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ROBERT AND
JAMES DICK
* *
TO TWO
GREAT SCOTS GENTLEMEN, DISTINGUISHED ALIKE BY THEIR BUSINESS ABILITY AND
HUMANI-TARIANISM, THIS VOLUME IS HAPPILY DEDICATED BY THE PRESENT
GENERATION.
Contents
7
ORIGIN OF THE DICKS
15
GUTTAPERCHA-AND THE FIRST ESSAYS
21
SUCCESSES-AND FAILURES
29
ARRIVAL OF BALATA AND THE BELT
40
FORMATION OF THE COMPANY
48
DIRECTORS
49
MANAGING DIRECTORS
50
CHAIRMEN
51
HOME BRANCHES
52
PRODUCTS
ORIGIN OF THE
DICKS
Our knowledge
of the brothers Dick before they reached their adventurous and inventive
manhood which created R. & J. Dick, Ltd., and built a new industry into
the fabric of Scots economy one hundred years ago is practically nothing.
No biographer with a poised pen sits at the elbow of obscurity, and men of
character with a purpose think not in terms of diaries but of deeds. The
Dicks were too profoundly absorbed in their enterprise to think, even for
a moment, of genealogical trees.
They sprang
from the people in an age of liberal thought and liberal opportunity and
their contemporaries in this eruptive and expansive century were less
inquisitive about origins than ideas. Probably it never occurred to the
brothers that their family was anything but their own business and a
matter of no consequence to others. It is known that other brothers and,
possibly, sisters were born within the fold, but no one living has met
them or has any notion of what they were like or how they resembled or
differed from Robert and James.
One of the
brothers died a bachelor and the other married late in life and was
without issue, his wife post-deceasing him. So there is none to consult
concerning family fact or fancy. The legend which seems to come near the
truth is that the Dick stock exhausted itself in the production of the
remarkable brothers. It is no matter.
The
worthiness of the two lowly parents of Kilmarnock, where the brothers were
born, is implicit in the excellence of the sons. Their type was common
enough in the Scotland of that day. Many of the great industrial families
of the present time owe their beginnings to such thrifty, industrious and
far-seeing forebears of whom the records are silent or, at any rate, not
very articulate.
The gap
between the home in Kilmarnock and the subsequent home and grocer's shop
of the Dicks at the corner of Crown Street and Govan Street, Glasgow, is
not bridged by any surviving account. It is fairly easy to reconstruct,
however, if the history of the Dicks followed the normal channels. When
the brothers were still reaching for adolescence the country was in no
happy state. One of the inevitable changes in the economic life of mankind
was moving in its appointed course. As the Industrial Revolution swept
bewilderingly forward in ever-higher gears it ploughed through the old
design for living and cast it into new and swirling patterns.
The machines
made the cities richer and the towns and villages poorer. To a man of
prudent views and with some care for his own future and the prospects of
his children, the town was no longer a delectable paradise and it was
Hobson's choice. So, in all probability, with an invitation from a
relative or a friend in his pocket, and some fortitude in his heart, the
father of the Dicks, formerly a seafaring man, joined the growing
pilgrimage to Glasgow, the bonanza of the hungry job-seeker, already
prosperous with its swollen sea trade and exploiting the new age -a city
already darkening with black smoke and fumes and loud with the metallic
clatter of engines.
They came to
Crown Street, to the house at the corner of Govan Street. James was then
five, Robert three years older. Crown Street is that long, drab
thoroughfare stretching from the south over the river to the old Mercat
Cross of Glasgow and the ancient steeple, whereabouts it joins the
venerable High Street, around which much of the colourful history of the
city is entwined. The Dick family, therefore, were domiciled not only in
the core of the Old City but identified with the locality in which
industry and commerce were mushrooming.
At the
beginning of the ’Forties or thereabouts the fortunes of many notable
Glasgow firms were being founded or about to be founded in this territory
- among them the carpet-making Templetons. Neither the Dicks nor the
Templetons, come weal come woe, have deserted these purlieus in more than
a hundred years. The Greenhead works of the Dicks still sits solidly
beside Glasgow Green and looks across to the Clyde; and not far away,
enshrined in all the splendour of an imitation of the Doge's Palace in
Venice, stands the modern factory of the Templetons. The lasting
attachment of the Dicks for the East-End, to which the family first came,
was written in a final allegiance on the part of Robert, the elder
brother, for he died in Monteith Row, where the brothers once lived
together, the brownstone terrace with the patrician look which sweeps by
the gates of the Green and equals in stateliness the noble terraces of
Greek Thomson and the Adam Brothers in the West-End.
What the
first family house in Crown Street was like is unknown. The tall tenements
accommodating the working classes, which still favour the area, probably
existed in some form. Two or three rooms off a close is a fair guess at
the size of the dwelling. How long the Dicks lived here, the ages of the
boys when the migration occurred, what penny-a-week school they attended
or if they were regular worshippers at the Kirk - for that would be the
compulsory school for conduct and ethics apart from the home are matters
beyond conjecture and confided to none.
If the
brothers left the classroom at or before the age of twelve it would not
have been regarded as uncommon or improper. For elder children in the
family of a small tradesman were naturally expected it was their
prescriptive right and allotted place - to begin early to assist in the
support of the multiplying younger. It is certain that the elder Dicks did
not enjoy the graces of a university education, although they interested
themselves in such technical studies and books as were available. Robert,
especially, was a student of the applied sciences all his life and in
advance always, and unregenerately, of his period; an experimentalist and
a dreamer to whom money meant little and achievement everything .... Money
came to him in generous measure and he spent it, or gave it away,
generously, even prodigally. And the University came to him and gratified
his sense of equal companionship - for Lord Kelvin sometimes wandered down
from the heights of Gilmorehill during the heartbreaking days of the
laying of the Atlantic cable and was closeted comfortably in the brothers'
room at the factory. The master of precision instruments, the alumnus, and
the earnest layman who pioneered electric lighting in Scotland and
manufactured his own equipment conversed over teacups at Greenhead while,
in the same room, brother James totted up his ledgers diligently beside
them - and the workshop next door hummed and thumped in the making of
guttapercha soles for cheap shoon.
If no special
educational benefits were conferred upon the young Dicks, however, we are
able to conclude from the next fragment of evidence that the family had
prospered in a modest way after arrival in Glasgow; for Robert, presently,
was apprenticed to a jeweller and James to an upholsterer. To have two
tradesmen - and, perhaps, more - in one household has been,
traditionally, the ambition of artisan Glasgow. But in those days of
economic revolution and transplantation it speaks eloquently for the
steady quality and character of the Dick menage.
