E. D. Sassoon & Co.

"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."

"Albert was now approaching his sixtieth year. A rich but rather lonely man, he missed the society ofReuben and Arthur and secretly grieved over the defection of the brother with whom he had shared his boyhood. E. D. Sassoon & Co. had started to compete significantly in opium and Indian yarn. According to reports from Shanghai, they were also investing heavily in real estate. In Fenchurch Street, London, they had quickly opened an office, first managed by Jacob and then by his younger brothers who each served his time in China in the traditional fashion."

"Authority was now heavily weighted at the English end, an ideal platform for launching a brilliant social programme but remote from the firm's traditional strongholds in India and China. In taking this step, the three brothers became in effect absentee landlords. By contrast, E. D. Sassoon & Co. entrenched itself still deeper in Bombay. It was the natural supply base of a house looking towards Europe for its imports but eager to service the hungry consumer markets, both at home and in the Far East."