Cains Beer Company PLC founder Robert Cain was born in County Cork, 181 years ago - and beer lovers are still thankful for the career choice he made.

  

The brewery he founded is now enjoying a successful period and owners Ajmail and Sudarghara Dusanj believe the larger than life Irishman would have approved of their methods.

Ajmail Dusanj said: "Robert Cain was a true entrepreneur and a lover of perfection. He embraced new technology because of the advantage it offered him over competitors.

  

“He worked hard, put in long hours and knew the brewing industry inside out but he was primarily a very sharp businessman. He knew that quality was the key to success and understood the importance of a brand long before many of his competitors did.

  

“We would love to give him a tour of the brewery today, let him taste some of our new beers and marvel at some of the technology. I’m pretty sure he would be impressed by the modern day Cains.

 

“A few pints will be raised in his name this weekend.”

 

 

It is of interest to everyone, but particularly to those who still have the future before them, to learn something about a self-made man. Some rich and successful men owe most of their fortune to good luck while others have prospered solely by their own exertions. Robert Cain, one of the most prominent brewers in Lancashire, belong to the class of men who have cut their way to the front by sheer force of physical strength and natural ability.

  

Wherever you find a man who has broken loose from his early surroundings and has fought his way to a place of wealth or power, you will also discover, if you look deep enough, that he possesses some uncommon combination of faculties and has been placed in a groove which suited such combination and gave it free opportunity to work out its proper result.

  

Just as a mixture of a few comparatively innocent chemicals will produce the potent combination known as gunpowder, so the fortunate association of a certain kind of physical strength and brain power yields a marked result in the affairs of life. A pinch less or a pinch more of the materials may spoil the effect in the man or the gunpowder.

  

Mr. Cain is indebted to nature for a strong combination, for no one with ordinary powers of observation could have known him, as the writer has, for a period extending almost over half his effective business career, without noting in him and uncommon degree of decision, activity, and masterfulness.

  

He was born, to use the hoary phrase, of humble parents in the year 1826. For some time during his early manhood he was at sea, but not in the capacity of a sailor. In 1850, however, his natural foresight led him to start a small brewery in Limekiln-lane.

  

From the first he determined to work night and day to establish the business on a firm footing and to adopt for himself the adage, used often by Miles Standish in the beautiful story by Longfellow:-

 

“If you would be well served you must serve yourself.”?

 

Instead, therefore, of leaving the management and responsibility of his business to others he was in constant attendance at his brewery. The continuous fermentation going on in a brewery demands unceasing care and watchfulness, and consequently the work may be said to proceed night and day without interruption.

  

Mr. Cain’s working day began then, as it does even yet, before most people have entered their second sleep. In those days it extended over thirteen hours--from five in the morning till six at night. The necessities of the brewery, however, frequently demanded even closer attendance than this.

  

A brewery is much the same as a steamboat, any breakdown must be promptly repaired at any sacrifice of time and comfort; and so it often happened that in addition to his regular thirteen hours a day Mr. Cain would be compelled to remain far into the night and even through the night.

  

This exceptional application and industry brought its own reward in a steady increase of trade, and at the end of four years he found that the premises in Limekiln-lane were no longer large enough. During this period he had succeeded, by dint of unflagging and almost painful labour, in removing from his path the thousand and one difficulties which in the beginning of life stand in the way of a new man in a new business and with limited financial resources.

  

All this time Mr. Cain acted as his own working brewer; that is to say he personally attended the actual manufacture of the beer besides managing the wholesale business of the brewery and of several retail licensed houses which he already owned.

  

About the year 1854 the brewery was removed to a larger place in Wilton-street which he had purchased. Here the number of hands employed and the output were about doubled, and the number of retail houses was also being steadily increased.

  

With his advancing prosperity Mr. Cain’s nose was kept more and more to the grindstone, nor did he with increasing success relax his remarkable industry. In the course of five years, however, the premises in Wilton-street also grew too small, and he let them on a lease to Messrs. David and Mathew Warriner, brewers, who subsequently bought them.

  

He then purchased his present brewery, in Stanhope-street, from the rev. Mr. George Hindley, of St. Georges’s Church, Everton, who, along with his brother, Robert, had inherited it from his father. On the death of old Mr. Hidley, Robert, his son, carried on the brewery, but did not succeed.

  

Then it was lpet to Messrs. Hyde and Rust, who, after occupying the premises for a few months, were unable to continue the business and in consequence put up their stock in trade to public auction. The establishment, with its brewing plant and machinery, then came into Mr. Cain’s possession, and he found by the deed that old Mr. Hindley had purchased the brewery seventy-two years before, so that much of the old building which has not been demolished by its present owner must be of considerable age.

  

During the first two years of Mr. Cain’s occupancy all the old brewing utensils and machinery were taken out and replaced with the most modern appliances. The place was thus carried on for some years when further increase of business necessitated an extension.

  

This was effected by purchasing some of the adjoining property called “Cotter’s Terrace” and throwing it into the brewery. An old building, containing offices and a warehouse, which originally stood in the yard was removed, and a new building, fronting Stanhope-street, was erected in its place.

