet way set in train some enormously powerful shifts in public life that were to make a real difference at grass roots level – from scientific management in industry, to education, to social reforms that set new directions right through the 20th century. Obviously I can’t cover these in any detail (and in any case I’m not qualified to do so) but I want to talk a little about five of the individual members of the family to give an idea of how they illustrate some of these major changes. And finally I want to suggest that it’s by no means a question of blinkered idealism and untempered optimism before the war – the Rowntrees were too grounded for that – but visionary ideas that looked deep into the future, and many of them groundbreaking ideas which have become the commonplaces of today (and by the same token of course, because they’ve become commonplace, that’s why they so easily get overlooked). [In fact, Rowntree Society’s main role is to hold a mirror up to such ideas of 100 years ago and to show how many still have a contemporary relevance today – and this is what separates us from the Joseph Rowntree trusts (i.e. JRCT, JRF, JRHT and JRRT). The Joseph Rowntree trusts are about the present and the future, we at the Rowntree Society look back to the past, to use the past to examine how it can help us understand the present.] (Family tree SLIDE) Part of the significance of the Rowntree name for York is that we’re talking about several generations of contribution to civic life in the city so the family’s influence is felt across several generations. If Joseph Rowntree had lived and acted on his own, his impact might have been far, far less than if he had not come from a family with a father, brothers, uncles, cousins and sons who all lived within the same mould. Generation after generation of tightly knit York Quakers adhered to a set of values that constantly and insistently informed and reinforced their thinking – in a sense a narrow set of values, but by virtue of their narrowness hugely resonant and powerful. The Rowntrees’ interests included liberal politics and social reform at national level, adult literacy and education, the pursuit of useful leisure-time activities, opposition to gambling and alcohol; (IMAGE – women’s rest room in the factory) and in the factory, good conditions for the workforce, doctors and dentists, security in social provisions, pensions, national insurance and so forth. When his younger brother Henry Isaac – the founder of the confectionery company – died at an early age, with his bank account in minus (a bad thing for a Quaker) JR said “The power of making money is by no means one of the highest – the power of rescuing a drunkard is a far higher power – a power which Henry possessed.” (IMAGE JR becoming freeman in 1911) In practice the Rowntrees’ interests translated into a long tradition of public service in York, through being a major employer and part of the political fabric of the city. In his acceptance speech to the corporation when Joseph Rowntree was made an honorary freeman of the city (this is the scroll he received) he spent a lot of time talking about the changes that had taken place in the city since his childhood – notably in public health, sanitation, the rate of mortality, and electoral corruption, and his hopes for the years to come – hopes that were dashed, of course by the outbreak of war 3 years later. (IMAGE x 2) Yearsley Bridge Infectious diseases hospital Huntington Rd. c. 1910; elections posters calling on Irish citizens to vote for Stuart.)But as Quakers the Rowntrees also remained closed from the outside civic world, playing their part in communal life but in private remaining within their group, locally as well as nationally. Seebohm said of his days at Bootham School that they, as Quakers, were regarded as a “peculiar people”. Also in York there was a fixed community of Quakers in a way that there wasn’t elsewhere to the same degree – two Quaker schools, the Rowntree company, Quaker-run companies such as Sessions printers, and of course the pioneering Retreat asylum that pioneered moral and humane treatment for mental health, founded by the Tukes, - apparently, so well-known internationally that the Grand Duke of Prussia paid a visit there on a tour of Britain.Also within the Quaker denomination nationally in the early 20th a major ideological shift was taking place due in no small part to John Wilhelm Rowntree (JR’s eldest son). He brought an international outlook into the Rowntree company’s newly formed export department, promoting ambitious business strategies, such as the establishment of a cocoa plantation overseas. (SLIDE of PLANTATION) He feared that rivals like Cadbury and other American and German companies would gain too much control over supplies, and he had ambitions for the Rowntree company to become a multinational enterprise with its own plantations overseas. As this slide suggests, on a trip to the West Indies in 1899 he found a suitable site for his plantation and he was able to convince the company to buy estates in Jamaica and Trinidad, even though his father had doubts about the project and the resources it required. More importantly (from the point of view of my theme of the earthly Jerusalem), John Wilhelm is widely regarded as the father of a new, liberal, branch of Quakerism. At the Manchester Conference (famous in Quaker history) he made a plea to the Society of Friends to move from the evangelical Bible-based certainties of the mid