While the Wright brothers were dividing their time between business and church, their business associates were giving time to other aspects of public work. The Chadderton Board of Health had been formed (rather belatedly) in 1872 following government legislation. One of the first Board members was Joseph Wright's future business partner, Jakeh Travis, who was elected to it for the 1873/4 session. Also elected in that year was John Marland a colliery proprietor. John was the brother of Hannah Wright's husband Jacob Marland. Ten years later, Ralph Bagley would be elected as Chairman of the Committee.
In November 1875, Bagley and Benjemin Wright withdrew from John Marsden and Company to enable them to concentrate on their partnership with Samuel Milne. However, by 1877, the partnership with Samuel Milne had come to an end, and Bagley and Wright were trading under the name 'Bagley & Wright' from the Wellington and Lees mills with Joseph Wright mill manager at the Wellington. From these mills they manufactured crochet, embroidery, tatting and bonnet cotton as well as sewing thread; the latter being a relatively new introduction to their line. They were also producing fishing-net twine something that they became known and respected over many years. The growth of the company had, up to 1877, been rapid and they now saw a commercial imperative to appear daily (not necessarily personally) at the Manchester Royal Cotton Exchange where the cotton market for Lancashire was based. Here spinners tried to get the best deals for raw cotton from the importers of American cotton while simultaneously getting the highest available price for their yarn from weaving businesses.
While assisting in the development of the Bagley & Wright business, Joseph Wright was developing a business in his own right. Although Wellington Mill was by 1877 an integral part of the Bagley & Wright operations, it also provided the manufacturing base for a separate business called Travis, Freeman & Wright that was owned by Jakeh Travis, Thomas Freeman and Joseph. Like the Wright brothers, Jakeh Travis and Thomas Freeman were devout Wesleyans, so their meeting and partnership was not entirely happenstance. However, whereas Benjamin and Joseph were "new kids on the block", Jakeh was "old money", his family having been involved with the cotton industry from the early 19th century. Indeed, although he was involved in several enterprises, his input was financial rather than active. When he was elected to the Chadderton Board of Health his employment was listed as 'gentleman'; a clear indication that he did not need to work to maintain his income. By 1881, Benjamin's family employed an additional domestic help, a 20-year-old servant called Harriet Mills from Wolverhampton. Having two or more domestic servants was the norm for cotton masters in Oldham at that time.
By the late 19th century, the company had established a large warehouse and office block on Cannon Street in central Manchester and a second warehouse at the junction of Union Street and Priory Street in Oldham. There were branch offices in Glasgow and Belfast and offices and warehouses in Melbourne, Bombay and Moscow.
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In 1890 Bagley & Wright's occupied Wood Top Mill to further complement their weaving capability at Cliviger Mill. On 28 December 1892, a memorandum was written by Ralph Bagley to 'J. Feilding Esq.' Secretary of the Operative Cotton Spinners Association (the spinners’ trade union) informing him that a forthcoming meeting had been cancelled. The heading of the memorandum lists the company's mills as: Wellington, Industry, and Belgrave in Oldham and Wood Top Shed in Burnley. In the archives of Burnley library is a reference written on Bagley & Wright notepaper in 1895 for a Mr. John Watson who “has been in our company for over five years as an overlooker & have always been found him a steady hand & competent workman”. The reference is signed by R. Sagar for Bagley & Wright. In 1895, the company's sewing cotton business was still expanding and a considerable investment was made in the extension of the Belgrave Mill to provide greater manufacturing capacity. In 1895 several British producers of sewing cotton yarn opened discussions on how they might combine their assets and markets to protect themselves from increasing competition from overseas. The companies decided to form a 'conglomerate' through which they would be in a better position to cooperate on the purchase of raw material and the combined marketing of their products. The aim was to cooperate rather than compete.
Around 1893, the company bought a mill at Crooklands to secure the supply of bobbins that they needed. The bobbin mill at Crooklands lay between Milnthorpe and Kendal. The English Lake District was a major centre for the production of bobbins because of the availability of trees to use as the raw material and water courses to drive water wheels to power the machinery. The Crooklands Mill was built some time before it was taken over by Bagley & Wright who certainly owned it between 1894 and 1897. In 1906 the mill had passed into the ownership of Messrs. A. Bell and Co., so it is possible that the mill was retained by Bagley & Wright until after Benjamin's death in 1905.