Either the
father or the mother, or both, were actively ambitious for their two sons;
or else the sons fended for themselves after the way in which the
literature of the time frequently speaks of early maturity in
self-sufficiency. Or, maybe, there was something in the resurgent mood of
Glasgow or in the murky air of Crown Street that went on for long enough
to throw up other prodigies like Tommy Lipton, born in another corner
house along the street. For the stuffing of dusty chairs or the mending of
old watches could not satisfy such ardent spirits .... The last we hear of
the Dicks
en famille
is of
a washhouse in Crown Street in which two young men are adding violently
to the nausea of the neighbourhood by frying a gummy substance termed
guttapercha, derived from an equatorial tree, in a kitchen shovel over the
boiler fire and trustfully believing that, by some alchemy, they could
produce an inexpensive commercial substitute for the leather soles of
footwear.
Both Robert
and James Dick were great men, as we can see from the distance in time of
a hundred years. The year 1846, we must remember, produced McCormick's
reaping machine. In the same year Elias Howe's sewing machine made its
debut. It was an age in which the labour-saving device was forced upon
public notice and the issue joined with centuries-old methods and
materials. It is no small thing that these two Scotsmen, racing with the
new current of thought, should make their attack upon the traditional uses
of leather. If they failed ultimately in the attempt to change the
immemorial habit of mankind to use hide for the protection of its feet
they, and their followers, have succeeded brilliantly all over the
mechanised world in a revolution which set up a new and powerful
competitor in power transmission and conveying – balata, the heir to
guttapercha.
They were
great men – judged by the standards of their age and by greater standards,
too. They were both characteristic of the times, if in different ways.
Robert's was the restless spirit, dissatisfied with man's knowledge of the
physical world. From the first it was Robert who dreamed of the universal
gum substitute for leather in its many uses; first the boots and then the
belt were the fruits of his faith and invention. It was Robert who had the
kinship with Kelvin and who spent his time and money experimenting with
determination and success in making electric light a practical
proposition.
And it was
James in his counting-house, with his actuarial mind and his capacity for
commerce, who disapproved of Robert's departures from his own business
concerns - as if Robert could have escaped the impulses of his own nature.
It was James, exasperated at last by a brother he could not comprehend who
dissolved the partnership and sailed away to Australia with a bride from
the Greenhead works, the daughter of a sea captain. Yes, and it was James
who found again in himself in this adventure abroad, the obverse side of
the Dick coinage. There, like Robert, he was true to his times; for if in
that remarkable century man seriously set himself to bring nature under
subjection he also accumulated wealth on the scale of the ancient East.
When James went to Australia with his bride and his liquidated capital he
bought a seventh share in Broken Hill and later acquired the principal
interest in Mount Morgan, an even better investment in gold mining than
his previous in silver. He died a millionaire. But in him was the faith
shared by many of his contemporaries that wealth should be converted into
a trust for his fellows. At his death it was disclosed that, apart from
some private bequests, his entire fortune had been bequeathed to
charitable institutions. And more than that, by a gesture upon which Owen
of Lanark must have cast an approving smile from the shades, he handed
over the business of R. & J.
Dick to his principal workers.
The total
estate left by James Dick was £1,077,000. Half a million pounds was
bequeathed to charities all over Scotland. The workers in the business
received money gifts of £108,915. A substantial part of the residue was
devoted to the creation of a pension fund from which employees to-day are
still benefiting.
When one
considers the first lowly experiment with the kitchen shovel over the
wash-house fire and the early struggles for survival, the evolution of the
story is remarkable. Here is not only a cross-section of the industrial
development of Glasgow in the nineteenth century, but a superb example of
Scots character – tough and fibrous in adversity and extravagantly
generous and disinterested at the summit of success.
GUTTAPERCHA –
AND THE FIRST ESSAYS
BEFORE the
year 1846 the Dicks were living in Crown Street. Robert, exhibiting the
first signs of initiative, had concluded his term with the unspecified
jeweller to whom he was apprenticed, had set up in business on his own
account as a watchmaker and established himself" in an upper chamber" in
Buchanan Street, then in process of reconstruction, its facades still
concealing a garden or two. James apparently had also excelled in his
trade of upholstery, but the paternal grocery business evidently did not
at that time have the funds to support a second son's endowment as an
independent business man; or else James was an autumn crocus in affairs,
or perhaps events anticipated such a venture.
At any rate,
whatever future Robert and James envisaged for themselves in the realm of
small business, some strange intelligence from over the seas settled their
destinies. The first news of the discovery of guttapercha, a gum derived
from a tree in tropical Borneo, probably did not reach the ears of even
the alert Robert. Information concerning the arrival of the first
shipments could scarcely, in the normal way, arrest the attention of a
young man peering at broken watches through an eye-glass and struggling to
consolidate a new business. It is probable from what we know of Robert
that his intense application was more likely to produce some new turn in
the science of horology. If he were not satisfied, as is likely enough,
with the spiritual limitations imposed by that small chamber with its
orderly disarray of springs, balances and cog-wheels, we know from his
subsequent career that he was interested in the mechanics of his trade.
Neither of the brothers thought fit to refer at any time to that most
humanly interesting of all propositions – how it all began. The journals
of the day probably paragraphed the progress of guttapercha, but whether
Robert was looking for new fields to conquer or whether the gum substance
inspired the idea is a moot point. The spectroscopic range of aniline dyes
was derived, as so many other adornments of civilised life, by someone who
was looking for something else!
This much, however, is strictly on record. We have it
from James in a speech delivered at the jubilee celebrations of the firm.
In 1843 the year of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland-a certain Dr.
W. Montgomery brought samples of guttapercha from Singapore which caused
"considerable excitement" in the world of applied sciences. The
imaginative, as in all such cases, given the theory that the gum was of
such a character as to displace leather in all its accepted functions,
prophesied· the end of tanned hide- as the material for every utility
article, from harness to footwear. It has been said that the shyest thing
in the world is a million pounds, but money is always forthcoming for new
ideas that create new markets; and soon a concern, The Wharf Road
Guttapercha Company, was formed to handle and advertise the gum. This
company enjoyed a high reputation in step with much of the investment of
the period, which laid the foundations of our international renown for
commercial integrity
A year elapsed before Robert became aware of
guttapercha; or, at least, it was in 1846 that he first mentioned the
subject to James. That conversation must have been provocative for, next
day, the brothers had succeeded in purchasing from some source one pound
avoirdupois of guttapercha. Along with it they obtained a can of solution
costing three shillings – and a card of instructions on how to make shoes.
It is not clear whether the amateur's guide to shoemaking was the work of
the admirable Wharf Road Guttapercha Company, employing recognisably
modern technique in its propaganda, or whether the card was an effort by
some early form of our adult education system to instruct youth in the
craft of the cobbler's last. Anyhow, the die was cast, and that very
night, the two young men soled and heeled three pairs of shoes and were
eminently pleased with themselves. The partnership was thus formed in
1846.
