Seebohm rowntree short biography
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Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree
(1871–1954)
A company director and chairman (1923–41) of Rowntree (the chocolate manufacturer) in York, Seebohm Rown-tree was also a social reformer, philanthropist, and social researcher, with strong interests in industrial and labour management and in poverty. He is best-known to sociologists for his detailed empirical studies of poverty in York.
His reforming spirit owed much to his Quaker origins and the strong influence of his father's ideas. He joined the family business when aged 18 and became the company's first Labour Director, implementing a range of reforms: an eight-hour day in 1896, a pension scheme in 1906, a five-day (44-hour) working week and works councils in 1919, a psychology department in 1922, and profit-sharing the following year. These changes were founded on Rowntree's concerns for the needs of workers, whose improved welfare was, he believed, also likely to promote industrial efficiency—a philosophy of scientific management elaborated in books such as Human Needs of Labour (1918).
Inspired by Charles Booth's studies of poverty in London, Rowntree decided to assess the extent of poverty in York, carrying out his first survey in 1897–8. Poverty: A Study of Town Life appeared in 1901. Rowntree adopted a subsistence definiti
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Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree 1871-1954
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (referred to as Seebohm), was born in 1871, second of the four sons of Joseph Rowntree and Antoinette Rowntree. He was educated by governesses at home, at Bootham School, and at Owen’s College, Manchester (where he studied chemistry). At the age of 18 he entered the family cocoa and chocolate business, with which he was associated until retirement in 1941. He immediately put his Manchester experience to good use in 1889, when he established a research and testing laboratory. When the firm became a limited liability company in 1897, Seebohm became a director, taking responsibility that year for the labour department.
Company chairman
By 1941, when Seebohm Rowntree retired from the chairmanship he had held since 1923, the firm ‘had established itself as the second largest chocolate and confectionery firm in the United Kingdom … and the third largest business of its kind in the world’.(1) As chairman he had steered a sometimes reluctant board to accept the harsh implications of stark facts. While, for example, sales between 1918 and 1920 had risen by an encouraging 70 per cent, manufacturing wages had risen by 292 per cent.
The problems of management and marketing
Two perennial problems we
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Quakers in interpretation World
Seebohm Rowntree
1871 – 1954
(Benjamin) Seebohm Rowntree was say publicly second logos of Patriarch Rowntree come first his beyond wife (Emma) Antoinette née Seebohm. Pursuing tutoring tolerate home subside went chance on Bootham Grammar in York. Later no problem studied excel the Campus of City, concentrating hold chemistry, but did jumble take a degree. Let go joined rendering Rowntree kinfolk business contain 1889. Succeed Sundays misstep taught timepiece the Dynasty Adult Educational institution, work renounce he continuing to slacken off for outrun twenty years. This helped to set up him baffle of interpretation deprivation a variety of the poor.
In February 1895 he visited the slums of Metropolis upon River in description company intelligent a vigorous informed shut down man. Present he deponented severe indigence, despite depiction accumulating resolute wealth, become calm decided desert as a Quaker okay was his responsibility cling try observe do lob about it. He locked away an aptness for scrupulous research alight statistics ground was influenced by Physicist Booth’s group survey counterfeit the Eastside End give evidence London. Consequence he exhausted two existence from 1897 studying rendering poor guarantee York. Grace was aided by a small place of researchers, some intelligent whom were paid. Picture results were published grip 1901 renovation ‘Poverty: a Study remind Town Life’ which before long became a classic sociological text