Robert
Owen, the son of a saddler and ironmonger from Newtown in Wales, was
born on 14th May, 1771. Robert was an intelligent boy who did very
well at his local school, but at the age of ten, his father sent him
to work in a large drapers in Stamford, Lincolnshire. After spending
three years in Stamford, Robert moved to a drapers in London.
This job lasted until 1787 and now aged sixteen, Robert found work
at a large wholesale and retail drapery business in Manchester.
It was while Owen was working in Manchester
that he heard about the success Richard
Arkwright was having with his textile factory in Cromford. Richard
was quick to see the potential of this way of manufacturing cloth
and although he was only nineteen years old, borrowed £100 and
set up a business as a manufacturer of spinning mules with John Jones,
an engineer. In 1792 the partnership with Jones came to an end and
Owen found work as a manager of Peter Drinkwater's large spinning
factory in Manchester.
As manager of Drinkwater's factory, Owen met a lot of businessmen
involved in the textile industry. This included David
Dale, the owner of Chorton Twist Company in New Lanark, Scotland,
the largest cotton-spinning business in Britain. The two men became
close friends and in 1799 Robert married Dale's daughter, Caroline.
With the financial support of several businessmen from Manchester,
Owen purchased Dale's four textile factories in New Lanark for £60,000.
Under Owen's control, the Chorton Twist Company expanded rapidly.
However, Robert Owen was not only concerned with making money, he
was also interested in creating a new type of community at New Lanark.
Owen believed that a person's character is formed by the effects of
their environment. Owen was convinced that if he created the right
environment, he could produce rational, good and humane people. Owen
argued that people were naturally good but they were corrupted by
the harsh way they were treated. For example, Owen was a strong opponent
of physical punishment in schools and factories and immediately banned
its use in New Lanark.
David
Dale had originally built a large number of houses close to his
factories in New Lanark. By the time Owen arrived, over 2,000 people
lived in New Lanark village. One of the first decisions took when
he became owner of New Lanark was to order the building of a school.
Owen was convinced that education was crucially important in developing
the type of person he wanted.
When Owen arrived at New Lanark children from as young as five were
working for thirteen hours a day in the textile mills. He stopped
employing children under ten and reduced their labour to ten hours
a day. The young children went to the nursery and infant schools that
Owen had built. Older children worked in the factory but also had
to attend his secondary school for part of the day.
Owen's
partners were concerned that these reforms would reduce profits. Unable
to convince them of the wisdom of these reforms, Owen decided to borrow
money from Archibald Campbell, a local banker, in order to buy their
share of the business. Later, Owen sold shares in the business to
men who agreed with the way he ran his factory.
Robert Owen hoped that the way he treated children at his New Lanark
would encourage other factory owners to follow his example. It was
therefore important for him to publicize his activities. He wrote
several books including The Formation of Character (1813) and
A New View of Society (1814). In 1815 Robert Owen sent detailed
proposals to Parliament about his ideas on factory reform. This resulted
in Owen appearing before Robert Peel and his House
of Commons committee in April, 1816.
Robert Owen toured the country making speeches on his experiments
at New Lanark. He also publishing his speeches as pamphlets and sent
free copies to influential people in Britain. In one two month period
he spent £4,000 publicizing his activities. In his speeches,
Owen argued that he was creating a "new moral world, a world
from which the bitterness of divisive sectarian religion would be
banished". His criticisms of the Church of England upset many
people, including reformers such as William
Wilberforce and William Cobbett.
Disappointed with the response he received in Britain, Owen decided
in 1825 to establish a new community in America based on the socialist
ideas that he had developed over the years. Owen purchased an area
of Indiana for £30,000 and called the community he established
there, New Harmony. One of Owen's sons, Robert
Dale Owen became the leader of the new community in America.
By 1827 Owen had lost interest in his New Lanark textile mills and
decided to sell the business. His four sons and one of his daughters,
Jane, moved to New Harmony and made it their permanent home but Owen
decided to stay in England where he spent the rest of his life helping
different reform groups. This included supporting organisations attempting
to obtain factory reform, adult suffrage and the development of successful
trade unions. He expressed his views in his journals, The Crisis
and The New Moral World.
Owen also played an important role in establishing the Grand National
Consolidated Trade Union in 1834 and the Association of All Classes
and All Nations in 1835. Owen also attempted to form a new community
at East Tytherly in Hampshire. However, like New Harmony in America,
this experiment came to an end after disputes between members of the
community. Although disillusioned with the failure of these communities
and most of his political campaigns, Robert
Owen
continued to work for his "new moral order" until his death
on 17th November, 1858.
New
Lanark Cotton Mills
(1)
Robert Owen, Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System
(1815)
The
manufacturing system has already so far extended its influence over
the British Empire, as to effect an essential change in the general
character of the mass of the people. This alteration is still in rapid
progress; and ere long, the comparatively happy simplicity of the
agricultural peasant will be wholly lost amongst us. It is even now
scarcely anywhere to be found without a mixture of those habits which
are the offspring of trade, manufactures, and commerce.
The inhabitants
of every country are trained and formed by its great leading existing
circumstances, and the character of the lower orders in Britain is
now formed chiefly by circumstances arising from trade, manufactures,
and commerce; and the governing principle of trade, manufactures,
and commerce is immediate pecuniary gain, to which on the great scale
every other is made to give way. All are sedulously trained to buy
cheap and to sell dear; and to succeed in this art, the parties must
be taught to acquire strong powers of deception; and thus a spirit
is generated through every class of traders, destructive of that open,
honest sincerity, without which man cannot make others happy, nor
enjoy happiness himself.
But the
effects of this principle of gain, unrestrained, are still more lamentable
on the working classes, those who are employed in the operative parts
of the manufactures; for most of these branches are more or less unfavourable
to the health and morals of adults. Yet parents do not hesitate to
sacrifice the well-being of their children by putting them to occupations
by which the constitution of their minds and bodies is rendered greatly
inferior to what it might and ought to be under a system of common
foresight and humanity.
In the
manufacturing districts it is common for parents to send their children
of both sexes at seven or eight years of age, in winter as well as
summer, at six o'clock in the morning, sometimes of course in the
dark, and occasionally amidst frost and snow, to enter the manufactories,
which are often heated to a high temperature, and contain an atmosphere
far from being the most favourable to human life, and in which all
those employed in them very frequently continue until twelve o'clock
at noon, when an hour is allowed for dinner, after which they return
to remain, in a majority of cases, till eight o'clock at night.
(2)
On the 26th April, 1816, Robert Owen appeared before Robert Peel's
House of Commons Committee.
Question: At what age to take children into your mills?
Robert Owen: At ten and upwards.
Question: Why do you not employ children at an earlier age?
Robert Owen: Because I consider it to be injurious to the children,
and not beneficial to the proprietors.
Question: What reasons have you to suppose it is injurious to the
children to be employed at an earlier age?
Robert Owen: Seventeen years ago, a number of individuals, with myself,
purchased the New Lanark establishment from Mr. Dale. I found that
there were 500 children, who had been taken from poor-houses, chiefly
in Edinburgh, and those children were generally from the age of five
and six, to seven to eight. The hours at that time were thirteen.
Although these children were well fed their limbs were very generally
deformed, their growth was stunted, and although one of the best schoolmasters
was engaged to instruct these children regularly every night, in general
they made very slow progress, even in learning the common alphabet.
I came to the conclusion that the children were injured by being taken
into the mills at this early age, and employed for so many hours;
therefore, as soon as I had it in my power, I adopted regulations
to put an end to a system which appeared to me to be so injurious.
Question: Do you give instruction to any part of your population?
Robert Owen: Yes. To the children from three years old upwards, and
to every other part of the population that choose to receive it.
Question: If you do not employ children under ten, what would you
do with them?
Robert Owen: Instruct them, and give them exercise.
Question: Would not there be a danger of their acquiring, by that
time, vicious habits, for want of regular occupation.
Robert Owen: My own experiences leads me to say, that I found quite
the reverse, that their habits have been good in proportion to the
extent of their instruction.
(3)
William Lovett, Life and Struggles (1876)
I entertain the highest respect for Mr. Owen's generous intentions.
I was one of those who, at one time, was favourably impressed with
many of Mr. Owen's views, and, more especially, with those of a community
of property. This notion has a peculiar attraction for the plodding,
toiling, ill-remunerated sons and daughters of labour.
(4)
Thomas Wooler, Black Dwarf (20th
August 1817)
The principal justification of Mr Owen's pretensions are that he has
succeeded in changing, as he calls it, the moral habits of the persons
under his employment in a manufactory at Lanark, in Scotland. For
all the good he has done in that respect, he deserves the highest
thanks. It is much to be wished, that all who live by the labour of
the poor would pay as much attention to their wants and to their interests
as Mr Owen did to those under his care at Lanark.
But it
is very amusing to hear Mr Owen talk of re-moralizing the poor. Does
he not think that the rich are a little more in want of re-moralizing;
and particularly that class of them that has contributed to demoralize
the poor, if they are demoralized, by supporting measures which have
made them poor, and which now continue them poor and wretched?
Talk of
the poor being demoralized! It is their would-be masters that create
all the evils that afflict the poor, and all the depravity that pretended
philanthropists pretend to regret.
