The working week suddenly became a warmer affair for many of Smiths’ employees in 1905. Wrangles over licence levels and rates of return finally reached an impasse in that year, losing the company its pitches on the two biggest railways, Great Western and London & North Western. The 250 vacancies thus created went instead to Messrs Wyman, the Great Western’s printing company. Undaunted, Smiths quickly opened new shops and lending libraries as close as possible to the vacated stations: 144 of them in eleven weeks, with more to follow. Suddenly, England had its first high-street bookshop chain.