The Bobbin Mill made use of an old horse-drawn tramway that passed closely by on an embankment. The tramway was originally built to serve a large gunpowder factory at nearby Gatebeck. The factory was owned by Wakefield and Co., one of the largest manufacturers of gunpowder in Great Britain in the 19th century. The tramway had horses pulling wagons of gunpowder from the factory to a wharf on the Lancaster Canal where it was dispatched to mines or to the military. The horses were shod in copper shoes so that sparks would not ignite the gunpowder. Before 1900, the tramway had been extended from the canal wharf to Milnthorpe where there was, by then, a railway station.
In 1867, the Crooklands Mill had been powered by a water wheel with a mill stream taken off the nearby Peasey Beck. At this stage, the Mill consisted of about 3 buildings and bobbins must have been transported to the canal by horse and cart. By 1900, a spur line has been built from the tramway, across the Peasey Beck and into an open shed in the Mill grounds. There is evidence that the Mill stabled horses to be used in pulling wagons of bobbins onto the main tramway line and down to the canal or onwards to the station at Milnthorpe.
In 1895 the company's sewing cotton business was still expanding and a considerable investment was made in the extension of the Belgrave #1 Mill to provide greater manufacturing capacity.
In 1897, fourteen companies involved in the spinning of sewing cotton combined to form the 'English Sewing Cotton Company Limited' (ESCC)[2]. In all cases, the Directors or Proprietors of each of the individual companies became Directors of ESCC. While some of the individual companies had previously only been involved with the manufacture of sewing cotton, Bagley & Wright had many other interests including yarn for weaving, fishing-net twine, crochet yarn etc. The Bagley & Wright business split into two; one part being subsumed into ESCC with Benjamin and Ralph as Directors, the other part staying independent. In effect, the ESCC was a 'holding company' and each of the fourteen companies within it maintained their own name and style of management.
The Belgrave #1 Mill was completely turned over to the manufacture of sewing cotton and was the Bagley & Wright 'contribution' to the ESCC. Bagley & Wright's other manufacturing activities were carried out in their other mills. From this point on, there are two listings for Bagley & Wright in the trade directories of the time. As an example, the 1901 Kelly's Directory of Oldham shows the following: (1) Bagley & Wright Limited, cotton manufacturers and doublers, Belgrave Mill, Honeywell Lane. (2) Bagley & Wright Manufacturing Co., cotton spinners and doublers; warehouse, Union Street; Wellington Mill, Wellington Street & Crabtree Mill, Bridge Street, Oldham Edge.
In 1898, the ESCC made a decision to enter the American market by purchasing a number of New England mills in the USA. These acquisitions, including the Willimantic Linen Company were consolidated into the American Thread Company [3]. This purchase and consolidation was to have serious consequences for ESCC by 1902.
Other than for the observation that Benjamin's sons had stayed at school longer than was the norm for less affluent families, the jobs that they took up after leaving school were relatively menial. In 1881, at the age of 18, his son Herbert had been a clerk within the Bagley & Wright business. Ten years later, in 1891, sons George Harrop Wright (21) and Frank Wright (18) were bookkeepers. Perhaps the greatest deviation from the 'work from the bottom' idea was that the sons did not have to experience the manual jobs of piecing and spinning. Clearly, the aim was to provide the sons with experience of various positions within the business to prepare them for future ownership. Because the business was so extensive, other family members could also be brought in and groomed for future management. Thus, Henry, the eldest son of Benjamin's brother Joseph, was a clerk at Wellington mill in 1891 while his father was the proprietor of Travis & Wright at the same mill. By 1901, Joseph's second son Benjamin (we will call him 'Benjamin junior' to identify him from his Uncle Benjamin) was a warehouseman at Bagley & Wright's Union Street warehouse.
