Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, Joseph’s second son, was a director of Rowntree & Co Ltd and chairman from 1923 to 1941, succeeding Joseph. He was an innovator in business management,industrial democracy and a champion of the poor, the unemployed and the homeless. He developed and furthered the ideas and vision of his father. Seebohm was very interested in personal relationships in industry and wrote about them in several publications. It was under his stewardship of the company that Rowntrees directly engaged in marketing their products, about which Joseph had been suspicious as he felt it led to false claims. Brands including Black Magic, KitKat and Smarties were introduced during the 1930s. His work in social reform led to Seebohm becoming an adviser to Prime Minister David Lloyd George and an architect of the welfare state, thus playing a key role in developing social policy in the early twentieth century. He put the statistical acumen he had inherited to good use in his poverty studies of York. 
