The Leahy side of my family included
3 Aunts and 5 Uncles. Many of the boys had degrees in chemistry. My grandpa,
Frank Leahy was an investor and owned a lot of stock in the array of chemical
companies in St. Louis. We called him “Daddy War Bucks”. My Uncle John was a
chemist who worked in cotton research technology.
Cotton Research Technology, Oil Mill
Gazetteer, June 1943, page 21
Second
Day Address John Leahy, director of research for the Texas institutions,
College Station, Texas, was the principal speaker on the second day of the
meeting. He opened his address by discussing and reviewing things done by the
Tri-States Association, and praised the research developments in the past ten
years. He spoke of the beginning of research instituted in Memphis by the
association. “You superintendents must be committed to the interest of cotton
and keep the research in channels of cotton and its by-products,” he said.
“While we must commit ourselves to research toward the war effort, we must also
remember that cotton is also a peacetime commodity, so we must keep two kinds
of research going, and also pay much attention to competition with synthetic
fibers.” He stated that heretofore cotton seed was the only oil seed produced
in the United States. Now we have competition, so we must develop new ways
peculiar to cotton seed. “Please have this specific thought in mind, that you
maintain an aggressive attitude toward research and pioneer the way for
industrial co-operation throughout the Tri-States,” he said. Election of
Officers
Comments
My Uncle John recruited my Dad to
compete a Masters in Cotton Research Technology at Texas A&M in 1945 and
introduced my Dad to the Board of Volkart Brothers. My Dad joined Volkart
Brothers to set up labs in the US and became Managing Director in 1951 and
moved to Brussels Belgium.
The Volkart Brothers,
pioneers of modern commodity trading, Cotton:
at the heart of the industrial revolution
Switzerland at the time was one of the leading industrialized
nations and the Swiss textile industry had dramatically changed with the
introduction of new mechanized machines. As the Swiss cotton industry was
suffering mightily from machine-made yarn from Britain, in 1800 the Swiss consul
in Bordeaux, Marc Antoine Pellis, approached the government of the Swiss
Confederation to import French-made copies of English spinning mules. They were
eventually put up in a nationalized monastery in 1801 and their 2014 spindles
put to work. A year later, some Wintherthur merchants brought forty-four of
Arkwright’s spinning machines to a factory in Wülflingen. As a result, by the
early 1820s no hand spinners were left in the Swiss countryside.
Cotton was back then the driving force behind the rapid
industrialization in Europe and market information was already of crucial
importance. The Landbote, a journal published in Wintherthur, would thus
publish regular news about the cotton market of Le Havre after 1840.
As nations competed
for markets, Swiss manufacturers, like their British counterparts, responded to
the increasing protectionism around them by investing in Italian and German
cotton industry, and by looking for markets further afield. This is when Volkart
Brothers was created.
In the 1850s and
1860s, the production of batiks for South-east Asia and cotton head shawls for
the Islamic world was important to Swiss manufacturers, and notably for the
Wintherthur merchant house Gebrüder Volkart, which was by then selling Swiss
cotton goods to India, the Eastern Mediterranean, and East Asia.
Volkart Brothers, trading pioneers
Perhaps furthest ahead of its time was a Swiss house that
incorporated far-flung networks into the firm itself: Volkart Brothers. Founded
in 1851 by Salomon Volkart simultaneously in the Swiss town of Winterthur –an
important center of the cotton industry- and in Bombay, the firm began by
purchasing raw cotton in India and exporting manufactured wares to India. As
they opened more branch offices, Volkart Brothers increasingly organized the
purchasing of cotton not only in India but also in other parts of the world,
transporting that cotton to various European ports and then selling it to
spinners. By the late 1850s, Volkart brothers incorporated a whole range of
selling and buying activities.
The trading company imported cotton, tea, oil, coffee, cocoa,
spices, rubber and other colonial goods from India and exported for soap,
paper, matches, watches, textiles, machinery and other industrial goods in the
subcontinent. The business was successful, and so branches in Colombo (1857),
Cochin (1859) and Karachi (1861) were founded. In Winterthur, the family built
the famous Villa Wehntal on Römerstrasse which served as both corporate office
and private residence.
Yet, at mid-century, Volkart was exceptional,
as most cotton was still traded between independent houses mediated by networks
of trust, not between branches of a single company.
In the last third of the nineteenth century,
however, Volkart Brothers moved their capital ever closer to the actual cotton
growers, creating purchasing agencies in cotton-growing regions of India,
including Khamgaon, and erecting cotton gins and presses. Agents in the employ
of Volkart Brothers would purchase cotton from the local dealers, have it
processed in the firm’s own gins, then press it as “Volkart’s Press” and sent
it by rail to Bombay, where it was branded by Volkart agents to be shipped to
Liverpool, Le Havre or Bremen to be sold to mill owners who put great trust in
the “VB” stamped on the bales. While the old system had relied on many
intermediary merchants, Volkart now single-handedly connected cotton growers
and cotton manufacturers.
By 1882, sixteen Volkart presses dotted the
Berar countryside and by 1920 Volkart would be the largest shipper of
Indian-grown cotton, selling more than 180,000 bales, or one-quarter of total
exports.
When Johann Georg Volkart 1861 died suddenly,
Salomon Volkart continued the business with non-family partners. At this time,
the London branch was set up (1868). Due to political and economic
difficulties, high staff turnover and his ailing health Salomon Volkart
retreated from active oversight of the business in 1875, despite working until
his death in 1893.
Besides the Villa
Wehntal, the company made a big impact in Winterthur with its first large
administrative buildings, the Volkart-Haus, built in 1904-05 next to the train
station.
The marriage of Lilly
Volkart with Theodor Reinhart in 1912 saw the effective transfer of Volkart into
the hands of the Reinhart family, which still controls the fate of the trading
house to this day. In 1926 the company recorded no less than 80 branches in
India and was thus virtually representative of Switzerland in India. Two sons
of Theodor, Oskar and Werner were also later involved in the company.
In 1985, Andreas
Reinhart took over and bought out the rest of the family, remaining the sole
owner of the business. He launched an active investment and participation
policy, which largely failed, thus weakening the company. At the same time, he
reinforced the family’s commitment to the arts and cultural sector, in which
the company funds several foundations, and was instrumental in the founding of
the Fotomuseum Winterthur.
In 1989 the company
sold its coffee trade at the Erb Group, the coffee business subsequently traded
under the name Volcafe, reminiscent of the origin. Until it exited from the
cotton trade in 1999 Volkart Trading was the fourth largest cotton merchant
worldwide. The Volkart the company website refers now only to the various
foundations and its own financial holding activities but is no long a
significant trading company.
Comments
I worked
at the Monsanto Chemical Company HQ on the Textile Division staff in the 1960s
and saw and wore the polyester and cotton blend shirts that had been developed.
We also saw cotton seed oil as an additive to many processed foods. The textile
business was alive and well in the US from the 1800s through the 1900s until
the US off-shored most of our industries.
My Monsanto experience was a touch-stone linking me to my dad and Uncle
John’s link to cotton research. Most of my career led me to some of the
international travel they also experienced. It was also a touch stone back to
Grandpa Leahy and his career working with and investing in the other St. Louis
chemical companies.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment