III

ROBERT OWEN-SOCIAL DREAMER

HE truth of the fact that the real is ever the

Tchild of the ideal is well shown in the life

and influence of Robert Owen, the social dreamer and prophet of a better day for workmen and common people. Prior to 1886, four biographies of him had been published-all in English-the most of which are now out of print. Since the beginning of the present century, three new ones have appeared, one in French by Edouard Dolleans, another in German by Helene Simon, and lastly a finely illustrated and large two-volume work in English by Frank Podmore. To this list of three biographies should be added an admirable account by George B. Lockwood of the experiment at New Harmony.1

Owen died in 1858, and although sixty years have gone by, an interest in his career and per

sonality still persists. An unusually successful captain of industry; a most strikingly original and unique personality; an instigator of practical reforms for the benefit of workmen; a pioneer along educational lines; an idealistic dreamer interested in the creation of Utopias; an incurable optimist; and a naive believer in the truth of his own ideas, are some of the terms which may be used by way of characterization. M. Dolleans well says that "he was not merely a closet philosopher, but a man who did not hesitate to risk his fortune to put his ideas into practice." Much of English socialism, especially on its earlier and Utopian side, and the ideas leading to the establishment of coöperative stores or retail societies, are the outcome of the life and ideals of this man, who was both a successful business man and a social dreamer.

When Owen was born, in 1771, in a saddler's home in a small village of North Wales, the Industrial Revolution was just beginning in England, and Owen came in contact with it when, at nineteen, he went to Manchester and became the owner of a small cotton factory, after having served several years as a draper's apprentice in

1 Edouard Dolleans, Robert Owen. Societe Nouvelle, Paris. Helene Simon, Robert Owen; sein Leben und seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart, Jena. Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. Appleton & Co. New York. F. B. Lockwood, The New Harmony Communities. Marion, Indiana.

London. The steam engine, the spinning jenny, the power loom, the cotton gin, and other mechanical inventions, led to the change from the domestic or household system of industry to the factory system. Cotton mills were hastily and poorly constructed, the work rooms were overcrowded, sanitary requirements were neglected, the hours of labor were long, and many children, especially parish apprentices, were employed. Says a contemporary writer: "The greater number of children a widow has, she lives so much the more comfortably; and upon such account alone she is often a tempting object to a second husband. Indeed at cotton mills it often happens that young children support their aged parents by their industry." The early cotton lords, in their race for wealth, had little idea of their social obligations. Legislation and better social ideals were clearly needed.

New Lanark, on the banks of the Clyde, where Owen entered upon his kingdom in 1800, was the place where he worked out some of his ideals. Buying with others the cotton mills of his father-inlaw, David Dale, he found some two thousand persons employed in them, of whom about five hundred were children from the parish workhouses who had been apprenticed to the mills for a term of years. "The population," says Owen, "was a collection of the most ignorant and destitute from

all parts of Scotland, possessing the usual characteristics of poverty and ignorance. They were generally ignorant and much addicted to theft, drunkenness, and falsehood, with all their concomitant evils, and strongly experiencing the misery which these ever produce." But in 1812 he was able to write that these same persons "had now become conspicuously honest, industrious, sober, and orderly, and that an idle individual, one in liquor, or a thief, is scarcely to be seen from the beginning to the end of the year." The change came about through the justice and moderation of Owen; checks, regulations, and direction of industry into legal and useful ways, made for honesty and cleanliness in mill and village; a store selling goods at reduced prices was established; the hours of labor were shortened; and a sense of mutual interest established. Good conditions and business worked profitably together, but objections being made to his schemes, Owen bought out his partners, getting part of his capital for so doing from Jeremy Bentham through the good offices of James Mill and Francis Place.

The most remarkable experiment at New Lanark, however, was the educational one. Robert Owen was a founder of schools for young children, a pioneer of the kindergarten movement, and so the cause of rational education owes much to his

influence. Owen believed that education is the primary source of all the good and evil, misery and happiness, which exist in the world, in so far as these depend upon our operations. To him differences between man and man are due to environment, and conditions of environment are directly under human control. Owen seems to be in the same company as Adam Smith, who says: "The difference between a philosopher and a common street porter seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education." The formation of character was to Owen the true aim of education. In the schools which he established, objects, more than books, were used in teaching. Globes, maps, paintings, natural history specimens, together with singing and dancing, were the chief means used. An American visitor speaks of one invention thus: "It consists in personifying the parts of speech, and in assigning to each its relative importance according to the military system. General Noun figures in his cocked hat, sword, and double epaulettes. By his side stands Colonel Verb, and so on down to Corporal Adverb." The industrial reforms and the educational experiments brought many visitors to New Lanark, and the name of Owen became wellknown.

The cotton manufacture, with its vast profits,