Cleanliness next to godliness: Christians in the Victorian starch industry.

For the purpose of this paper, the sense in which cleanliness connects with godliness derives from the prominent role played by a handful of nonconformist entrepreneurs whose impact on the consumer goods industries extended far beyond the significance of their businesses when measured by investment or other financial criteria. The historically strong association between marketing and the manufacture and sale of packaged branded products supplying cleanliness to all classes in the form of soap, starch, washing blue, and polish, adds a special interest to a discussion of the conference themes of the virtue of business and the business of virtue.