For some
reason connected with the current economy of the upholstery trade, James
was unemployed at the time of this episode, and it was considered by
Robert as a good opportunity to install his brother in a retail business
for the sale of the various products of the Guttapercha Company, which was
manufacturing the goods it was popularising. Within a week a vacant shop
was rented at 12 Gallowgate-a site which, with the exception of three
years during the reconstruction of Glasgow Cross – remained in possession
of the Dicks until the abandonment of their interest in the making of gum
footwear and the sale of their country-wide interests to similar
companies.
Trade
flourished and it appeared as if the speculation were justified. But
summer brought a decline in sales, possibly due to some flaw in the
advertising scheme which emphasised the waterproof virtues of guttapercha
and failed to say that the substance, at that stage of development, wilted
in higher temperatures. So, after three months of confidence James again
found himself idle and with responsibility for an annual rent of £50.
During this
period of retail trading, however, the brothers had been germinating the
plan which shortly was to end Robert's attachment to a career of
watchmaking and to launch a partnership in a fresh direction. For the
rest of that summer James returned to the exercise of his talents as an
upholsterer with a cousin named Simpson in London Road. By the winter the
brothers considered themselves ready to begin operations. The plan was to
manufacture shoes with guttapercha bottoms. Bootmaking is a craft of great
skill and antiquity, and it required a stout heart, not to say a dauntless
simplicity, for a watchmaker and an upholsterer to embark upon the project
with nothing more in the way of furnishings, mental or manual, than the
amateur's guide, ambition and resourcefulness. The shoes were hand made.
“It was slow and expensive,” says James, “and we rea1ly could not compete
with the ordinary shoes in the market, although we were well patronised by
the scientific and wealthy people of the town.” The effect of it all was a
flutter in the dovecots of the conventional trade, a season of notoriety,
and then stagnation again.
The tenacity
of the brothers has to be admired. Twice their enterprise had failed but
there is no mention of discouragement. One way and another they must have
earned enough to enable them to survive independently, for they continued
determinedly alone with the next phase of their endeavour -to produce
shoes with only the uppers made of leather. This was resolutely riding the
fallen horse at the same fence. Robert, the watchmaker, as became his
trade, made the guttapercha moulds, and James, the upholsterer, essayed
the leather uppers. The experiment, in so far as the finished product was
concerned, was entirely successful. An original concept of footwear had
arrived and the Dicks, acquiring a flat opposite the shop, had gone into
earnest manufacture. Hours were spent over the window display at 12
Gallowgate, but it failed to allure a conservative public. After the first
excitement was over, the nine days' wonder giving place to other
sensations, the sales graph showed the familiar downward curve.
It was price,
the brothers concluded. From the beginning it had been evident that
novelty and what advantages guttapercha could claim over the orthodox
leather article would not sustain the market alone. The leather shoe had
to be undersold. Guttapercha could overcome prejudice only by sheer
economics.
The
guttapercha shoe had not only to' be cheaper than the leather one, but it
had to be sensationally cheaper, as well as good, to obtain, not a luxury
or fashionable market, but a working-class and extensive clientele. So the
Dicks set about the problem, undismayed.
One suspects
that it is at this point that James really came into his own when, for the
first time, costing and not pure creation became the real touchstone of
success or failure.
SUCCESSES –
AND FAILURES
The good
fortune which superstitiously is supposed to follow high endeavour and
less high living ran true to form on this occasion. It came to the Dicks
in the fortuitous shape of a fall in the price of guttapercha.
When the
brothers were being rebuffed by an unappreciative country the gum was a
monopoly and accordingly priced. About this time a new concern, the
Silvertown Company, arose in opposition to the Wharf Road Company and, as
a consequence of competition, the price of the gum began to decline. The
finest material was being offered and bought at 1s. 7d. a lb., far below
the price to which the Dicks had been accustomed.
The chance
had arrived to test the last theory of two dogged young. men who were
themselves satisfied, in spite of all, that the factors were in favour of
their product in the challenge to leather, if only the price of the
article could be related to the vast market which working-class demand
could offer.
The tickets
in the window at No. 12 Gallowgate showed a reduction from 7s. 6d. to 6s.
6d. in the price of shoes, and the rush of customers was confidently
awaited. To the astonishment of the Dicks the unheeding mob passed by
their door. James was the less confounded of the two, for he had now the
consolation of his hobby-horse. His price was low but obviously not low
enough. Guttapercha was still toppling in price, which now had reached its
nadir at ninepence a pound. James had been adding to his experience of
buying and handling leather. This fact, the fall in guttapercha, his
financial shrewdness and the faith he shared with his brother made the
next step inevitable. The shoes swiftly came down to Ss. 6d. a pair. Ah,
this was IT at last! ... but still the result was frustration as the
public remained indifferent to what was surely the biggest event of the
day in the whole cobbling world. Nothing, apparently, not even price now,
seemed destined to attract that glittering but obdurate market.
It was
decided, more gloomily than at any stage since the days with the
frying-pan in the washhouse -but not less determinedly-that one last
effort to make the grade should be attempted, and price again was chosen
as the battleground. Robert in his small factory, working at his gums and
solutions, and James, with his representatives and his ledgers, somehow
contrived between them to produce a pair of shoes at 4s. 6d., which they
decided to sell at 5s., leaving themselves the bare margin of sixpence a
pair. In many ways this manoeuvre was blind betting – “bulling” their
luck for what it was worth. It should be remembered that this was not an
established business with fighting reserves able to operate at a loss on a
long-term view. It was a final throw-and it succeeded. Five shillings,
just that figure, not four - and - elevenpence - three - farthings, proved
to be the talisman. The tide had turned...
The little
shop in Gallowgate-ticketed with the standard price of five'
shillings-caught the fickle fancy of the public. The perfect form of
advertising which is the word-of-mouth, "Have-you-heard?" club, pub and
street corner chatter, spread the news; and the shop rapidly throve until
it could no longer bear the swelling burden of demand. Nor could the
factory in the flat produce the goods. The tide had turned and turned with
the impetuosity of a flood. Shakespeare says, “There is a tide in the
affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ...” The
Dicks rode the storm of success like Valkyries. They were as inspired and
as industrious as in the winter of their dismay. They bought land and
built a new factory; they rented shops throughout Glasgow, throughout
England, crossed the Channel to Ireland-seventy shops eventually were
retailing the five-shilling shoe.
For
thirty-five years they enjoyed unalloyed prosperity and created a new
industry for Scotland. The record week of sales was 34,000 pairs, and the
average sales were never lower than 20,000 pairs a week.
The trump
card had been the price-not just five shillings, but the magic of a round
figure pitched correctly, if at that time fumblingly, to catch the
imagination and fit the pocket. It is extremely doubtful if, in the
beginning, the Dicks understood at that time the psychological forces with
which they were dealing-the conception of the low fixed price which made
Woolworths, and the theory of small profits and quick returns which is now
the dogma of Emporia. One cannot say whether Robert and James Dick were
the actual originators of this new ideology-to give it a blessed name. One
of the curiosities of invention is its simultaneous occurrence at
different geographical points. This is to be found, for example, in the
science of aeronautics and in the more recent study of nuclear energy.
