Industrial Development and Community Responsibility: The Harford Family and South Wales

Abstract

When the Ebbw Vale ironworks were sold in 1844, it ended nearly a hundred years of the Harford family’s involvement in Welsh industry.1 Yet surveys of the industrial development of Wales have rarely focused on these important Quaker entrepreneurs; thus some of the more distinctive features of their businesses and impact on the landscape and community relations have been ignored. Given the evidence available, this chapter focuses primarily on the Harford family and their tinplate business and ironworks at Melingriffith, Glamorganshire, and Ebbw Vale and Sirhowy, Monmouthshire, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward.2 This study explores how the Harfords developed their various businesses and reviews their management decisions and practices. The argument here is that the cooperative relationships put in place between the Harfords as industrialists and their workforce were a key feature of their success. In a period of industrial expansion and unrest, when conflict defined many of the relationships in the coalfields and ironworks, the suggestion that the Harfords applied themselves to ethical business transactions, fair- minded labor relations, and philanthropy can be tested.