Philanthropy
Hartley was a Primitive Methodist and applied his Christian principles to business. In 1888 he built a model village at Aintree; the following year he introduced a profit-sharing scheme, the results each year being announced at a special ceremony, with music and speeches. He claimed that the wages he paid to women and girls — four-fifths of the workforce — were appreciably higher than those of his competitors; he also provided free medical treatment. He personally chose his managers and trained them, sending them on advanced chemistry courses at his own expense nearly £300,000. He preferred to donate part of any sum requested, so as to encourage others to give. He endowed a number of hospitals in Colne, Liverpool, and London, and financed departments at Liverpool and Manchester universities. Equally generous to Primitive Methodism, he supported an organization for building chapels, acted as treasurer of its missionary society, and converted the old Holborn Town Hall into its national headquarters.
In 1896 the Primitive Methodists created the Hartley lectures in recognition of W. P. Hartley's work, the inaugural lectures were given in 1897.
Read more about this topic: Sir William Pickles Hartley
Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)