But, at any rate, the Dicks were early-and independently-in the field.
These young
sons of the grocer of Crown Street in all their oral or written records
never aspired to talk in a highfalutin' way of the anatomy of
pricemaking, or of all the abracadabra of man-hours. One imagines they
would not have adopted the Bedaux schemes of production. Low price was not
accomplished by a nice calculation of exactly the number of soles a
worker could be forced to fabricate in any given period. Conditions
certainly favoured benevolence of view towards labour, but the attitude
of the Dicks was always patriarchal towards their employees.
There is the
story, by way of evidence, of a certain employee who was not notable for
his diligence, and who had been granted reprieve after reprieve,
sometimes by his amusing method of playing one brother off against the
other. The crisis came one day when neither brother could be bothered any
more with such nonsense and the erring servant appeared before Robert, who
was completely uncompromising. The man departed with a headshake which
suggested his view of the hopelessness of dealing with employers who could
not understand, but returned shortly and confronted Robert who received
him with some impatience. "Wait, Mr. Robert," the man said, “before you
say anything. Perhaps you dinna ken when you have got a guid man but A ken
when A've got a guid maister.” The man was allowed to stay and
subsequently became quite a figure in the business.
This family
attitude persisted from the beginning to the end of the lives of the Dicks
and was symbolised finally in the gift of R. & J. Dick, lock, stock and
barrel, to the senior employees and the generous legacies to all old
servants: The. Brothers were kindly to the point of quixotry in all
relations with their workpeople. They were men of strong character,
ambitious and forceful, depending upon their own talents to ensure the
prosperity of their affairs and regarding their establishment as a trust
and the workers as their personal responsibility. James said himself that
the force behind his return to Greenhead after his brother’s death and
after he had accumulated his million in foreign parts, was concern for the
people who, in factory and the shops, had marched with him in his prime.
The Dick
cheap shoe had now become a byword in the vocabulary of the
working-classes and Robert and James had settled down to exploit the
demand. Hand manufacture had been replaced by power machinery and
refinements in manufacture ~ad been steadily instituted. The shoe was
good, reliable and economical, and had built itself into public esteem.
The age of accident was over. The misfortune of the lawyer at Parliament
House could not recur. No product could long have survived this story of
discomfiture
in
which, on a
hot summer's day, the lawyer had stood for a long time discussing a case
with an eminent Queen's Counsel and had to unlace his guttapercha-soled
shoes before he could walk away, so firmly was he fastened to the
Edinburgh pavement! All these awkward technical – and social – problems
had been surmounted.
The Dicks,
after extending the Gallowgate factory by renting new property, realised
that this course was expedient but only makeshift, and decided that a
properly organised factory
in
a new location was
necessary. In 1859 Robert Dick, on behalf of his brother and himself,
bought MacPhail’s Mill, a disused building situated at the top of what is
now MacPhail Street and beside Glasgow Green, the oldest and most historic
of Glasgow's open spaces. The area was 4,872 square yards and the cost
£1,000. The mill was renovated and, periodically,
it
was extended
until a sizeable factory was in existence. It was named,
quite obviously, Greenhead Works. The factory, enlarged and modernised,
now devoted exclusively to the manufacture of the world-famous “Dickbelt,”
is still the headquarters of a thriving Industry.
The
modernisation, of course, was gradual, and in accordance with
requirements and the energetic policy of the Dicks and their successors.
On one occasion, however, partial reconstruction was made necessary by a
fire which broke out one night while the factory was still in shoe
production. The fire brigade took charge, and a cordon of firemen was
formed to protect the inquisitive spectator from himself. While the blaze
was at its height a figure pushed through the cordon and was sternly
rebuked by the words – “You can't go into this factory.” Over his
shoulder, as he ran towards the smoke-filled offices, Robert Dick replied,
“Can't I, by - ! It's my factory,” and disappeared, to return a few
minutes later, hugging to his person some ledgers and papers.
The arrival
of the electrical age sealed the fate of Dick’s cheap guttapercha shoe. It
had been discovered about 1865 that guttapercha was the most efficient
form of insulation for electrical cables and the demand for supplies of
the gum began to increase. This demand reached its peak when the Atlantic
submarine cable, coated with guttapercha, was fabricated. Production of
the gum moved in pace with the consumption and the trees in Borneo, which
were the source of supply, were recklessly destroyed beyond repair to
nourish the inexhaustible demand. The results, inevitably, were a
contraction of supply and a swift rise in price. By the end of the century
the market price had swollen from ninepence a lb., the figure at which the
Dicks first produced the five-shilling shoe, to five shillings a lb.
True to
character and faithful to tradition the brothers struggled against
adversity, even using inferior material to maintain a cheap shoe in their
multiple shops, but to no purpose. The trade was done and the fact had to
be recognised. It was no use seeking consolation from a still robust
demand from the Continent.
Long after
both Robert and James were dead the manufacture of guttapercha shoes, in
various forms, continued at Greenhead, concurrently with the manufacture
of “Dickbelt” until, in 1923, shoe production was discontinued .
The origins
of the “Dickbelt” and its influence upon the fortunes of the Greenhead
establishment are subjects for separate consideration.
ARRIVAL OF BALATA AND THE BELT
In one of the
few self-revealing documents James Dick left behind him – Robert appears
not to have been survived by any script which would cast light upon his
thoughts – he says:
“About the
year 1885 I got wearied of the continual hard work and, not being in very
good health, or in love (I am not sure which-any way you like to put it),
I made up my mind to leave the business and get married. I took to
travelling.”
At the time
of this decision James was 62 years of age, having been born in Kilmarnock
in 1823. He married Kate MacDonald, a girl employed in one of the
departments of the business and, for six years he travelled abroad with
his wife, mostly in Australia. Robert, the older man, was left alone
without the support of his life-long partner, with the cares of a
collapsing concern upon his ageing shoulders-he was now 65. James,
according to his own testimony, had no part or parcel in the invention of
the balata belt. "It was during my absence," he says, "that my brother
invented the belt." To Robert, then – or, rather, to Robert's unflagging
powers of ingenuity and resilience – goes the credit of raising the
phoenix from the dying embers of Greenhead.
James has
said it was fatigue, marriage and ill-health which caused him to take his
departure. The brothers were loyal to each other and, on that account, we
are not given what was undoubtedly a fourth, and potent, reason-Robert's
addiction to wider interests than the production of shoes for the masses,
and James's intense dislike of this Tweedledum and Tweedledee existence.
