Business Career
Along with his elder brother, Joseph, later Sir Joseph Bailey, 1st Baronet, Crawshay went into the iron business as a young man in 1811 at Nantyglo and soon at Beaufort, Ebbw Vale. He became a Partner, with his brother in 1820.
For a time he also ran the ironworks at Rhymney, and while there he constructed a tramway between Rhymney and Bassaleg near Newport.
Though by now a major ironmaster he far-sightedly bought up large areas of coal-rich land, at their agricultural value too, in the Rhondda Valleys, at Mountain Ash and Aberaman and was prepared to sit on these assets for nearly nine years before developing them as some of the richest coal and iron ore deposits in the world.
In a similar manner he waited until the most auspicious time before applying for a Parliamentary Act to open and run a railway company. In 1845 he was instrumental in setting up the Aberdare Railway, along with Sir John Josiah Guest to capitalise on further assets in the form of sinking new collieries and building new blast furnaces.
He also promoted railways between Coleford, in the Forest of Dean, via Monmouth and Usk to Pontypool.
He was anti trade union and opposed to his workers organising themselves along these lines.
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