Bombay

"He started active trading from a very small quayside warehouse, owned by Zacharia. It was rat-free but far removed from the spacious ancestral serdab in Baghdad which at times bulged with merchandise like an Aladdin's Cave. The dhow captains slowly came to know him as a man of honour whose word could be trusted even in the smallest enterprise. He bought wharf space and rented it to traders who arrived by sea or overland to sell their goods and stock up. He added steadily to his capital but preferred to act as a middleman, particularly for Bombay merchants, rather than compete independently with local dealers who had more substantial reserves. It was the birth of a lifelong antipathy to all gambling transactions, however tempting. Cautiously he began to export a few horses, dates, sheepskins and small consignments of pearls to India, content with the lighter cargoes of silks and metal-ware that came back. With neither boats nor camels to distribute goods, he wisely decided to limit his imports."

"There was no falling off in personal initiative after their father's death; quite the reverse. His counsel would be missed, but they could at last speak their minds, liberated from a sense of being pieces on a chessboard. Each son now had the stimulus of a solid personal holding in the business. Apart from estate in England valued at £160,000, their father had left 'upwards of two million sterling', according to the vague Press announcement. No precise figure was ever published, but it was generally assumed in Bombay that he had been worth over five million pounds."

"Elias made Shanghai his personal base in 1850. Hong Kong seemed to him too dependent on slow mails and supercargoes of small clippers to handle a heavier volume of China trade. Already he saw lively potentialities beyond opium which was profitable but risky, and always strongly competitive. He therefore began to import metals, muslins and cotton while smoothly expanding the spice trade with the Indies, a lucrative sideline of the family business since their earliest years in Bombay. Moreover, the cold northern provinces offered a vast untapped market for the woollen yarns which his father was buying up in bulk."

"The Sassoon firm had unique advantages. Few competitors were as closely integrated or enjoyed a more reliable information service. It preserved them from the fate which overtook so many others as a too eager alchemy went to work in mid-century Bombay. They resisted dazzling new prospectuses and preferred to buy up businesses wrecked by gamblers or badly run by indolent, near bankrupt owners."

"More often he devoted his early evenings to talmudic study, receiving visitors and writing letters. Pleas for business advice, dowries, spiritual guidance and endowments came from the Gulf, the Holy Land, China, Japan and even beyond. A small community in New South Wales - one time refugees from Baghdad - might need prayer-books; the congregation in Tientsin required funds to open a new school; and from a dozen rabbis came desperate appeals for Sassoon, descendant of Princes of the Exilarch, to defend his brethren against some local oppressor. He weighed evidence, sifted genuine penury from professional begging letters, and poured out advice, together with his many lakhs of rupees. Every letter was answered in his own firm hand. Visitors who came from afar were given food hampers and clothing for their homeward journey, apart from the inevitable donations. Many stayed. From Baghdad, Aleppo and Damascus he brought over and resettled entire families. Most had to be fed, housed and given medical care. In his last years, no Jewish beggar would ever be seen in the streets of Bombay."

"After only ten years of independent trading, Elias and his sons felt equipped, both psychologically and financially, to give a lead to the more complacent parent firm. Cotton manufacture was an obvious outlet, but Sassoon caution made Elias hesitate until a Parsee had again shown the way. J. N. Tata recovered from his misadventures with Premchand Roychand and indirectly profited by his experiences in the false boom. During the ill-starred attempt to open an Indian Bank in England, he hurried to Lancashire to develop the brokerage side of their business. He interested himself in machinery and the workings of the Manchester Cotton Exchange. On his return, he thought much about the possibilities of manufacturing cotton locally instead of relying on Lancashire's piecegoods. Fourteen mills were now operating in Bombay with about half a million spindles, but many more had closed down through lack of money or bad management. To rebuild his capital Tata had first gone to Hong Kong, exchanging silk goods for the opium his brother shipped out from Bombay. Profits were satisfactory, but he saw little chance of breaking either the Sassoons' hold on this two-way traffic or the handsome rebates and discounts which they and others enjoyed in the freight market. He returned to India in 1869, investing his limited funds in a disused oil-pressing plant which he rapidly converted into a small cotton mill. The output was insignificant and not of good quality, but he familiarized himself with machinery and day-to-day administration. He recovered his whole outlay in two years and sold the plant at a respectable profit."

"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."

"David Sassoon was, however, wise enough to see the dangers of becoming too inward-looking and parochial. He endowed the Gothic-style Sassoon General Hospital at Poona for the benefit of all sects and creeds of Indians, as well as Jewish patients. Built on two floors with accommodation for two hundred men and women, it was equipped on the most modern Western scale, together with a hostel for doctors and nurses. Separate buildings were put up for lepers and maternity cases. The usual massive clock tower was included in the architect's plans. Punctuality was the first unoriental habit David Sassoon picked up from the British. He also gave generously towards an asylum in Poona for the relief of destitute invalids, aware that after-care might be desperately needed by those discharged from hospital, still crippled and unable to work. He once returned thoughtfully from visiting Abdullah's villa at Mahabaleshwar where European fruits and vegetables flourished in a red clay soil. He could not help contrasting its vivid flowers and the woods swarming with wild birds and game with the filth and flies he had just left below in Bombay. He soon bought a few acres and set them aside as camping grounds for the poor."