James was single in his devotion to his business-and especially to his
sphere in the counting-house. One might say that in his later years he was
the static as opposed to the dynamic type of his brother. He was impatient
of those perpetual visitors whom Robert was always entertaining in the
common room they used, visitors of some distinction, such as Lord Kelvin
(then Professor Thompson of Glasgow University) and J. D. F. Andrews,
another bright star in the constellation of pioneers in precision
instruments. James would meet them and then retire to a corner and his
ledgers, while the scintillating talk ran on at the hearthstone.
We are not
able to judge whether Robert's distractions and absorptions had any
adverse effect on the firm of R. & J. Dick. Probably they didn't. But
James, with his passion for something which, to him, was real and
substantial and with the responsibility of long and perplexing days over
the guttapercha debacle, no, doubt was rebellious and regarded Robert's
digressions as unwarranted dilettantism. On this very subject it is easy
to surmise the nature of some of the conversations in the mansion on
Monteith Row, where the bachelor brothers lived together after the death
of their mother.
Yet it was
Robert’s initiative which first gave identity to the idea of guttapercha
soles and it was the fertile, questing mind of Robert which invented the
balata belt when all seemed lost.
The pursuits,
not strictly allied to the business, which caused the disquiet in James
were related to electrical research, as the names of Kelvin and Andrews,
Robert's friends, suggest. He gave his wealth, his time and his capacity
to the formation of the Woodside Dynamo Company, one of the earliest of
Glasgow's electrical equipment concerns, which erected a factory in the
vicinity of Kelvinbridge. His personal experiments in electric lighting
were in advance of his period and abreast of what might be described as
the enlightened thought of the day. He ran a cable from Greenhead to the
original shop in Gallowgate, which he thus provided with one of the first
electric lighting installations in Glasgow. He also illuminated the Dick
shop on North Bridge, Edinburgh, with electricity, employing a Woodside
dynamo driven by a Tangye engine in the back premises. On Saturday nights
he displayed coloured lamp$ and attracted such crowds that the
installation had to be removed, "to preserve law and order," at the
instigation of the local authority. Perhaps,
inter alia,
no one
suspected Robert of having, in addition to his notable attributes, a
lively flair for advertising which James could not fail to have commended.
There can be
no doubt as to the catholicity of Robert's interests or friends in the
realms of applied science and of engineering, if we add to Kelvin the name
of the Mechan of Scotstoun who built the light metal boat which Stanley
took with him to Africa in his search for Livingstone and do not overlook
that it was Andrews' concentric cable for the transmission of electricity
which made possible the first electric installation in a sea-going vessel.
It is a
simple step in reconstruction to assume from these personal associations
and progressive tendencies of mind that Robert had considered, among other
exciting problems in an age of engineering imperfection, that of power
transmission. The next step is as obvious-that Robert was re-joining issue
with the old enemy, leather. By all his inclinations and experience he
would be prejudiced against the leather belt and, thereby, challenged to
find a substitute. Undeniably, that substitute would require to be a gum.
If he could succeed in this, then his life-long battle was not to end in
defeat. At one stroke he would justify his faith and secure his business.
He found the substance for which he was searching-balata. By painstaking
experiment he perfected his transmission belt, and took out patent rights.
At an age not far short of 65, he undertook with his usual calm fortitude
as great a task as that which confronted him when he entered industry as a
young man – the reconversion of Greenhead from a shoe-producing to a
belt-producing unit.
Like
guttapercha, balata is a vegetable gum. It is derived principally from
trees of the mimusops species in the virgin forests of Venezuela, Brazil
and the Guianas. The properties which distinguish it from other gums and
make it especially valuable in the manufacture of balata belting are its
great toughness, its dependability, its resistance to oxidisation and
moisture and its wide range of usefulness. These characteristics, in
conjunction with the specially woven "Dick belt " fabric, ensure an
immensely strong and practically stretchless belt. When the variety of
industrial usage is considered, a belt that will take no harm by being
exposed to weather or water is an answer to the engineer's prayer and
accounts for two things.
The first is
the universal acceptance of the belt and the second, as the result of the
accumulated wisdom of 60 years, the practice of manufacturing the belt in
only one quality, the best.
Cheaper belts
have come and gone. Robert Dick's patent expired after the regulation
fourteen years and imitators, naturally desirous of extracting harvests
from a field already fertilised, entered into competition. Those
competitors used persuasive methods and cut-prices. But behind the
“Dickbelt” was the sterling worth of Robert Dick and the reverence of his
successors for his skill and sagacity to such an extent that the article,
apart from adjustments exacted by mechanical change, remains fundamentally
the original work of the inventor.
To-day, the
belt produced in 1885 is responsible for a trading organisation which
encircles the globe. The largest belt ever made is a “Dickbelt” of 3,000
feet for the potash mines of Alsace. There are “Dickbelts” in every
climate, on tea estates in Ceylon, in wheat mills in Chile, in the
goldfields of Australia, the jute plants of India, in the rice mills of
Burma, in a ropery in New Zealand, carrying wet shale in South Wales, and
conveying merchandise in Amsterdam – wherever a stout and Scottish job is
needed to transmit power or convey commodities.
The
steel-rolling mills of Europe are almost exclusively equipped with “Dickbelt.”
Even after enduring, as part of their history, six years of relentless
employment during the Occupation, “Dickbelts” are still functioning
creditably in Poland and Belgium, from which new orders are again
beginning to flow.
* * * *
Robert Dick
did not live to enjoy the fruits of perseverance and industry, but he
lived long enough to be reasonably assured that the firm 'of R. & J. Dick
was established. His death occurred in 1891, six years after the invention
of the belt and at the beginning of the laborious processes of
reconversion and marketing. Apart from a great anthology of decent
impressions passed down from _ generation to generation in the business
there is nothing to add to the biography of Robert Dick.
James, his
brother, returned to assume the proprietorship and management of
Greenhead. He did so reluctantly.
“At this
time,” he says, “it was a very serious question with me whether I should
return to Greenhead or not. But it was my duty to return and do what I
could for the work and also for the old employees who had so long and
faithfully served us.
“The first
thing I did when I returned was to find out the value of my brother's
invention and I found it to be a first-rate belt. I then spared neither
time nor money to make it a success, and in this I have not been
disappointed.
“In the year
1892 the sales of these belts amounted to £40,000 and by the end of this
year (1896), it will be little short of £200,000. Of course, this has
involved great outlay and, although I have been protected by a patent, the
belts have been sold at a reasonable price.”
What James
clearly did on re-entering the business was to reinvigorate it. For twelve
months before his death Robert had been in ill-health, and the efforts he
had made for the reconstitution of his affairs had sapped his remaining
energy and impaired the: effectiveness of his effort. James took stock of
the situation and found it promising. He was wealthy and he was attached
to Greenhead and its many associations with his brother. He flung money
into building, machinery, agencies abroad and the marketing of the belt.
And, as he acknowledges himself, he was successful beyond his
expectations.
