1901- 1914
1901
The Edinburgh wholesale branch moves to Hanover Buildings, Rose Street - the first of three buildings to be so named.
John R. Menzies
The two boys - they were not much more than boys in 1879 - showed themselves true sons, thoroughly indoctrinated in the founder's principles of thrift and devotion to duty; to which they added a capacity for unremitting toil at which old John Menzies himself might have stood amazed.
Charles T. Menzies
They began, says H. M. Graham, 'to work like beavers. They knew what had to be done and, quite simply, did it. Office hours meant nothing to them and their enthusiasm at times caused their executives nightmares. Peter Nisbet...used to recall in after years how, as a boy, he was sent to the brothers' house in Grosvenor Crescent [Edinburgh] for the lunchtime snacks. Back at the office John or Charles would clear a space on the desk, motion the sandwiches to be laid down and with the minimum of distraction would return to the job in hand. Their industry was phenomenal, but it paid dividends.'
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1906
John Menzies & Company, Ltd. is incorporated. William Dawson and Robert Dickie, managers of the Edinburgh and Glasgow houses, are elected as directors. John R. Menzies and Col. Charles T.Menzies are Joint Managing Directors. John R. Menzies is Chairman.
Seventy years later you would find in the boardroom others who, like them, had started at the most modest levels: a former assistant from the Carlisle news department, a former apprentice in the Edinburgh book department, a former boy from the Glasgow book saloon. They were living testimonies of a philosophy encapsulated in the chairman's remark:
The same holds good today.
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1910
Menzies buys its first power-driven vehicle, for £383/17/6d.
One of John Menzies & Co. Ltd.' early vehicles
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1914
First issue of Weekly Notes for the trade, to supplement the monthly Book Lists.
When war broke out in 1914, the two Menzies brothers had been at the head of the firm for thirty-five years. Of their temperaments, their personal interests and circles of human relationships not much has been recorded but we know that Charles was a friend of H.M. Stanley, the African explorer).
By all accounts they kept themselves too busy to have much of a private life.
Opposite are the names of the Menzies employees who died on active service in two World Wars, inscribed on these memorials at the main entrance of the firm's headquarters in Hanover Buildings in Edinburgh.
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