Career
After a mining apprenticeship, Farley took over Dunkirk Colliery when he was twenty-one. Farley played a leading role in several local limited companies. He was a director of the Sandwell Park Colliery Company and later an active Chairman of the Hamstead Colliery Company
His labour relations attitudes were stern.
He condemned the eight-hour day as ‘interference with the liberty of the subject’ He also criticised union organisers at the Summit Foundry for alienating employers from workmen.
However, Farley provided excursions and pensions in his own firm and experienced little labour trouble. He had been urged to stand for parliament when West Bromwich acquired its own seat in 1885, but Farley declined the opportunity.
Instead he channelled his formidable energies into the betterment of his native town. He felt obliged to ‘make the lives of the people brighter and happier’ He believed civic improvement assisted prosperity and prevented business irresponsibility and excessive demands by working mentor
He bought Oak House, West Bromwich with the intention of making it his private residence, but resolved to present it to the town as a museum.
Farley played a key role in William Legge, 5th Earl of Dartmouth’s gift to the town of Dartmouth Park in 1878. He was a county magistrate from 1879, and one of the first borough JPs of West Bromwich. When West Bromwich was incorporated in 1882 Farley’s was the only name suggested for the mayor’s chairman
He filled it four more times and received particular cr for discouraging partisanship in council affairs
Voluntary societies as diverse as the Rifle Volunteers, friendly societies, a choral society and West Bromwich Albion Football Club found Farley an active officer and major contributor. Foreign a quarter of a century he attended almost every committee meeting of the West Bromwich Building Society.
West Bromwich made Farley its first freeman in 1896 and erected a clock tower in his honour a year later.