Robert Owen

For other people named Robert Owen, see Robert Owen ( disambiguation ) Welsh fabric manufacturer and social reformer, 1771–1858

Robert Owen ( ; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858 ) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a collapse of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective border on to child raise, including government control of education. [ 2 ] He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a fabric mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile fabricate. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his luck in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his utopian society. It lasted about two years. early Owenite communities besides failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union apparent motion, and support child labor legislation and absolve co-educational schools.

Reading: Robert Owen

early on life and department of education [edit ]

baptism record of Robert Owen in the Newtown Parish Register Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne ( Williams ) and Robert Owen. His forefather was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster ; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family ‘s seven children, two of whom died at a new old age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard. [ 1 ] [ 3 ] Owen received little courtly education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He besides worked in London curtain shops in his teens. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] At about the old age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the following twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield ‘s Drapery in Saint Ann ‘s Square. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, therefore as to enter into a partnership to make spin mules, a newfangled invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business contribution within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in lease factory space. [ 8 ] In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him director of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. however, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a abridge promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and belated manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock. [ 9 ] [ 10 ] By the early 1790s, Owen ‘s entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a penis of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, [ 10 ] where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He besides became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated chiefly by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers. [ 11 ] [ 12 ]

marriage and family [edit ]

On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann ( or Anne ) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the owner of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland. [ 10 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters : Robert Dale ( 1801–1877 ), William ( 1802–1842 ), Ann ( or Anne ) Caroline ( 1805–1831 ), Jane Dale ( 1805–1861 ), David Dale ( 1807–1860 ), Richard Dale ( 1809–1890 ) and Mary ( 1810–1832 ). [ 10 ] [ 5 ] [ 15 ] Owen ‘s four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen ‘s wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s. [ 16 ] [ 17 ]

New Lanark mill [edit ]

In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark grind from David Dale, and Owen became its director in January 1800. [ 10 ] [ 13 ] Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than strictly commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water exponent provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain ‘s largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers ‘ lives. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] many of the workers were from the lowest social levels : larceny, drunkenness and other vices were common and department of education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respect people rejected the hanker hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills. [ 20 ]
Truck organization of requital by arrange of Robert Owen and Benj Woolfield, National Equitable Labour Exchange, 22 July 1833. Until a series of Truck Acts ( 1831–1887 ) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner ‘s “ truck shop ”, which charged high prices for cheapjack goods. [ 21 ] Unlike others, Owen ‘s truck store offered goods at prices merely slenderly above their sweeping price, [ 13 ] passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under stern supervision. These principles became the footing for Britain ‘s Co-operative shops, some of which continue trade in alter forms to this day. [ 11 ] [ 22 ]

philosophy and influence [edit ]

Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers ‘ confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The residential district besides earned an external repute. sociable reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. [ 13 ] [ 23 ] The opinions of many such visitors were golden. [ 24 ] Owen ‘s biggest achiever was in defend of young person education and early child concern. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an option to the “ normal authoritarian approach to child education ”. [ 25 ] The manners of children brought up under his system were more elegant, affable and unconstrained ; health, batch and contentment prevailed ; alcoholism was about unknown and bastardy highly rare. Owen ‘s relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful manner. [ 20 ] [ 13 ] however, some of Owen ‘s schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for early investors to buy his plowshare of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US $ 800,000. [ 13 ] The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. [ 20 ] The ownership change besides provided Owen with a gamble to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers ‘ rights and child british labour party laws, and free education for children. [ 13 ] In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the foremost of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. [ 26 ] Owen had in the first place been a follower of the classical big, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that spare markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive world power of capitalists. however, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist expectation. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the church service of England, and developed a impression system of his own. [ 27 ] [ 28 ] Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behavior or site in life. This rationale led Owen to conclude that the correct geological formation of people ‘s characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of built-in irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual ‘s character formed the footing of Owen ‘s system of education and social reform. [ 29 ] Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as master and “ the most basic and necessity component in an evolving skill of company ”. [ 30 ] His doctrine was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton ‘s views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the mastermind influence of Enlightenment philosophers. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] Owen ‘s work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a “ initiate in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools. ” [ 5 ] His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. [ 26 ] [ 10 ] In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen besides had interviews and communications with leading members of the british government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He besides met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe. [ 32 ] [ 33 ] Owen adopted modern principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different discolor was installed above each machinist ‘s workplace. The color of the grimace showed to all who saw it the timbre and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no big incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time. [ 33 ] [ 32 ]

Eight-hour sidereal day [edit ]

Owen raised the necessitate for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour work day with the motto “ eight hours labour, eight hours diversion, eight hours rest ”. [ 34 ]

Models for socialism ( 1817 ) [edit ]

Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a “ New View of Society ”. [ 19 ] He outlined his put in a composition to the committee of the House of Commons on the nation ‘s Poor Laws. [ 35 ] As misery and trade wind stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labor with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities. [ 5 ] Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from 1,000 to 1,500 acres ( 405 to 607 hour angle ), all be in one build with a public kitchen and dining halls. ( The proposed size is probable to have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark. ) Owen besides proposed that each kin have its own individual apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the old age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen farther suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. work and use of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his estimate would be the best way to reorganise company in general, [ 20 ] [ 32 ] and called his vision the “ New Moral World ”. [ 26 ] Owen ‘s utopian model changed little in his life. His originate model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a bring residential district. While chiefly agrarian, it would possess the best machinery, offer vary employment, and arsenic far as potential be collected. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, “ unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands ”, linked by common pastime. [ 36 ]

