the Hoskins Brothers (G & C Hoskins) in 1908. Under the complicated deal, the Hoskins took over the overdraft of £138,000 owing to the bank, paid £14,000 to shareholders of William Sandford Limited in the form of 4 per cent bonds, and paid £50,000 to Sandford himself —ensuring Sandford's future financial security. Sandford would lose his home and possessions at 'Eskroy Park'. The Hoskins Brothers had outlaid £202,000 for the assets and nobody but Sandford himself had lost any money. He expressed some satisfaction with that outcome, stating that, "I have come down, but I have dragged nobody with me". William Sandford Limited was wound up in early 1908. Lithgow after Sandford The long-sought protection of the iron and steel industry was finally introduced, from the first day of 1909, by Andrew Fisher's Labor government, in the form of bounties to be paid under the new Manufacturers' Encouragement Act, which made it a condition that those benefitting from bounties would pay "fair and reasonable wages". The new legislation came too late to save Sandford, but the bounties alone probably would not have been enough to turn around the Lithgow operations in the manner Charles Hoskins would do by 1914. G & C Hoskins had been a large customer of William Sandford Limited—using pig iron in their iron pipe foundry in Sydney—and one of the very few outside shareholders of William Sandford Limited. Charles Hoskins was one of Sandford's closest friends and a fellow protectionist. Despite this relationship and the apparent generosity of Hoskins' settlement with Sandford, unkind and ungracious public remarks—about Sandford and his management of the Lithgow plant— resulted in a bitter public dispute between Sandford and Charles Hoskins during August 1911. Even after he had left the industry and Lithgow, Sandford continued to be an advocate for the iron and steel industry at Lithgow and to defend his role in it, of which he was proud. Workforce relations Sandford had been popular and widely respected in Lithgow as a relatively benevolent employer, who had the interests of his workers at heart. In 1893, when orders at Lithgow were slack, he obtained work for some of his employees at the Onehunga Ironworks in New Zealand. He provided cheap land for his workers and assistance to build their houses, including providing house designs and guaranteeing their bank loans. He had engaged his workers by contract with an element of profit