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Oil for the West of England, 1889–1896: A Study in Competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

W. J. Reader
Affiliation:
London, England

Abstract

As the oil industry grew, comfortable family firms, hitherto untouched by the ferocities of competition, found their position under attack and their independence menaced. The painful, inexorable process of substituting a new economic order for an old is here detailed from the viewpoint and records of one of the dispossessed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 These papers now belong to Unilever Limited, to whom I am indebted for permission to use them.

2 Hidy, Ralph W. and Hidy, Muriel E., Pioneering in Big Business: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1882–1911, vol. I (New York, 1955)Google Scholar. Competition in the West of England is referred to in a footnote on p. 748, n. 27, of which this article is an expansion.

3 Ibid., p. 123. The first section of this article is based on Hidy and Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, chap. 5.

4 Wilson, C. H., The History of Unilever (London, 1954), vol. I, pp. 5971Google Scholar; and Reader, W. J., “The United Kingdom Soapmakers' Association and the English Soap Trade” in Business History (Liverpool University Press), vol. I (June, 1959)Google Scholar.

5 Hidy and Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, pp. 283, 748, n. 27.

6 Hidy and Hidy (at p. 748, n. 27) say that the Association had members in Gloucester and in Somerset, but there is no record of them in the Thomas papers.

7 Cf. contracts made later in France and Scandinavia (Hidy and Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, pp. 242, 248).

8 Ibid., pp. 250, 748, n. 27. The Mellon family also held shares.

9 Ibid., pp. 250, 283, 748, n. 27.