FACTORY OF DREAMS by Kenneth D. Brown

Review by Chris Warrell

Over the years there have been many books and articles published about the various products and publications of the Meccano factory, and the whole subject would appear to have been thoroughly explored with very little more to be said, or so we thought…

Kenneth D. Brown, Professor of Economic and Social History at Queen’s University, Belfast since 1988, uses his expertise to provide a thorough history of Meccano Ltd, looking at the business decisions that were responsible for the variable fortunes of the company.

The book is neatly divided into seven chapters that reflect the different stages in the company’s history. The titles also give a clue as to what happened, so we have chapter 3 - Building an empire: Frank Hornby and Meccano, 1918 – 1936; chapter 4 – Losing an empire: Roland Hornby and Meccano, 1936 – 1964.

The first chapter, which draws substantially on part of his earlier book The British Toy Business, sets the scene for the creation of the Meccano company with a look at "The development of commercial toy manufacturing in Britain" from the Great Exhibition in 1851 to the end of the Victorian era. Mr Brown shows that changes in social conditions, better living standards with children spending longer at school and a different attitude to youngsters paved the way for an increase in the manufacture of toys and games with new firms springing up. One of these was G and J Lines in 1896 who, as Lines Brothers, acquired Meccano Ltd in 1964.

Frank Hornby’s initial attempt to start his business and apply for patents is already well documented, but this book goes into great detail, showing how the company was organised, names of shareholders and details of the accounts and balance sheets. It also describes how the factory was set up, with, apart from the clerks and skilled craftsmen, a mainly female workforce.

There are numerous quotations and over 400 references from various publications or interviews. Usefully these are all contained at the back of the book, and it is not necessary to constantly refer to these when reading the book; they are mainly there for the reader to check, or be aware of, the source material. All the interviews were conducted in 1990/91, so presumably not originally for this book.

The bibliography is extensive, with the surviving archives of Meccano and Lines Brothers being used, along with various national and Liverpool newspapers and magazines. Secondary sources include most of the Hornby Companion Series as well as Mr Brown’s own articles on company history.

Business could be a very dull subject to most people, but the writer has a lively style and doesn’t bog down the text with a lot of jargon, so that no prior knowledge is required to enjoy the book. The scope of the work means that it doesn’t go into any great detail about the products of Binns Road; anyone seeking that information should look elsewhere.

It is very well illustrated with over one hundred photographs. Many of these have not been widely available before, with images of the Binns Road factory mainly from the 1950s being, for me, the most interesting. Included in the collection is a lovely one from 1950 showing the Hornby Dublo assembly line with partly assembled locomotives standing on various lengths of inclined track.

Most readers of this review will be familiar with the success of the products of Binns Road in the 1920s and 30s and the slide from popularity to its ultimate demise in 1979. It is suggested that this stemmed from the death of Frank Hornby in 1936. His son Roland, to whom the company passed, is described as "a well-meaning but essentially weak individual, lacking either much interest in the business he had inherited or any grasp of wider economic reality" and was "content to leave well alone."

During the 1960s and 70s Meccano was taken over, first by Lines Brothers and then, after they were dragged down by Meccano, later by Airfix. The book shows how management lost control of the business over the years, and it describes this in great detail. The following extract (from an interview of an accountant in 1990) showed how the factory had problems with working practices:

"J G Thomas recalled that draughtsmen had become so powerful that they had negotiated guaranteed overtime of twelve hours a week, irrespective of the amount of work available. As a result, costs proved difficult to control and by 1961 direct labour accounted for about forty-one per cent of overhead costs in the works as compared to an average of thirty-eight per cent in earlier years."

The penultimate chapter is a lengthy post mortem which suggests all sorts of reasons for the collapse of Meccano Ltd without drawing any conclusions. It is a complex subject and there would appear to be no single cause for the failure.

It makes for a fascinating read and is the sort of book that you can’t put down, even though we all know what happens at the end.

Published in 2007 by Crucible Books. (www.cruciblebooks.com)

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