nineteenth century towards a more open outlook in which the education of the young became a the cornerstone for the survival of the Society of Friends. He argued that Quakers should return to the early tradition of seeking the divine “inner Light” within all people as the source of religious inspiration. This served to make the faith less dogmatic and allow Quakers to take their place in the modern world and make religion more relevant to society’s needs. It also allowed them to pursue their peace mission and join in with wider campaigns with fellow non-conformist Christians on issues such as temperance and social reform. John Wilhelm’s international outlook was also seen in his collaboration with the American Quaker, Rufus Jones. Their work on the history of Quakerism is still regarded as a central textbook and the movement they inspired led to the establishment of Woodbrooke College in Birmingham that is still an active centre of Quaker-led international education today. John Wilhelm’s reputation probably would have been far greater had he not suffered from a debilitating blindness and he died suddenly during a visit to the US, aged just 36. Wilhelm’s only son, Lawrence, represented the perspective of the younger generation who was active in the world. (SLIDE IMAGE FROM BOOTHAM ARCHIVE). After leaving Bootham School Lawrence Rowntree became a medical student at Kings College Cambridge and he joined the FAU - taking the family’s Daimler to Belgium that Joseph his grandfather had lent him (apparently to his grandmother’s disapproval – it took two hours to persuade her and she was rather grumpy). While at the front he wrote a diary drama (notionally a play in three acts!) called “A Nightmare” that still survives in a 19-page typescript. It’s nothing special in its poetic art, yet moving for its youthful antics, its ground plans, and the small drawings of the Daimler stuck in mud tracks. From the FAU Lawrence enlisted in the regular army and at the front he drove one of the first tanks. Is it worth stopping to consider his shift from active pacifisim into active service? Probably not. As his aunt said (into whose hands the diary had come), he didn’t in the event need to examine his conscience as his services on the battlefield were needed simply to all or any in need of medical help. Lawrence was killed at Paaschendale in 1917 and is commemorated on this war memorial at Scalby parish church just outside Scarborough (IMAGES OF SCALBY). (Scalby was his father’s home, though John Wilhelm had been laid to rest in Pennsylvania at the Quaker centre of Haverford – and those of you who know the YHA in York (a historic Rowntree building) may remember that it was formerly named Haverford (then the Haverford Youth Hostel), in commemoration of Wilhelm’s burial place in Pennsylvania.) And at the end of his diary is the plaintive note of the 22 year old (addressed to his grandfather Joseph Rowntree in York): “Such as it is, here it is. Perhaps it will read better some years later when all this is a nightmare that is past, and not one that we have not woken up from.” Surely too it was hard for a young rich man from a privileged background, and a Quaker background, to grapple with what the idea of service meant. York was a small place where Rowntree was a big name. Amid the rowdy jingoism in the decade leading up to the war it must have taken a huge commitment of faith and conscience for the young schoolboy from this background to take a stand against war when so many of his fellow citizens were giving their lives. Indeed, the Rowntree company’s employment records from the war years offer a different reminder of the stark reality of York at war – the dull yellow pages of the company legers, written in longhand by the company clerks, in even lined columns, page after page of names and factory department and the weekly wage, and other small employment related details, and then every so often suddenly there in the blank column is the startling word in black ink ‘died’ or ‘army killed’ ‘called up’ ‘compelled to go’. These mundane ledgers are very different from the Kings Book in York Minster, with its fine Gothic script memorial and respectful ornamentation – but they provide no less of a reminder of York at war. The newspapers of the time are another reminder. York’s main paper was the conservative Yorkshire Herald which refers to the war euphemistically as “The Situation”; and its letters pages contain wholesale allegations of the Rowntrees as preferring the Hun to the English, and headlines like “Let them mend the wire in front of the trenches”, “All the ambulances in the world won’t end the war”/ and referring to COs as “Slackers and Shirkers”, and also accusing the Rowntree family of arrogance and bigotry. With its pro-war stance, The Herald uses the York MP Arnold Rowntree as the figurehead of the family. Arnold Rowntree, Joseph Rowntree’s greatly loved nephew, is an embodiment of the public servant within the national sphere. Known familiarly as ‘Chocolate Jumbo’, or more delicately put by his biographer ‘he had a particular liking for the products of the industry’); and he had a sense of humour and warm personality, e.g. he had a horse named Business which he used to ride on the Mount, and when he was not at home his servants could accurately say he was ‘out on business’; and he had bold imaginative flair which might have been why he was put in charge of the advertising and marketing at the Cocoa Works (IMAGE barge on the Thames). When