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The largest British company in 1907 was Imperial Tobacco, with £15.5 million share capital, appreciably more than Krupp, whose capital was a mere £9 million. The company was established in 1901 through the merger of thirteen tobacco manufacturers in order to resist the American offensive on the British market. The overwhelmingly dominant force in the combination was the firm W. D. & H. O. Wills, of Bristol, which controlled nearly 60 per cent of the company’s capital at its foundation. Wills’s prodigious rise in the late nineteenth century dated from the purchase in 1883 of the exclusive patent of the Bonsack cigarette-making machine, soon to secure them a 55 per cent market share. Big business was also strongly represented in the British textile industry. The wave of horizontal mergers of the last years of the nineteenth century gave birth to a number of huge companies, whether measured by capital or workforce. The largest British employer in 1907 was the Fine Cotton Spinners & Doublers’ Association, with 30,000 workers and £4.5 million share capital; the company was founded in 1898 through the merger of thirty-one cotton-spinning firms, some more than 100 years old, and introduced from the start a centralized control and co-ordination between the constituent firms. The Calico Printers’ Association employed more than 20,000 workers with £5 million share capital; it was founded in 1899, but took a few years before being able to rationalize what was at first a mere federation of family partnerships. The Bleachers’ Association, founded in 1900, had a capital of more than £4.5 million and more than 11,000 employees. The immensely successful firm of J. & P. Coats, thread manufacturers, was the country’s third largest company with £10 million share capital; it employed nearly 13,000 people.