My
father, Joe Leahy joined Volkart Brothers in 1946. He had owned 13 filling stations in St. Louis
and served as the Night Superintendent of the Small Arms Plant in St. Louis
during World War II. This multi-national,
Swiss-based commodities trading company needed management people and Joe was
introduced to them by his brother John Leahy in 1945. Uncle John was a Chemist who had researched
all the properties and possible uses cotton seed oil and became the Director of
Research at Texas A&M, the Secretary of Agriculture for the State of Texas
and Consultant to Volkart Brothers. We moved to Hallettsville Texas in 1945 so
my dad could complete a Masters in Cotton Research Technology. When he completed this degree, he was hired
by Volkart Brothers as Manager of Research & Development and was tasked
with setting up test labs in Providence RI and Memphis TN. In 1948 he was
promoted to VP Research & Development at the US Headquarters in Manhattan
NY. In 1950 he was promoted to Managing Director and moved to Brussels Belgium.
The history of Volkart Brothers is below.
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.
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 branc 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.
The Swiss Trading & Shipping Association (STSA) is a
non-profit, non-political Swiss association representation companies active in
commodity trading and shipping activities, trade finance and related services.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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