he was elected to parliament as Liberal MP in 1910 it was not with huge ambition or an appetite for national politics, but he entered reluctantly and with a strong sense of duty and service. When war broke out, overnight Arnold went from being a Liberal backbencher of progressive but unexceptional views to being one of the handful of MPs who were dubbed “at best pacifists at worst traitors”. When war was declared he said “I for one will have nothing to do with this war”. Yet as a loyal liberal who believed the Cabinet had done its best to avoid the war, he would not join any declarations by anti-war MPs, or condemnations of foreign policy. He also believed that while young men were sacrificing themselves for what for them was a just cause, those who opposed the war could not refuse some form of self-sacrifice or service themselves. Thus the FAU, a group of volunteers, mostly Quakers, who agreed to go to the western front to medical nursing and orderly duties, was created. (SLIDE OF CHINA Xi’an; exhibition on WW2) The the Quakers were called “The Public Silence Group”; the FAU “Public Friendship Save Protect Group”. Cf. Nestle in China is called “bird’s nest”…!By his association with the FAU Arnold Rowntree was placed in the moderate section of Quaker opinion, between those who were prepared to tacitly endorse the war, and those who saw it as their duty to disrupt the military machine. His position was that anyone who had a conscientious objection to war, not just Quakers, but socialists and Jehovah witnesses, for example, should not be forced to join the armed forces. Thus he became a key organiser of a network of local tribunals to listen to appeals, and directing people into civilian work of ‘National importance’. Though a big achievement for Arnold as MP, it led to thousands of disputes and much bitterness in 1916-18. Over 5,000 men were imprisoned for refusing to accept their tribunals’ verdict, and AR received a vast amount of mail from these men and their relatives and he asked many questions in the House.Not all COs were grateful to AR either, the absolutists seeing him as a collaborator, while those who saw him as the CO’s friend saw him as unpatriotic. Not only that, but when the Liberal party split in 1916 he was on the side of the loser Asquith, not being able to align himself with Lloyd George, who had banned the overseas circulation of the Nation, one of the newspapers Arnold was involved in, and Lloyd George threatened to extend conscription to Ireland, a position AR could not accept.In a sense, looking at Arnold from the mainstream of English political life in the war, these years were years of failure for AR – he was always swimming against the tide, politically; his anti-war voice in the House of Commons was a marginal one in the thrust of a fierce patriotism; his beloved liberal party split over the issue of the war; the adult school movement, to which he was deeply committed, was suffering a decline in the early 20th century, the Quaker denomination was painfully rent over the matter of pacifism in war, in ways in had not been since the days of its early persecutions in the 17th century. All this time the Rowntree family was being vilified in the local press in York. It is scarcely surprising that he was voted out of office in 1918; and when he was it must have been with a sense of relief and release from his public political duty. Through looking at Arnold Rowntree (and by extension his family members) you can start to the splits and awkwardnesses in the definitions of pacifism and the strength of feeling against the pacifist movement. It was not dogma or the acceptance of the certainty of external truths that prevailed. It was liberty of conscience that mattered. So too, in Joseph Rowntree’s editorials as company director in the Cocoa Works Magazine: there is no anti-war rhetoric or pacifist posturing but a Christian call and prayer for a speedy end to the war and safe return of the serving workforce coupled with a call to rally those left behind to keep the business going for the benefit of those who would one day return. The war years must have been all the more difficult for the Rowntrees who had German origins on the maternal side. The Quaker Seebohm family had come to England in the 19th century and settled in Hitchin, Herts. The German language, the children’s Christian names, visits to Switzerland, having a German governess for their children were all part of the Rowntree domestic round. There was also an involvement in the Anglo-German co-operative holidays association which brought so many German and British school children together in the years leading up to the war. So when in the early months of the war, in January 1915, Arnold’s wife May Rowntree gave a public lecture on ‘the story behind the war’ saying how little the English understood other nations – she speaks of ‘appalling ignorance’ - , for this she was vilified as being ‘pro-German’ in the local press.Yet their German background and European roots may also have helped open up any potential insularity that the Rowntrees might otherwise have had. There was huge support to the Belgian refugees who were coming into York; the Cocoa Works had its own refugee committee that was involved in providing work and accommodation in York, as well as French lessons etc. in the factory; and in fact nine houses at New Earswick were allocated rent-free to refugee families. (SLIDE CWM) And there are several articles in the CWM on Belgium at