merchant but a budding entrepreneur, banker and industrialist. In 1783 he joined Edinburgh businessman Robert Scott Moncrieff in setting up the first Glasgow agency of the Royal Bank of Scotland – a business arrangement possibly assisted by his wife’s family connections. Within a few years, the Glasgow branch was doing business worth one million pounds. America was no longer a British colony and Glasgow merchants no longer depended on tobacco for their fortunes. Textiles, sugar and rum were the new tobacco. In 1783, there was an opportunity for Dale to extend his reputation and influence with the establishment of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce , the first of its type in Britain. Dale became a director, later deputy chairman, and joined forces with the likes of James Oswald, James Dennistoun, John Glassford, Thomas Buchanan and many others – ex tobacco lords, sugar & rum merchants, textile merchants and entrepreneurs from the coal, chemical and brewing industries. Dale became an important figure in the commercial life of Glasgow and remained an influential figure in Chamber until his death. According to one source, Dale by this time had become:...the prosperous Glasgow merchant who, by virtue of pure force of character and intelligence, had fairly broken down that wall of distinction which once separated him from the great tobacco and sugar lords and could now wear his cocked hat jauntily, display his silver knee buckles showily and take the place of honour on the crown of the causeway with the proudest of them all. New Lanark In 1784 Richard Arkwright visited Scotland in 1784 at the request of George Dempster, landowner and Perthshire M.P. Arkwright, owner of the several successful cotton mills in England, acknowledged as the father of the cotton industry and one of the richest men in Britain, was persuaded to visit Lanark, with a view to establishing a cotton mill in the area. Dale and Dempster accompanied Arkwright to where New Lanark is today. The site was considered to be suitable and a partnership was agreed between the three of them. Construction work began immediately and the mill buildings were based on Arkwright’s own mills in Cromford. Men and boys were sent from New Lanark to Cromford for initial training and the mills began spinning in early 1786, at which point both Dempster and Arkwright left the partnership, leaving Dale as the sole owner. By the 1790s there were nearly