When James
Dick died in 1902 his belt and his business were firmly established.
Behind him, the man who came back from retirement, he left a record, not
only of thinking in a large way and of having boldness and imagination in
the conduct of affairs, but of altruistic and humanitarian qualities
rarely combined in one personality. Robert cared very little for money; he
had a social conscience expressed in great kindliness. They called him
"The Silver King" as the result of his habit of indiscriminately handing
out half-crowns to the poor, the improvident and the general run of
mendicants who waylaid him nightly as he walked from Greenhead to the
brothers’ home in Monteith Row. It was James, however, having the same
gentle and generous instincts, but with a more profound sense of the value
and management of money, who conferred greater social benefits with his
wealth.
James died a
millionaire, the sequel to the accumulation of his profits from R. & J.
Dick and the positive genius behind his investments in precious minerals.
With the exception of family and private bequests, the larger part of his
fortune was devoted to the well-being of his fellow-men. Already, in
celebration of his marriage, and at a cost to himself of £60,000, he had
purchased and presented Cathkin Braes to the Corporation of Glasgow with
the condition that this beauty spot should be preserved in its natural
state as a public park. This urge towards public benefaction asserted
itself again during his lifetime when, entirely at his own expense, he
erected the Dick Institute, still one of the finest architectural features
of Kilmarnock, the town of his birth; while he financed, as a memorial to
his brother, the imposing Dick Wing of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, which
forms a stately pile in Cathedral Square. Just before his death, perhaps
as another and more pointed recognition of his brother's special
aptitudes, he gave £25,000 to the Royal Technical College so that, one
supposes, they could use the refinements of crucible and retort where his
kind had had to be content with the kitchen shovel!
* * * *
The lifetime
benefactions, however, were dwarfed by the posthumous. There was
£1,077,000 to dispose of. Nearly half a million was disbursed in favour
of Scottish charities at the discretion of the trustees. In 1909, before
the world began to consider millions either in manpower or money without
considerable awe, more than a third of a million had been distributed and
unsensational newspapers were putting up headlines about a “shower of
gold.” Eighty thousand pounds went to the Royal Infirmary of Glasgow for
the Dick Wing and the two other great Glasgow institutions, the Western
and Victoria Infirmaries, .each obtained £30,000. The family bequests
alone totalled over £100,000.
The employees
in R. & J. Dick were scrupulously remembered. To Mr. John Edward Audsley,
his cashier and, later, managing director of R. & J. Dick, Ltd., he
bequeathed £5,000; to each of the clerks in the counting house at
Greenhead, £500; to managers of departments, £500; to managers of shops
outside the factory, £300; . to employees under managers, £50; to female
workers with 30 years’ service, £300; to female workers with 20 years’
service, £100; to the remaining female workers, £50; to male workers with
40 years’ service, £100 ; with 30 years’ service, £75; with 20 years’
service, £50; with 15 years’ service, £40; to the remainder, £30. To Elsie
Jack, his cook, he bequeathed £8,000, and to Maggie Bradley, his
housemaid, John Patters on, his coachman and David Nicoll, his gardener,
he left £1,000 each.
When the
numbers in the far-flung boot shops and the branches and agencies abroad
are taken into account, together with the well-endowed and
noncontributory pension fund for staff and workers, it is obvious that
the bequests amounted in all to a substantial fraction of the fortune-in
fact, to £108,915.
The strongest
manifestation of James Dick's munificence, and that which is an integral
part of this brief history, was his gift, under certain terms, of the
assets and properties of the firm of R.& J. Dick to fourteen of his
higher-ranking employees to be operated as a co-partnery.
The fourteen
beneficiaries, who were awarded varying percentage interests by the
testator, were:
Of the
Greenhead Factory –
John Edward
Audsley. Andrew Barday.
Adam Carter
Hay. Peter Denniston.
Peter Brode
David
McConnell Kennedy. Robert Burns.
Of London –
Andrew
McAllister. John Fleming Linn.
Of
Birmingham –
James Walker.
Of Amsterdam
–
Thomas Traill.
Of the Boot
Shops –
Robert Ewing
Lockhart,
153 Argyle
Street, Glasgow.
Allan Mair,
12 Gallowgate,
Glasgow; and
David
Galbraith,
18 Gallowgate,
Glasgow.
These
fourteen co-partners carried on the business after James Dick's death
until 1908 when they became vendors to the limited liability company of R.
& J. Dick, Ltd., the circumstances of which fall into their natural place
in the subsequent review of the developments of the concern to the present
day.
FORMATION
OF THE COMPANY
The ingenious
mind of Robert Dick produced the revolutionary driving belt manufactured
from balata in 1885. Guttapercha, as has been observed, was no longer
procurable in adequate quantities for gum products or at an economic
price. The footwear market was sagging and it was vital to find
alternative employment for the factory. From the beginning to the end gum
and its uses have been the story of R. & J. Dick, Ltd. Robert purchased
the first shipment of newly-found gum known as balata. At the same time as
he commenced his experiments with balata, the course of his researches
took a fresh direction. Balata might not only prove the substitute for
guttapercha in shoe-making, but it might be, by proper processing, the
material with which to enter the field of competition with leather belting
for power transmission and conveying. The steady expansion everywhere of
mechanical manufacture flattered the idea.
In the last
decade of the 19th century, power transmission was achieved solely by
leather belting. By the very monopoly of use prices were high. Leather,
which even to-day is the principal power transmitter, was markedly
unsuitable for certain types of plants. Robert Dick's laboratory tests
were designed to achieve a belt which, in the circumstances he envisaged,
would provide maximum service, as well as exceptional tensile strength,
pliability and frictioning. With his balata, and aided by the knowledge of
previous explorers in the same sphere, he accomplished what he sought.
Solid woven cotton belts were being produced in the United States as early
as 1858 and, about the same
time,
the Stanley
belt was evolved in Scotland by F. S. Sandeman. Maurice Gandy, whose
product is still in the market, was the originator, about 1875, of a
canvas belting, consisting of stitched, folded cotton duck. Robert Dick's
balata belt, which was a compound of specially woven duck, treated with
the patented solution of balata, was a considerable advance on previous
essays to compete with leather and, after its introduction, steadily began
to attract notice, especially in the Empire and on the Continent of
Europe.
For a moment
it is necessary to revert to the events at Greenhead in 1908. From 1902 to
1908, as has been explained, the fourteen co-partners conducted the firm
of R. & J. Dick with the impetus imparted by James Dick. Under James
Dick's Deed of Arrangement, however, his capital interests fell to the
co-partners. But the Deed required certain repayments to be made to his
trustees to meet obligations placed upon them. These repayments, since
none of the co-partners was in any sense wealthy or independent of his
employment for livelihood, were made by agreement out of the profits of
the business, which were progressively sound. This process of repayment
was, as a consequence, sluggish and unsatisfactory to the trustees who, in
terms of the will, were committed to certain duties. For this reason it
was found necessary to transform the co-partnery into a limited liability
company, which duly occurred in 1908.
