Elias

"The pattern was becoming all too clear to Elias. His brother would remain the suave Chairman, although increasingly absorbed in civic affairs and his social life. He was playing host to the Governor, local officials, the Parsee magnates and any native princes who happened to be visiting the Presidency. He was being canvassed to accept nomination to the Bombay Legislative Council. His two sons had private tutors and would doubtless follow him into the business after completing their education in England. He was still in his prime, full of vigour and affable, if a touch pompous. He had lost his hair which gave a more patrician look to the longish face, framed by an almost white imperial beard."

"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."

"They had no taste for pioneering. David Sassoon followed the Gubbays, Ezras and Ezekiels to India. He had only sent his son, Elias, to China after the Jardines and others had secured a foothold in the Treaty Ports. From the beginning and almost by instinct, he conformed to the classic tradition by launching his millions on the second wave."

"As expected, the quiet and secretive Elias was careful with his money and inclined to play a lone hand. Within a few years, he was able to pay over £2,000 for shares in the China Steam Navigation Company. He also snapped up sites on the Shanghai mud flats at agricultural prices, sometimes as low as £90 an acre. (It would soar to £300,000 an acre by the time his grandson, Sir Victor, came to develop the Bund!) He guessed that the port must grow, but was surprised by the influx of fifty thousand Chinese labourers who poured into the Settlement by 185 5, eager to work and escape vicious taxation by the warlords. Elias would be among the first to invest in the housing estates that soon sprawled over the Chinese city."

"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."