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house were Joseph Rowntree’s sons, including twenty-one-year-old Joseph and nineteen-year-old Henry Isaac. Joseph was tall and dark with an intensity of features, the natural severity of his own character complemented by years of Quaker upbringing. His father had taken him to Ireland on a Quaker relief mission in 1850 during the Irish potato famine, and the experience had left a lasting impression. Joseph remembered the look of death as starvation slowly turned the young and comely into the walking dead. Numberless unknown dead lay in open trenches or where they had fallen by the side of the road, alongside those still living, their faces showing their terror. For the serious-minded Joseph, it had been a formative experience and a shocking lesson on the effects of poverty. His younger brother, Henry, formed a contrast to Joseph’s austerity. Somehow the full Puritan weight of Quaker training did not sit quite so readily on his young shoulders; he had a sense of fun and could be relied upon to lighten the mood.
    By 1860 George Cadbury had returned to Birmingham, although he had barely completed three years as an apprentice. Whether his father recognized his ability and recalled him to help at home or whether the move was instigated by George because he was hungry to get started is not known.
    To the employees at Bridge Street, the two young Cadbury brothers were curiously “alike and unalike.” Richard was seen as “bright and happy with a sunny disposition.” He claimed he would be happy simply to rescue the business and turn it around to make a few hundred pounds a year. George was much more driven. In the words of his biographer, Alfred Gardiner, he “had more of an adventurer’s instinct. . . . The channel of his mind was narrower and the current
swifter.” Despite his ambition, he could see no simple solution. As the brothers deliberated during the spring of 1861 in the gloomy Bridge Street factory, the prospect seemed a dismal one. From their cramped office, they could see the empty carts banked up in the yard awaiting orders. It was not immediately obvious what they could do together that their father and uncle had not already tried and that would make the crucial difference.
    The great hope, of course, was to come up with a breakthrough product. They did in fact have something in mind that their father had been working on before family difficulties drained his energy. It was a product very much of the moment, with healthful overtones, called Iceland Moss. The manufacturing process involved blending the fatty chocolate bean with an ingredient that was thought to improve health: lichen. It was fashioned into a bar of cocoa that could then be grated to form a nutritious drink. Richard had a flair for design. He could see the possibilities for launching Iceland Moss. It would be eye-catchingly displayed in bright yellow packaging with black letters that boldly proclaimed the addition of lichen, complete with the image of a reindeer to show how different it was. They aimed to promote the health properties of Iceland Moss, but would the untried combination of fluffy-textured lichen and the very fatty cocoa bean appeal to the English palate?
    Apart from developing new products, the brothers also had to find new customers. Their father had only one salesperson, known at the time as a “traveller.” His name was Dixon Hadaway and he alone covered a vast swathe of the country from Rugby in the south high up to the Scottish highlands, visiting grocers’ shops to promote their line of cocoa wares. He took advantage of the new trains to cover the long distances between towns but was also obliged to travel by pony and trap or even on foot. Despite the challenges of getting around, Dixon Hadaway was evidently determined to keep up appearances, smartly attired with a tall top hat and dark tweed coat, although it was invariably crumpled from long hours of travelling. It seems he was appreciated by his customers, who claimed