English master bakers and English making machines have been installed at Weston’s new English Biscuit Factory, and the great opportunity of these English lines is proven by the fact that a 24 hour day production has been maintained for several weeks past. The company also produced a sampler tin of the new biscuits that sold very well. Weston's English Quality Biscuits proved a long-term success and the product line became the basis for the company's continued growth. With the death of George Weston in 1924, W. Garfield Weston became president of George Weston Limited at the age of 26. Garfield, who had effectively been running the company the past several years, set the firm on a path of expansion. In 1928, he took the company ‘public’ and made his first major acquisition – William Paterson Ltd., a Brantford, Ontario, biscuit and confectionery maker founded in 1863 by William Paterson. The company also made its first foray into the American market but the effort ended in near disaster. A Weston's English Quality Biscuits factory was set up at Watertown, near Boston, Massachusetts, but after a series of missteps, that included a botched advertising campaign, the plant was closed. It was later realized that a senior manager had secretly been working for the competition. The American company was subsequently reorganized and a new biscuit plant established near Passaic, New Jersey. In spite of the Great Depression, George Weston Limited continued to expand in Ontario and Western Canada. The company bought Lawlor's Bread Limited of Toronto for over a quarter million dollars in 1930. It went on to acquire Regal Bakeries Limited in Ontario in 1931, Independent Biscuit Co. of Calgary that same year, and Lawrence Bread Limited in 1933. As the Depression deepened and George Weston Limited remained profitable, it bought companies and operations under favourable terms. In 1933, for example, it extended its service area to 100 miles around Toronto with the acquisition of Ontario Bakeries Limited from its trustee and receiver: In this case, as in nearly every case where the company or its subsidiaries have taken in other plants, the company was able to take advantage of the extraordinary low price obtaining for capital assets during the depression, to expand its business at very low cost to itself and on purchase terms that are scarcely more than rental. The company went on to acquire McCormick's Limited from its receivers in 1937 and bought Inter City Western Bakeries in 1938. In the United States, it expanded biscuit operations at Passaic, New Jersey, and established a new Weston's Biscuits plant at Battle Creek, Michigan.