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      Quakers entering into business were encouraged to keep written accounts, since accurate and thorough bookkeeping helped avoid errors of judgement.

       • It is advised that all Friends that are entering into Trade and have not stock sufficient of their own to answer the Trade they aim at be very cautious of running themselves into Debt without advising with some of their Ancient and Experienced Friends among whom they live.

      Above all, Quaker elders, many of whom were in trade themselves, were keen to prevent any ‘Great Reproach and Scandal’ that might damage the reputation of the Society:

       • It is advised . . . that all Friends concerned be very careful not to contract Extravagant Debts to the endangering and wronging of others and their families, which some have done to the Grieving Hearts of the upright, nor to break promises, contracts and agreements in the Buying and Selling or in any other lawful Affairs, to the injuring themselves and others, occasioning Strife and Contention and Reproach to Truth and Friends.

      The local Monthly Meetings across the country were not only a forum for exchanging ideas: Quakers were urged to ‘have a Watchful Eye over all their Members’. If they found anyone ‘Deficient in Discharging their Contracts and just Debts’, they were charged with ‘launching an Inspection into their Circumstances’. Should the transgressor fail to heed honest advice, ‘Friends justifiably may and ought to testify against such offenders.’ Accordingly, Friends collaborated in their local communities to help one another achieve high standards of integrity in trade.

      For those who failed to comply, there were further words of guidance. Despite the Advices’ exhortation to Friends to aspire to ‘Truthfulness and Perseverance in Godliness and Honesty’, ‘to our Great Grief we find there are fresh instances of Great Shortness in coming up in the Practice Thereof, particularly by some injuriously defrauding their Creditors of their Debts’. This had led to ‘Grievous Complaints’. The Advices urged further discipline to deal with those ‘Evil Persons’ who proved ‘base and unworthy’. Firstly, the rule which prohibited Friends from suing one another could be waived. Secondly, Monthly Meetings had the power to investigate cases and ‘speedily set righteous Judgment upon the head of the Transgressor’.

      Discipline could be severe for any members who were unable to meet the ethical standards required, or who acted imprudently in business. With the astonishing success of Quaker businesses and banks during the Industrial Revolution, protecting the good name of the Society became more important. Those who repeatedly failed to demonstrate the high ethical conduct required of a Quaker tradesman could be ‘disowned’ by the Society. This was seen as a harsh punishment, with the offender excluded from the local Quaker community and recognised publicly as a thief or a cheat.

      Effectively as early as 1738, Quakers had a set of specific guidelines for business, which endeavoured to apply the teachings of Christ to the workplace. Straight dealing, fair play and honesty would form the basis of Quaker capitalism, and for those who fell short, there were rules of discipline. These guidelines were supplied to clerks at the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, and were refined and formally updated every generation. They provide a snapshot of changing ethical concerns as the Industrial Revolution gathered momentum. For example, when the trading guidelines were updated in 1783 in the Book of Extracts, Friends were warned against a ‘most pernicious practice’ which could lead to ‘utter ruin’: the use of paper credit. This was considered ‘highly unbecoming’, falling far short of ‘that uprightness that ought to appear in every member of our religious society’. The 1783 Extracts warned unequivocally that this practice was ‘absolutely inconsistent with the truth’.

      The 1738 Advices and 1783 Extracts were updated once again in 1833 into the more formal Rules of Discipline. By this time, material prosperity presented another issue to exercise the minds of Quaker elders. Was it right for a religious person cultivating plainness and simplicity to accumulate wealth? ‘We do not condemn industry, which we believe to be not only praiseworthy but indispensable,’ noted the Rules of Discipline, but ‘the love of money is said in Scripture to be “the root of all Evil”’. The guidelines urged ‘Dear Friends who are favoured with outward prosperity, when riches increase not to set your hearts upon them.’ The work ethic was entirely acceptable, but accumulating riches for oneself was not.

      In 1861, as Richard and George Cadbury embarked on their business life, Quaker guidelines were updated once again, in Doctrine, Practice and Discipline. By now the section on trade had become a sophisticated set of rules, under the heading ‘Advice in Relation to the Affairs of Life’. These covered a wide range of issues: honesty and truthfulness, plain dealing, fair trading, debt, seeking advice from fellow Friends, inappropriate speculation, discipline, and much more. With an increased number of Quakers experiencing worldly success, there was even a section for the children of rich Quakers, to ensure that they were not corrupted but fixed ‘their hopes of happiness on that which is substantial and eternal’. The love of money was ‘a snare, which is apt to increase imperceptibly . . . and gradually withdraw the heart from God’.

      Richard and George Cadbury’s entire worldview was shaped by Quaker values. They moulded their early childhood experiences, their learning as apprentices, their social and marriage opportunities, their choice of career, and their all-encompassing view of the wider purpose of their chocolate business.

      From the earliest years they had seen their father endeavour to apply Quaker ideals in the community. According to George’s biographer Alfred Gardiner, John Cadbury was deeply concerned about society’s ‘savage indifference to the child’. This was before Charles Dickens made the Victorian public finally take notice of the plight of the ‘Parish Boy’ and the ‘little workus’, in his description of child criminals in Oliver Twist in 1837. In the 1820s, when John was developing his shop on Bull Street, it was not uncommon for children to be carted off from the workhouses ‘like slaves to the cotton mills of Lancashire or to the mines’, to be used there as if they were disposable. John was horrified by the misery and degradation of children trapped in a life of slavery.

      His greatest outrage was reserved for the ‘barbarous practice’ of using workhouse boys as young as five as chimney sweeps. Some chimneys were as narrow as seven inches square, and the children could only be induced to climb up inside by straw being lit beneath them, or being prodded with ‘pins’. Before they grew too big to be useful, many suffered twisted spines or damaged joints, or were maimed by falls or burns. When John was informed of a machine that could clean chimneys, he ‘had the courage to call a meeting of Master Sweeps in the Town Hall’, reported the Daily Gazette. But his demonstration of the new machine met with strong opposition, as the sweeps were convinced they got better results using boys. After years of campaigning he was delighted when legislation was eventually introduced banning the use of climbing boys.

      George and Richard also saw their parents become passionately involved in another major social issue of the time: alcoholism. The consumption of gin had become widespread in the eighteenth century, when many traditional pubs and alehouses were replaced by gin shops which promised oblivion with the tantalising slogan ‘Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for two pence. Clean straw for nothing.’ This ‘liquid fire’, in the words of London magistrate John Fielding, led to nothing less than ‘hell’. The painter and social critic William Hogarth wrote of gin causing ‘Distress even to madness and death’. Reports of children dying of neglect from their drunken parents were commonplace. There were even accounts of children being killed by their parents, their clothes sold for a pittance for more gin.

      By Victorian times the gin shops had become ‘gin palaces’, whose gilded interiors and warm gaslights seduced workers pouring out of mills and mines on payday. As a member of the Board of Street Commissioners in Birmingham, John Cadbury saw at close hand the squalid reality for those beguiled by such temptations, and he and Candia became keen supporters of the Temperance Movement. In 1834, John publicly signed up to become a total abstainer, and he and Candia vigorously took on the town’s drinkers, including even the ‘Moderation Society’, which tolerated modest

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