Division – 1900 to 1910
The ESCC operation hit stormy waters early in the 20th century. The investment that the company had to commit in forming the American Thread Company (ATCO) was much larger than originally estimated and returns were slow in materialising. The value of shares in the ESCC dropped sharply. An article in The Guardian newspaper in April 1902 noted that an extraordinary general meeting of the ESCC directors and shareholders was to take place on 23 April. The purposes of the meeting were to (1) discuss the company's position in regard to its management and finances, (2) to enquire into the reasons for the loss of share value and (3) take steps to reorganise the Company Board to protect the company from issues arising from its holding in the American Thread Company. The shareholders were concerned that a large amount of ESCC money had been placed in a reserve fund for the purpose of paying a dividend to shareholders. The problem, from the point of view of most shareholders was that the directors of the mills in the USA that had been bought out to form the ATCO had all been issued with large numbers of ATCO and ESCC shares as part of the consolidation. The effect was that share value had been diluted. Solicitors and accountants working on behalf of the shareholders stated that the use of a reserve fund for the payment of a dividend could be illegal under English law. Prior to this meeting, the ESCC Board consisted of 24 directors, all of whom were directors of the individual companies that had combined to form the holding in 1897 plus several directors of American companies. To improve management efficiency the meeting decided that the Board membership should be reduced to 12 with half of this number being ordinary shareholders unconnected with either the individual ESCC enterprises or the ATCO mills. From this point onwards, neither Ralph Bagley nor Benjamin Wright sat on the ESCC Board although they continued to own substantial share holdings in the ESCC.
From the ESCC's perspective, the collection of firms that formed the basis of their operation was identified as being inefficient. Whenever there was a turndown in the market for sewing thread, the overheads due to running numerous mills, each with its own management and administrative structure, was a liability. By 1905, the company had decided that 'concentration' was required and steps were taken to reduce overheads and improve operating efficiency.
In 1905, the year of Benjamin's death, Ralph Bagley was 66 years old.
The English Sewing Cotton Company's Report of 25 July 1907 listed that the following results of 'concentration' were that (1) A linen thread mill was sold to round off the trust's sphere of business, (2) The production of the Egerton Mill was transferred, the report explaining that the trust 'had sufficient reserve productive capacity at other mills to enable them to deal with the trade conducted at that branch' and (3) The plant of the Belgrave Mill at Oldham was removed, and the site and buildings sold. Finally, 'a further concentration took place by the transfer of the business of R. F. & J. Alexander & Co., carried on at Duke Street, Glasgow, to one of the other branches of that company'. Contemporaneously with this policy of concentration, output was centralised by the connection of the ESCC with Messrs. Coats, and the system of common sales established in 1906 through a newly formed organisation called the Central Thread Agency. The net profits of the ESCC greatly increased following that step, though, for the most part, this was due to improved market conditions. The net trading profit for ESCC, which had been £170,829 in 1904, and only £92,614 in 1905, rose to £254,846 in 1907 and was maintained in 1908 at £251,938 although we have no record of the capital deployed.
Oldham Family Records and Archives have records of those eligible for jury service around the turn of the 19th century. The records provide an interesting insight into the wealth of the people on the list because it gives the amount of money for which each person has been assessed to contribute to the Poor Rate of the Borough. Jurors had to be property owners because this was seen as a measure of responsibility. The entries for Ralph Bagley, Benjamin Wright and George Harrop Wright in 1903 show that Ralph Bagley carried a Poor Rate assessment of £420 while Banjamin Wright was assessed at £276. Both were identified as 'Special Jurors'.
Being defined as a 'Special Juror' depended entirely on the amount that had been assessed for Poor Rate and this, in turn, depended on the wealth of the individual measured by the value of the property that they inhabited. In 19th century England and for several decades after the end of Victoria's reign, an Englishman of wealth and standing could, if required to defend him/her-self in a court of law, request that the jury was constituted from peers on the grounds that they would not be adversely prejudiced. Special Jurors were those who might be called upon to stand as jurors at such a trial. It was not until 1949 that this privilege of the wealthy and landed gentry was repealed. [4].
Benjamin Wright died on 5 May 1905 at home on Queen's Street, Oldham. As befitting his status within the town, his funeral was in the finest Victorian tradition. A description of the cortege in the Oldham Chronicle on 9 May described the scene. After noting that the interment was at Green Acres cemetery in Oldham, the article lists the occupants of the nine carriages each 'drawn by two bay horses'. In addition to his widow and seventeen members of his close family, the cortege included Ralph Bagley and his wife, representatives of Trinity Wesleyan Church and major cotton industrialists from the town.
In his will, Benjamin left a net estate of £33,557 (over £13.28 m as a 2006 value using the average earnings indicator as the comparator. [5]) His will detailed his wishes that his private and business assets be formed into a trust for the benefit of his children and grand children. His widow and eldest son Herbert were trustees and Herbert was to take over the running of the Bagley & Wright Manufacturing partnership in place of his father.
Jakeh Travis died in 1907 and the Travis & Wright business was formally dissolved in January 1908. Two years later, after the death of his wife, Joseph Wright retired. He was to live another 20 years.
