interior Planning Kennard showed the usual degree of Wedgwood devotion and within five years his agency was making a profit and in 1920 it was incorporated as an American Company. Kennard was later joined by Hensleigh, who in the 1930s literally 'carpet bagged' round Canada, building up a business connexion which resulted in a separate selling company for Canada being set up in 1950 in Toronto. Virtually the whole of the capital of both the Canadian and the American companies is owned by the parent company. The sixth generation of Wedgwoods had a much more professional attitude than their predecessors. Josiah, now Chairman and Managing Director, joined (aged thirty) in 1928; Clement Tom, who was Director in charge of building, John Hamilton, now Deputy Chairman, and Hensleigh Cecil (until recently President of the New York Company) all joined around the same time. All were under thirty. The slump in the early thirties was to prove a great testing time for their managerial qualities. Josiah was a trained economist, and almost immediately had to plunge into the grim business of cutting out much of the 'dead wood' which the company at that time was carrying. It is typical, however, that rather than wholesale dismissals, which were the general pattern of the day, at Wedgwood people were pensioned off and the existing ex gratia pension scheme was greatly extended. But more important, and with considerable courage, the work of modernizing the factory and its management was pushed forward with great vigour. Improved systems of costing and stock control, loss records, and sales and order analyses were started, and an interesting experiment in bulk production (for Cadbury's) at a very low profit margin did much to keep the wheels turning and to counteract the devastation of the American market in 1933. By 1934 this generation of Wedgwoods had miraculously managed to pay an ordinary dividend, and in 1935 the company made better profits than ever before since it became a limited company in 1895. Next came the great act of faith. The directors decided to abandon the Etruria factory and build a new one in the countryside of Barlaston, six miles south of StokeonTrent. Money had to be raised, and considering the insecurity of the times the Wedgwoods seem to have had remarkably little difficulty in getting it. Shares were not floated on the open market, but £200,000 was raised by debentures, £50,000 by a further issue of ordinary shares mainly to members of the family, and a further £50,000 out of liquid reserves. With this comparatively slender sum plans were made to build the most modern and efficient pottery in the country, if not in the world. But two years of planning, surveying, and negotiating brought the directors to September 1938 and it must have required great courage to go ahead with their plan at such an inauspicious time. While Mr Chamberlain was waving his piece of paper at Heston airport, the foundations were being laid at Barlaston, and by August 1940 the main part of the building was complete. to buy a house