War, an escape through Ghent, and records of staff employees from the factory during a visit to Ostende in the month before the outbreak of war. (There is currently an exhibition in Liege showing these connections between Belgium and York.) Indeed (but this is the subject of a different lecture) I think it can be said the Rowntrees were Europeans in outlook well before the European Coal and Steel treaty was ever dreamed up in 1952, the treaty that was the cornerstone of the European union as we know it today. Their hopeful perspective on the 20th century is nowhere better illustrated locally in York than in their call for collective post war unity for all the nations of the world in the Rowntree park plaque that marks the founding of the League of Nations – this is perhaps the most public statement in York of the Rowntrees’ utopian aspirations. (IMAGE x 3) The text reads: ‘This park and the adjoining playing fields were given to the city by Rowntree & Co. Ltd to the memory of those members of the company’s staff who at the cost of life and limb or health and in the face of inconsiderable suffering and hardship served their country in her hour of need. Many were inspired by the faith that this war might be the end of war – that victory would lead to an enduring peace and to greater happiness for the peoples of the world. The creation of the League of Nations will be a fitting crown to the faith and hope of the men who have fought and a true memorial to their endurance, heroism, comradeship and sacrifice.’ (Image Books JS) In the last part of this lecture I want to take a look at Seebohm the man at the time he was writing his “official” studies (of course they’re not official by our modern standards –– in his day he was self-styled, self-financing, he didn’t have a degree, having studied chemistry for just one year in Manchester before entering the Cocoa Works – but such was the impact of his ground-breaking work on Poverty that he is sometimes looked upon today as one of the fathers of sociology – and he used to tease his friend Lloyd George that he hadn’t read his book, and Winston Churchill after reading it famously lamented that England might be able to rule the waves but she couldn’t flush her sewers. Seebohm Rowntree is also equally and especially renowned for his work on enlightened business management (this explains why the Japanese have such an interest in him and why collections such as this are so readily snapped up by Japanese book buyers. In the next few weeks I intend to set up a campaign to “save” this particular collection for York and to use it to put on public display – if you would like to know more you’re welcome to contact us at the Rowntree Society). In good Quaker fashion, you are judged by your deeds (not by leaving after you grand gestures – that’s why York has virtually no physical memorials and commemorative statues and plaques to mark the Rowntrees’ extraordinary contribution to the city) – that’s why this book collection makes a such a good embodiment of Seebohm Rowntree the man. Seebohm as we know him today is the sum total of his publications – a man who stayed in the shadows in government but was enormously influential behind the scenes in the whole development of the welfare state, and a man who was a huge innovator in business practice and industrial management in the early 20th century, not just in Britain but in the US and further afield. That being said, it is intriguing to know how his background Quakerism informed his published work that itself was so very visionary. In fact he reveals little of himself and probably Beatrice Webb was right to describe him as “more than a philanthropist than a capitalist” although he worked quietly behind the scenes in the highest political circles. It’s often lamented that he burnt so many of his private papers before he went to live at Hughenden in Bucks, ironically perhaps, to live in part of the former home of that famous conservative PM Disraeli – a building today owned by the National Trust. A collection of materials at the Borthwick Institute’s Rowntree archive contains a set of hand-written notes of his talks addressed to the adults schools of York. This is the sort of place you have to dig around to get a sense of Seebohm Rowntree the man, and they are rich materials. The first thing that struck me in looking at them is that they resemble “sermon” notes that might have been “preached” from the pulpit in another church denomination, not as instructive lectures in the adult schools or a throwback to another age where religion and education went hand in hand and were inextricably linked. (I’m sure someone has worked on the nature of Quaker sermonising when it is displaced from the silent Quaker meeting but it seems an interesting subject!) I’m picking out one or two excerpts here from three different points in the 20 year period I’m considering in this lecture, to illustrate what he says about the home, because I imagine he would have been thinking of this subject simultaneously with the development of New Earswick (which was, after all, designed for such people who he would have known through his work for the adult schools from York’s poorer areas) – but also because I want to link it to his thinking on the interiors of the houses, the décor and homely features of the sort that Parker and Unwin were describing in their essays in the slide I showed at the beginning.First, an address to the Women’s school in Leeman Road September 1901. He