The
circumstances are set out in the prospectus of R. & J. Dick, Ltd. The
capital was set out as £650,000, divided into 325,000 5 ½ per cent.
cumulative preference shares of £1 each – now 6 per cent. of 15s. each
(5s. per share having in 1936 been repaid to the preference shareholders
)-which were offered . to and taken up by the public; and 325,000 ordinary
shares. The vendors-that is, the fourteen co-partners -took the whole of
the ordinary shares in part payment of the purchase consideration. (Later,
an official quotation for those shares was obtained on the Stock
Exchange.) In 1919, 162,500 additional ordinary shares were issued and
readily taken up.
At the time
of James Dick's death in March, 1902, his capital in the business, apart
from the value of goodwill, stood at £351,550, while there was a bank
overdraft amounting to £143,177. From the date of James Dick's death until
the exercise of the option to purchase, the business was carried on under
the scheme of management provided by his will. By December, 1906, James
Dick's capital had been reduced to the sum of £194,039; while, in
addition, the whole of the bank overdraft of £143,177 had been liquidated.
The situation at the flotation in 1908, as quoted from the prospectus, was
that the co-partners, in exercise of the option, “purchased and acquired
from Dick's Trustees (1) the whole business and assets of R .. & J. Dick
(exclusive of the factory at Greenhead) upon payment of the balance
remaining due at 31st December, 1906, of the deceased's capital in the
business (excluding the value of the goodwill), which balance ... amounted
at that time to £194,039; and (2) the factory at Greenhead and fixed
machinery on payment of £20,000... price thereof in said Deed of
Arrangement.”
The
exploitation of the American market, to which we now refer, was the
primary aim of the directors of the new company, relying upon increased
production space at Greenhead for supply. American manufacturers,
travelling in Europe, were continuously encountering the “Dickbelt” and
hearing praises of its performance. A demand from across the Atlantic
followed and in its wake the decision of R. & J. Dick, Ltd., to create
branches in U.S.A. This measure, adopted in 1909, did not entirely
neutralise the problem, as imitators at home and others producing in a
tariff-protected country were throwing their own brands of balata belting
into the market. In order to produce the “Dickbelt” on a competitive
basis, it was decided, accordingly, to manufacture on the American
continent.
A site was
chosen at Passaic, New Jersey. Passaic is not far removed from New York
and, therefore, is convenient for the import of raw material and the
supply of labour. The factory, which was completed in 1911, is a modern
fireproof structure of 50,000 square feet of space. The “Dickbelt”
produced is identical in every detail with that by the parent factory at
Greenhead. The first manager was Mr. J. F. Linn, who was for many years
connected with the London office of R. & J. Dick.
Passaic was
formed into a limited liability company in 1919 as R. & J. Dick
Co.,
Inc., and, together with Greenhead, manufactures “Dickbelt”
and allied products for the Old World and the New.
In 1929 R. &
J. Dick Co., Inc., secured the controlling interest in the Barry
Pulley Company, Inc., for which, previously, they had been world
distributors.
* * * *
No firm is
without its vicissitudes. In its course, R. & J. Dick, Ltd., in its
original and later forms, has experienced tribulation arising from adverse
conditions and economic fluctuations. In 1918, at the end of the First
World War, the directors were attracted by a proposition, which then
appeared extremely inviting, to undertake the entire production of gum
from the forest to the factory. A Venezuelan station for the purpose of
purchasing balata from the collectors was first instituted. Afterwards,
exercising concessions from the Venezuelan Government, the company formed
a subsidiary concern, Dickbalata, Ltd., which collected, prepared and
distributed its own gum. This venture continued for three years, until
1922~ when the slump in trade descended upon the world and had to be
abandoned, with considerable loss.
This,
together with the Company's commitments for raw materials at high prices,
resulted in the writing down from £1 to 4s. each of the 487,500 ordinary
shares by the cancellation of 16s. per share.
All
enterprise is, in a degree, speculative. From 1846 to 1946, and especially
when the Dicks themselves were struggling for recognition, misfortunes
have befallen the concern, only to be overcome, until to-day R. & J. Dick,
Ltd., modernly equipped, soundly administered, and marketing products for
which there is renewed world demand, has the confidence of nearly 3,000
shareholders.
The business
which was conceived 100 years ago in a wash-house in Crown Street has
become not only manufacturers of world-renowned belting but eminent
experts in the science of power transmission, maintaining staffs at
strategic points in its markets for consultation, designing, servicing and
supplying transmission needs of every variety.
* * * *
In its proper
concentration on belting, this narrative has exhibited some indifference
to the story of the company's association with footwear and the other
articles which, in procession, form the sales catalogue of a century. A
mechanical department, so-called, still exists for the manufacture of
horse-shoe pads, pickers, and valves. There were contracts for leather
boots and Cossack knee-boots for the Russian Armies during the 1914-18
war, in addition to the supply of enormous quantities of belting for
armament purposes during the periods of the two World Wars.
The
manufacture of boots – and, successfully, for many years, of balata-soled
canvas sandshoes and balata-soled footwear of various kinds – was carried
on concurrently with that of belting. But it was finally decided in 1923
to discontinue production although, as a subsidiary interest,
boot-factoring was maintained until 1935, when practically the last of the
shoe branches in the United Kingdom closed down, having by the Board’s
decision departed one by one as the leases expired. The remainder were
disposed of to Greenlees & Sons (Easiephit Footwear), Ltd. Those in
Ireland were acquired by the Saxone Shoe Co., Ltd.
Several
reasons could be advanced for the change from footwear to belting. There
is no question that a majority among the directors were in favour of a
development towards power transmission and a retreat from boot
manufacture. One cogent motive – and one that carried impressive weight in
the counsels – was the distance of Greenhead (and Glasgow) from the
territorial areas in which boot production was, in a manner of speaking,
indigenous. Northampton and Leicester are centres for leather manufacture
in the same way as Glasgow and parts of Central Scotland are for heavy
engineering. The resources
exist
convenient to
each locality and, most important of all, the labour supply, traditional
and trained, is in abundance.
The boot
trade at Greenhead, so long as it was confined to the attachment of gum
soles to leather uppers, was a matter of trade specialisation. When
it reached
for instance, the preparation of designs for the graceful, even fantastic,
and ephemeral changes of mode for feminine footwear, the problem became
intricate. The whole paraphernalia of staffing, skill and science was
required, out of its element, for the persistence of such a scheme. And
anyone who knows anything about the uprooting of labour, the transference
of technical research, and the arrangement of educational curricula also
knows the chances against success in the alien area. The Board of R. & J.
Dick, Ltd., followed a studied view.