  

From the earliest time in Stanhope-street till the present moment Mr. Cain has been adding to and improving his brewing plant and machinery, and everything new which comes out and which is better than older machinery he buys without hesitation.

 

On this point I may use his words in conversation:-

 

      “I am always open for anything new which happens to be an improvement on the old system, and I am always glad to take old machinery out and put in new wherever I can see an advantage. One must go with the times or else be left behind in the race. That is the way with the world at present. Is that not a fact?”

 

      “But it is not common for men of sixty to think as you do, Mr. Cain.”

 

 Well, when a man begins to think otherwise it is time for him to give up and let some of the younger blood have the business. I have always found in my experience that keeping pace with the times was the secret of success in business.”

 

      “But suppose a man sees an improvement and has no means to carry it out. What then?”

 

      “The great thing is in being able to recognise and improvement when you see it. But a man who is to be successful, when he does see an improvement, begins at once to strain every nerve and to take the risk of carrying it out. If a man remains quite satisfied with what he has and is always afraid and nervous of laying out money in this way, and has no ambition to go ahead, he is not only stationary but begins to be so far outstripped by more enterprising rivals that he ultimately finds himself out of the hunt altogether.”

 

      “To what qualities do you mainly attribute your success in life?”

 

      “Chiefly to that of sticking to business and, as it were, living in it. I used never to feel so happy as when inside my own house or inside the gate of the brewery. You may think it strange, but I have generally preferred to be at the brewery helping things along than at any place of amusement. I don’t mean that a man should be a miser or deprive himself of enjoyment.

 

What I mean is, that I found most enjoyment in building and strengthening the business which I created by my own exertions. Unless a man gets at the back of a business and pushes it along by main force and prevents himself from being attracted by any other consideration, he cannot be expected to climb the ladder or life if he begins without advantages inherited from others.”

 

      “In the career of a successful man like yourself, who has built up a great business, brick by brick from the foundation, which part is the most troublesome?”

 

 “Oh, it is the first step which is the terrible difficulty. While everyone is against you, while you are unknown, suspected, weak in credit--those are the troublesome days. If a man has the strength and foresight to live through this and keep a foothold he will find the next stages perhaps as hard in work but more encouraging as regards profits and prospects. It is the first hundred or so which is the greatest pull of all, for as soon as the capital begins to work itself the money making begins in earnest.”

 

Mr Cain, however, owes much if not most of his success to a remarkably prompt and clear judgment. The writer has seldom met a man with these most rare and valuable qualities so marked. In all things connected with his own surroundings his conclusions are as instantaneous as they are laconic.

 

There are few men who have greater power of penetrating a business scheme at a glance and turning it inside out, and also few men who are less open to illusions. Unless a plan has a logical sequence which will bear close examination, though it might promise a great profit on the off chance, Mr. Cain is the man to put it aside in a moment without the smallest regret or adventurous hankering after a risky fortune.

 

He is also a keen judge of men, and perhaps in business life a severe disciplinarian. Like many self-made men Mr. Cain had not great educational advantages at the outset of life, but the natural quality of his brain power has far outweighed any mere scholastic attainments, and he has been acquiring as he went on. If Mr. Cain had begun in the army he would probably have ended by being a general.

 

He possesses all the best qualities of military capacity. White hair and whiskers worn at present à la militaire, ruddy complexion, and in full vigour and activity of almost youth, it is hard to believe Mr. Cain has done so much work. He is still, as he has always been, the earliest man of the neighbourhood.

 

Some years ago, when Mr. Cain lived at Grassendale, he used to pass Aigburth Hall on his way to business. Mr. Charles Challoner, who lived in the Hall used to hear the sound of a horse trotting past in the early grey hours of the morning, and at length enquired about the person from the sexton of Grassendale Church.

 

“He goes past like the clock,” said Mr. Challoner. “I have looked at the time over and over again when his horse passed and he was almost invariably to the same minute. I never need to look at my watch in the morning now, I know the exact time by Mr. Cain’s horse’s hoofs.”

 

Mr. Cain has five sons and four daughters living, several being married, and he resides at “Barn Hey,” Aigburth, which he calls a “comfortable place on two or three acres of ground,” but some people would describe it differently. He is fortunate in being in possession of a large number of oil paintings by the celebrated Daniels.

 

That dissolute and strangely independent genius worked for no man as he did for Mr. Cain, in whose house he spent many of his days and where his eccentric pride and sensibility were respected so as to avoid giving any chance of his throwing up the work or striking his brush through a picture which was a common incident with him.

 

At the present time the brewery at Stanhope-street is undergoing an important change. A new building, on a much larger scale, is being erected on the old site, and when finished, in about two-and-a-half years, will contain the best machinery and appliances that the world can produce.

 

Like most successful men, Mr. Cain owes much to a good wife. His domestic life has been smoothed by a lady of sweet disposition, who has not only known how to make her husband happy, but also how to bring up her children in a homely, common-sense fashion, and to equip them for the race of life independently of their father’s success.