starts saying “Deep down in all of us is a longing a yearning to be something better. In every man is a desire after God…” He talks of the home, saying we cannot overestimate the importance of the place the home occupies. He says: Make home pure and noble. Start at once. A smiling face a kind word. Warm the spiritual atmosphere with your love. Many can do no work beyond their homes – but they are doing work of the first importance. Keep all clean and pretty. Flowers, etc, window plants, no harsh words.Second, at the Clifford St Meeting October 1907, on “Reality in Life” – in the home simplicity is needed “In all its arrangements, furniture, and ornamentation, there will be a purpose. Nothing is mainly for show or effect. Ornaments exist for their intrinsic beauty or for their association with donors, not because they are “the proper thing”. If books are lying about it will be because we are reading them, or for the interest of visitors. He also says that true simplicity is not incompatible with a home in which there are costly furnishings and ornaments, but (always with the characteristic Rowntree spendthrift regard) he’s also not saying there is not a need for us to closely watch expenditure”. One last example - In a lecture he gave near the end of the war to Bootham School in May 1918 called “What men live by”, he said that the country was living through one of the greatest periods in history. The work of reconstruction includes – ‘housing, education, industry, wages, social relationships. All will be changed. How?’ He says the answer was about the need for education, need belief in brotherhood of man, not theory but practice. For Seebohm Rowntree this – education, the brotherhood of man, and practice, not theory - was the new Jerusalem.So, to draw all this together. What are the visionary achievements of the Rowntrees I’ve looked? I’ve listed 10.First, it was the major expansion in the pre-war years of a small local company – one that flourished well into the 20th century into a world-wide company and employed and sustained hundreds of thousands of workers and their families throughout the world.Second, it was about industrial welfare, creating decent working conditions for the factory workforce that ensured respect, as well as new ideas about business management, and the idea that industry is human (as seen in Seebohm’s groundbreaking post-war book The Human Factor in Business 1921 – in this collection). Third, it was using marketing and advertising in the development of the Rowntree brand to equate with trustworthiness and quality.Fourth, in Joseph Rowntree’s 1904 Memorandum to set up his charitable trusts, there was the vision of laying down your money and spending it wisely on public causes, doing this in a two-pronged way, by examining the root causes of problems, while at the same time looking for practical solutions to immediate problems on the ground.Fifth, with New Earswick, there was the vision of a good environment for living, creating the template for decent public housing in 20th century Britain.Sixth, there was the dedication to an improvement of public services and infrastructure in York. From street lighting and drainage, to libraries and parks, right up to the establishment of the University of York – the Rowntrees left very few parts of the city where they did not in one way or other have some involvement.Seventh, it was their work in education and social activism for the young and an ongoing commitment to adult education and life-long learning and training.Eighth, it was giving active service and acting according to your conscience at all times, not just in wartime.Ninth, it was a vision of a united Europe as a means of co-operation and political harmony.(SLIDE) Finally, to bring this right up to date: for a city that currently positions itself as a Living Wage city, let me draw attention to this. This is a letter (also from this same collection) written in 1916 on Downing Street headed notepaper. It was addressed from Seebohm Rowntree to Arthur Henderson, Labour politician, first labour Cabinet minister, and three times leader of the Labour party and part of the war cabinet under Asquith’s and then Lloyd George’s coalition leadership. The fact it was written on Downing St paper shows just how close to government Seebohm had got. The text runs…. “I advise that you should ask the Prime Minster to give an assurance that under the scale no matter what is the cost of living, no whole-time man would be paid a wage which has less purchasing power than 25/- [shillings] had before the war.” (Scale refers to Minimum Wage? ) So here (in 1916! –whatever the context of the letter) Seebohm seems to be raising the whole question of a fair living wage – so that income should be sufficient to meet the needs of the wage-earner and equate post-war to what it did pre-war.Though, of course, the Rowntrees’ dreams and ambitions were broken by the first world war, which knocked everything off course, in all their strivings there never really was a utopian vision of an idealised green and pleasant land; but it was rather a vision of hope, optimism, pragmatism and expediency, and a vision that never compromised their underlying Quaker values. The many members of this remarkable family never ceased in their mental fight before, during, or after the first world war, never giving up that mental fight, or letting the proverbial sword sleep in their hands. ................
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