Arguments against Owen and his answers [edit ]

Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. first gear, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. [ citation needed ] Owen then sent such newspapers wide to parliamentarians, politicians and early important people. [ citation needed ] These articles spurred the first damaging reactions to his ideas. [ citation needed ] Opponents thought that Owen ‘s plans would result in an irrepressible increase in population and poverty. [ citation needed ] The other main criticism was that Owen ‘s design and the coarse use of everything would basically make the state one big workshop. [ citation needed ] William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravel plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. [ citation needed ] Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence. [ citation needed ] Owen ‘s opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. [ citation needed ] His influence in opinion circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his “ design ”, started diminishing and rumours of his miss of religious conviction bedspread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. a long as such a social arrange continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen besides considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the position of the hapless and cultivate classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the british fundamental law did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the populace brain by expanding vote rights. [ 37 ] other noteworthy critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his exercise as a precursor to their own. [ 38 ] They recognized in Owen the crucial sympathy, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the alone wealth in capitalist societies. [ 39 ] Similarly, Owen besides recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not mechanically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific concept of socialism from Owen ‘s societies. [ 40 ] They argued that Owen ‘s plan, to create a model socialistic utopia to coexist with contemporaneous company and prove its transcendence over time, was insufficient to create a fresh club. In their see, Owen ‘s “ socialism ” was utopian, since to Owen and the early utopian socialists “ [ south ] ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, rationality and judge, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. ” [ 41 ] Marx and Engels believed that the upset of the capitalist system could lone occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the aid and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the passage to socialism .

Community experiments [edit ]

To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient cultivate communities, Owen began experimenting in communal exist in America in 1825. Among the most celebrated efforts was the matchless set up at New Harmony, Indiana. [ 5 ] Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen ‘s earliest and most ambitious of these. [ 24 ] owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. [ 42 ] In January 1825 Owen used a helping of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of farming along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp ‘s Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony ( or Harmonie ) on the locate in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a utopian community. [ 26 ] [ 43 ] [ 44 ]

return to Britain [edit ]

Although Owen made further abbreviated visits to the United States, London became his permanent wave home and the centre of his oeuvre in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some early business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. [ 10 ] [ 53 ] He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, “ All the worldly concern is fagot save thee and me, and even thou art a little gay ”. [ 57 ] Having invested most of his fortune in the fail New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a affluent capitalist. however, he remained the steer of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, absolve education for children and adequate support conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain documentation for his ideas. [ 53 ] In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, [ 10 ] [ 58 ] a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of tug notes ; this system superseded the usual means of switch over and middlemen. The London substitution continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. [ 59 ] Owen besides became involved in barter unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union ( GNCTU ) before its break down in 1834. [ 10 ] Socialism inaugural became current in british terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. [ 60 ] [ 61 ] Owen ‘s layman views besides gained enough determine among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the religious doctrine of many of them. [ 62 ] [ 32 ] however, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen ‘s agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and periodic treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed. [ 20 ] [ 32 ] [ 21 ]

Role in spiritualism [edit ]

Tomb of Robert Owen, Newtown, Powys In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were delusive. [ 63 ] In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an american medium credited with introducing spirituality to England. He made a public profession of his fresh faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a booklet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women. [ 64 ] Owen claimed to have had medium touch with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the function of these was to change “ the show, faithlessly, separate and abject state of human being, for a genuine, unite and happy express … to prepare the global for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of jacob’s ladder, patience and love. ” [ 65 ] Spiritualists claimed after Owen ‘s death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the “ Seven Principles of Spiritualism “, used by their National Union as “ the basis of its religious philosophy ”. [ 66 ]

belated years [edit ]

As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. [ 53 ] Owen published his memoir, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death. [ 10 ]

Death and bequest [edit ]

Crowds of locals gather to commemorate Robert Owen at his sculpt in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in the 1890s Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native greenwich village of Newtown at the end of his liveliness. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died hard up apart from an annual income draw from a reliance established by his sons in 1844. [ 10 ] [ 5 ] [ 67 ] Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, residential district builder, and medium who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved exploit conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labor laws and rid department of education for children. [ 53 ] In these reforms he was ahead of his fourth dimension. He envisioned a communal club that others could consider and apply as they wished. [ 68 ] In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race ( 1849 ), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual ‘s experience. [ 69 ] Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person ‘s “ character is not made by, but for the individual, ” [ 70 ] and that nature and society are creditworthy for each person ‘s character and impart. [ 71 ] Owen ‘s agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting sociable reforms in women ‘s and workers ‘ rights, establish release public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and deal union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts. [ 26 ] [ 72 ] Owen ‘s bequest of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana :

Honours and tributes [edit ]

The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire.[5]
The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland.[5]

Selected published works [edit ]

A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816
Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. (London, 1815)
Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817)[85]
Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181[86]
An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819)
Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821)
An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823)
An Address to All Classes in the State (London, 1832)
The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (London, 1849)

Collected works :

A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G.D.H. Cole (London and New York: J.M. Dent & Sons, E.P. Dutton and Co., 1927)
A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991)
The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993)

archival collections :

Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom.[87]
New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States[88]
New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen’s Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States[89]
Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States[90]