Jacob Sassoon: Systematizer and Modernizer Before Rivals Notice

“By the end of the century, one-third of India's half million factory workers were in cotton, with the Sassoon mills or their associated concerns among the largest employers. E. D. Sassoon & Company had several thousand hands on their payroll with an output, man for man, far higher than that of any other plant in Bombay and even several in Lancashire. Jacob had shown foresight in briefing his brothers in London to explore ways and means of streamlining cotton manufacture. He was eager to replace the old chaotic factory layout by a planned co-ordination which would save space and revitalize output. Spectacular results were achieved. He became the first millowner in India to install a conveyor-belt. It was crude and suffered many an early breakdown through careless operators, but for a time he alone was feeding raw cotton to his looms and seeing the finished yarn emerge, ripe for the bale and quickly on its way to the Bombay docks. With a minimum of delay, massive shipments of yarn could be dispatched not only to the Persian Gulf but to the Japanese ports beyond China.”

“A waiting game now opened. It demanded a sense of timing as well as tactical subtlety. The rival Sassoon firms would continue to watch each other, both vigilant for any sign that Tata would either crash or survive. Judging from the first two or three years at the Empress Mills, Sir Albert was being proved right. The stocky Parsee had made the beginner's error of buying inferior looms. His cloth was poor in quality, with production figures even lower than those of his Bombay competitors. His Company stock slumped to half its issue value, and several shareholders started to panic. He hurried back to Lancashire and sank most of his remaining cash in better and more up-to-date plant, scrapping the old machinery. Within a very short time, his bales became saleable and output shot up. He could soon pay stockholders a 16 per cent dividend, but continued to plough every spare rupee back into the business. E. D. Sassoon & Co. had now learned enough. They quickly bought land for factory sites and began looking around for any badly-run mills which might be taken over at cost or even below and put on a paying basis. Their branches had long handled Lancashire piece-goods and would find it comparatively simple to distribute cloth manufactured in Bombay. Tata lacked capital and was buried in the interior, while they had superior shipping facilities as well as warehouses ideally sited on Bombay's splendid harbour and docks. Moreover, immigrant Jews from Baghdad would make a reliable home-based labour force, far less prone to absenteeism than the migrants of Nagpur.”