[1] Charles Hoskins joined his elder brother George (1847-1926) in Sydney in 1876, operating a small engineering workshop at Hay Street, Ultimo.

Around 1889, their firm, G & C Hoskins, moved to larger premises in Wattle Street, Ultimo and established a foundry, pipe-works and boiler shop.

A growing force was the Labor Party; it somewhat favoured protection, as a means to maintain relatively high wages, but also advocated nationalisation of major industries, complicating its position.

[11][12] The Chamber of Manufacturers of New South Wales had been established in 1885—Hoskins was an early and prominent member[12]—with its primary supporters focusing on lobbying for protection, in direct opposition to the "Free Traders" led by Sir Henry Parkes and later George Reid.

In 1895, Charles Hoskins was the first President of a reconstituted Chamber of Manufacturers that aimed to advance industry, without partisan political lobbying,[13][14] an approach that it has followed since that time.

A leading Free Trade businessman and politician, Joseph Mitchell won the contract, in 1897, but died before he could build his planned large iron and steel works near Wallerawang.

[1] In 1898, after negotiations, G & C Hoskins and the Melbourne firm Mephan Ferguson shared the contract to manufacture and lay 60,000 lengths of pipe over the 350 miles (563 km) from Perth to Coolgardie, for the water-supply scheme designed by Charles Yelverton O'Connor.

[17][19] The contract for the pipeline in Western Australia stipulated that the pipes were to be manufactured in that state, and that all would be to Mephan Ferguson's design using an ingenious 'rivetless' locking bar.

[21] In December 1907, there was a crisis when the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney took over the assets of William Sandford Limited, owners of the Eskbank Ironworks at Lithgow, including its nearly-new modern blast furnace.

[1] Matters came to a climax at the end of August 1911, when during a bitter and sometimes violent company-wide strike—following Hoskins use of strikebreaking 'scab' labour in his coal mine to keep the works operating—Hoskins and his sons, Henry and Cecil, were besieged by rock-throwing workers and his motor car was destroyed by the rioters.

[43][44] Hoskins' reaction was to assert that Royal Commission had been intended to justify nationalising the steel industry,[40] which given its terms of reference is conceivable, but the Premier denied that.

The company responded in late December 1911, by initiating legal action, against the NSW Government, stating that it was being "condemned unheard" in an unfair and unjust manner.

[48][49] In the meantime, other events were favourable to Hoskins; the industrial dispute ended in an uneasy peace, in April 1912, and, later in 1912, the company won a contract to supply rails and fishplates for the new Trans-Australian Railway—after convincing the Commonwealth authorities that it could meet the product specification—and a large order of water pipes for the new national capital.

Under the settlement, the original exclusive contract was not reinstated, but the company was not debarred from tendering to the N.S.W Government,[54] which it did successfully in subsequent years.

[55] Labor still held office, when, in June 1913, McGowen was replaced as premier by his deputy, the same William Holman, who had been the Attorney-General and the driving force behind the Royal Commission.

The new premier continued to justify the cancellation of the contract, based on the Royal Commissioner's findings[56] but the government was by then faced with the adverse consequences for the workers of Lithgow—now that the industrial disputes were over.

That was largely due to the failures of the Sandford period, but it was Hoskins who wore the consequences, when the NSW Government cancelled the exclusive contract in late 1911.

[63]The Lithgow plant was in urgent need of expansion; the Hoskins brothers had the financial means to do so and experience of operating a heavy industrial enterprise.

[77] While the war was in progress, he was building a new branch railway line and an aerial ropeway to open up a new iron ore quarry at Cadia,[78][79] as well as developing a coal mine and coke ovens at Wongawilli.

[80] However, by the time of the war, difficulties associated with the location of his plant at Lithgow had already become apparent to Hoskins, leading him to reconsider its long term future.

[102] Through Charles Hoskins' commercial intransigence—his unwillingness to renew the lease on the existing terms and conditions—the company lost access to its deposit at Carcoar in 1923, after extracting only about a third of its ore.[103][83] Charles Hoskins had believed that he did not need to pay a royalty to the landowner of Coombing Park and could just make a claim under a Miner's Right, following amendments made to the Mining Act in 1919.

[80] "Wonga", a little saddle-tank engine, worked at Wongawilli, from 1916 to October 1927; it had first been used by the British and Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Company in 1876, as part of an earlier attempt to operate a blast furnace in Australia.

In the early 1920s, the young iron and steel industry in Australia found itself subject to intense competition from imports; this affected both Lithgow and Newcastle.

[128] BHP also had vast cash flows from its Broken Hill silver-lead mines and smelters and, increasingly, from its profitable steel operations, with which to fund expansion and enhancement of its steelworks.

[136] That left the stage clear for Hoskins to take advantage of Port Kembla's seaport location, amidst the Southern Coalfields renown for their excellent hard coking coal.

[147] Although Thomas was not initially involved in G & C Hoskins, he later became the firm's Melbourne representative and later the manager of the works at Midland Junction, in Western Australia.

The stonework was dismantled and transported in sections to its new site and re-erected in the same orientation as the original bank building, becoming the facade of a more conventional Italianate mansion.

During that time, he had to rectify and expand an inadequate loss-making plant, while in conflict, simultaneously, with some of his workforce and with his largest customer, the N.S.W Government, and under the scrutiny of a Royal Commission.

[214] Standing on an opposite corner of the intersection of Mort and Bridge Streets from the church, the Charles Hoskins Memorial Institute building—opened in 1927—was a campus of the Western Sydney University, between 2014 and 2018.

[184] The mansion that Hoskins built in the early 1890s, 'Illyria' at Strathfield, was renamed 'Holyrood' by its next owner—William James Adams, a nephew and an heir of George Adams—and survives to this day.