System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!William Cadbury, Chocolate maker
Born in 1867, in England, William A. Cadbury was the grandson of company founder, John Cadbury.
William joined the board of Cadbury in 1899, along with his brother Barrow and cousins Edward and George. Cadbury Brothers Ltd had become famous for its enlightened attitude with regard to employee relations and William continued this attitude. Cadbury and William Lever (of Lever Brothers' soap) created, with their own money, model workplaces and communities for their workers.
In 1901, William Cadbury discovered, during a visit to Trinidad, that the cocoa workers on Sao Thome and Principe Islands were, for all practical purposes, slaves. In 1909, he published Labor in Portuguese West Africa and persuaded two other Quaker cocoa and chocolate firms, Fry and Rowntree, to boycott Portuguese cocoa. Due to the nature of such labour practices, William Cadbury turned to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1902, to supply the company’s cocoa. While the cocoa industry there was in its infancy, he worked with the local chiefs to improve significantly the quality of cocoa and provide a ready market for their produce. Cadbury played a leading role in this as well as the economic, social and agricultural development of the industry and the country. By the late 1940s, Ghana cocoa was considered to be among the finest in the world, which is still seen as largely due to Cadbury's efforts.
During William’s tenure at the company, new innovations included; laboratories, advertising offices and employee education and training, and a design studio to do posters and press advertisements. Cadbury also developed a number of new products including; Cadbury Dairy Milk (1905) and Cadbury Milk Tray (1915).
The Cadbury script logo was introduced in 1921, based on the signature of William Cadbury. It is still used as the company logo on sales catalogues, seal designs, special boxes and stationery. William Cadbury died on July 8, 1957, at age 89.