* * * *
So now we
have the story complete of boots and belting, of the careers of two
remarkable and original thinking Scotsmen, and of the pattern which
industry has followed in Glasgow in a hundred years. Whatever the morrow
may bring, there is much honest pride to be derived from the past and,
probably, some lessons, too. Above all, there is profound reason for the
gratitude of those at present conducting and manning the business that
they should find themselves in the select company of heirs of a great and
flourishing industrial house. In the world of modern industry we appear to
be on the verge of new conceptions and conflicts as deep as those of a
century ago. In such times the independent, dynamic qualities of the
brothers Dick, who founded our concern in 1846, remain a challenge to
economic and political planners and an inspiration for the future of R. &
J. Dick, Ltd., Power Transmission Engineers.
DIRECTORS OF
THE COMPANY
Name
Appointed Resigned Died
The Rt.
Hon. JAMES PARKER SMITH, P.C. 1908
1922 - - - -
Sir JOHN
URE PRIMROSE, Bart., 1908
1922 - - - -
JAMES
GOLDIE
1908 - - - - 1913
Col.
JAMES SMITH PARK, D.L., M.V.O 1908 - - - -
1921
JOHN E.
AUDSLEY 1908 -
- - - 1920
ANDREW
McALLISTER 1908
1908 - - - -
ADAM C.
HAY
1908 - - - - 1936
DAVID M.
KENNEDY 1908 - -
- - 1925
ANDREW
BARCLAY 1908
1922 - - - -
DAVID
GALBRAITH
1920 1922 - - - -
JOHN T.
TULLOCH, M.C., C.A. 1920
1942 - - - -
PETER
RINTOUL, C.A.
1921 - - - - 1933
A.
KENNEDY AITKEN, C.A.
1925 - - - - - - - -
Wm. F.
CLARK, J.P.
1925 - - - - - - - -
DAVID
TODD
1925 1928 - - - -
Sir A.
MURRAY STEPHEN, M.C. 1934 - - -
- - - - -
JOHN
DUNLOP, O.B.E., C.A. 1942
- - - - - - - -
EDWARD L.
F. MUCKLOW 1946 - - -
- - - - -
MANAGING
DIRECTORS OF THE COMPANY
On the death
of Mr. James Dick, Mr. John Edward Audsley, who had been his chief
assistant and who was one of those to whom Mr. Dick left the business, was
appointed by his co-partners to manage the firm of R. & J. Dick. On the
flotation of the Limited Company in 1908, he was appointed managing
director of the Limited Company. He continued in that office until August,
1913, when he retired from the position but remained a member of the
Board. To succeed Mr. Audsley, Mr. Adam Carter Hay was appointed. He
resigned from the position in January, 1920, but retained his seat on the
Board. On the death in August, 1921, of Mr. Oliver Hayward Porter, who had
been appointed general manager on Mr. Hay's resignation, Mr. Hay, on the
invitation of his co-directors, returned to his old position as managing
director. In August, 1935, a joint managing directorship was formed, Mr.
Andrew Kennedy Aitken, CA., being appointed to act with Mr. Hay in that
capacity. In October, 1936, on Mr. Hay’s death, Mr. Aitken was appointed
managing director, in which capacity he still serves.
CHAIRMEN OF THE COMPANY
The first
chairman of the Limited Company was the Rt. Hon. James Parker Smith, P.C.,
who resigned from the Board in 1922 and was succeeded by Mr. Peter Rintoul,
an eminent chartered accountant of Glasgow. On his death in 1933, he was
succeeded by Mr. John Taylor Tulloch, M.C., another well-known chartered
accountant. Mr. Tulloch resigned in 1942, and was followed by Mr. John
Dunlop, O.B.E., C.A., partner in Messrs. Moores, Carson & Watson,
Chartered Accountants, Glasgow, who is the present chairman.
HOME BRANCHES
OF THE COMPANY
Telephone Telegram
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., Bridgeton 2344
“Guttapercha”
Greenhead
Works,
Glasgow S.E.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., Mansion House 0220 “Trimly
Cannon, Eagle House,
London”
90 Cannon
Street,
London E.C.4.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., Colmore 4460
“Balata Belt”
200
Corporation Street, Night – Acocks Green 1125
Birmingham,
4.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., 44257 (Day and Night) “Balata”
195
Gloucester Road,
Bishopton,
Bristol, 7.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., Blackfriars 8083
“Balata”
77 Bridge
Street, Night – Sale 2463
Deansgate,
Manchester,
3.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., 26176
“Guttapercha”
4
Eastgate, Night – Roundhay 61551
Leeds, 2.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., 23767
“Gutta”
30 Dean
Street,
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD.,
2547 “Balata”
27 Albert
Square,
Dundee.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., 26535
“Balata”
11 Winecellar
Entry,
Belfast.
R. & J. DICK,
LTD., 51264
7 Dame Court,
Dublin.
PRODUCTS
OF THE COMPANY
Since"
Dick's Original" Balata
belting was
first patented sixty-one years ago, the Company has progressed with the
manufacture of other classes of drives which the trend of modern machinery
has demanded.
The following
are the trade names and a short description of the more important.
“Dixit
Belting”
–
Manufactured
similarly to Balata, but impregnated with special gums
which give it a high resistance to the deleterious effects of acid fumes
and humid atmosphere. Used on high speed machinery and in places where the
heat is too great for Balata.
Dixel Vee
Rope.
–
Manufactured
in Balata and
Dixit materials, is named “Super
Drive”
because of its robust strength. It can be used on all classes of drives
from the small individual rope to large drives of 2,000 H.P. containing a
multiple of ropes. Very suitable for main drives.
“Ruberix”
Belting
–
Manufactured
from Filastic Yarn. This is composed of cotton fibre
thoroughly blended by a special process with pure rubber Latex. The woven
belt is further treated with Latex and vulcanised under pressure.
This belt has
high frictional grip and is eminently suitable for short centre drives
with high ratio pulleys.
“Dixadd”
Belting –
This
is a
combination belt of Balata and leather. The leather, which is specially
prepared soft and spongy chrome, is fastened to the Balata belt by means
of rivets to the underside so that the leather strips make contact with
the pulley face. This strip gives added frictional grip while the Balata
transmits the power. By this means it is computed that the
“Dixadd”
belt has 70 per cent. more effective tension than the ordinary belt
“Dixadd”
is principally used on overloaded drives, on short centre drives, and with
large speed ratio up to 12 : 1
“Dickrope.”
–
This
is also a Vee
section rope but made of textile and rubber, moulded endless. The
elasticity retained in this rope allows it to deal successfully with shock
loads as experienced on compressors, fans, planing machines, etc. A very
suitable belt for individual short-centre drives to effect saving in
space. Manufactured to R. &
J. Dick specification, under working arrangement with a
producer of Vee ropes.
AIRD &
COGHILL, LTD., GLASGOW |