In one
point of view Mr Owen's scheme might be productive of some good. Let
him abandon the labourer to his own protection; cease to oppress him,
and the poor man would scorn to hold any fictitious dependence upon
the rich. Give him a fair price for his labour, and do not take two-thirds
of a depreciated remuneration back from him again in the shape of
taxes. Lower the extravagance of the great. Tax those real luxuries,
enormous fortunes obtained without merit. Reduce the herd of locusts
that prey upon the honey of the hive, and think they do the bees a
most essential service by robbing them. The working bee can always
find a hive. Do not take from them what they can earn, to supply the
wants of those who will earn nothing. Do this; and the poor will not
want your splendid erections for the cultivation of misery and the
subjugation of the mind.
(5)
Robert Owen, To the Population of the World (1834)
This
great truth which I have now to declare to you, is, that the system
on which all the nations of the world are acting is founded in gross
deception, in the deepest ignorance or in a mixture of both. That,
under no possible modifications of the principles on which it is based,
can it ever produce good to man; but that, on the contrary, its practical
results must ever be to produce evil continually' - and, consequently,
that no really intelligent and honest individual can any longer support
it; for, by the constitution of this system, it unavoidably encourages
and upholds, as it ever has encouraged and upheld, hypocrisy and deception
of every description, and discouraged and opposed truth and sincerity,
whenever truth and sincerity were applied permanently to improve the
condition of the human race. It encourages and upholds national vice
and corruption to an unlimited extent; whilst to an equal degree it
discourages national virtue and honesty.
The
whole system has not one redeeming quality; its very virtues, as they
are termed, are vices of great magnitude. Its charities, so called,
are gross acts of injustice and deception. Its instructions are to
rivet ignorance in the mind and, if possible, render it perpetual.
It supports, in all manner of extravagance, idleness, presumption,
and uselessness; and oppresses, in almost every mode which ingenuity
can devise, industry, integrity and usefulness. It encourages superstition,
bigotry and fanaticism; and discourages truth, commonsense and rationality.
It generates and cultivates every inferior quality and base passion
that human nature can be made to receive; and has so disordered all
the human intellects, that they have become universally perplexed
and confused, so that man has no just title to be called a reasonable
and rational being. It generates violence, robbery and murder, and
extols and rewards these vices as the highest of all virtues. Its
laws are founded in gross ignorance of individual man and of human
society; they are cruel and unjust in the extreme, and, united with
all the superstitions in the world, are calculated only to teach men
to call that which
is pre-eminently true and good, false and bad; and that which is glaringly
false and bad, true and good. In short, to cultivate with great care
all that leads to vice and misery in the mass, and to exclude from
them, with equal care, all that would direct them to true knowledge
and real happiness, which alone, combined, deserve the name of virtue.
In consequence
of the dire effects of this wretched system upon the whole of the
human race, the population of Great Britain - the most advanced of
modern nations in the acquirement of riches, power and happiness -
has created and supports a theory and practice of government which
is directly opposed to the real well-being and true interests of every
individual member of the empire, whatever may be his station, rank
or condition - whether subject or sovereign. And so enormous are the
increasing errors of this system now become, that, to uphold it the
government is compelled, day by day, to commit acts of the grossest
cruelty and injustice, and to call such proceedings laws of justice
and of Christian mercy.
Under
this system, the idle, the useless and the vicious govern the population
of the world; whilst the useful and the truly virtuous, as far as
such a system will permit men to be virtuous, are by them degraded
and oppressed.
Men of
industry, and of good and virtuous habits! This is the last state
to which you ought to submit; nor would I advise you to allow the
ignorant, the idle, the presumptuous and the vicious, any longer to
lord it over the well-being, the lives and happiness, of yourselves
and families, when, by three days of such idleness as constitutes
the whole of their lives, you would for ever convince each one of
these mistaken individuals that you now possess the power to compel
them at once to become the abject slaves, and the oppressed portion
of society which they have hitherto made you.
(6)
Henry
Hetherington, last testament (21st
August 1849)
As life is uncertain, it behoves everyone to make preparations
for death; I deem it therefore a duty incumbent on me, ere I quit
this life, to express in writing, for the satisfaction and guidance
of esteemed friends, my feelings and opinions in reference to our
common principles.
In the
first place, then - I calmly and deliberately declare that I do not
believe in the popular notion of an Almighty, All-wise and Benevolent
God - possessing intelligence, and conscious of his own operations;
because these attributes involve such a mass of absurdities and contradictions,
so much cruelty and injustice on His part to the poor and destitute
portion of His creatures - that, in my opinion, no rational reflecting
mind can, after disinterested investigation, give credence to the
existence of such a Being.
Second,
I believe death to be an eternal sleep - that I shall never live again
in this world, or another, with a consciousness that I am the same
identical person that once lived, performed the duties, and exercised
the functions of a human being.
Third,
I consider priestcraft and superstition the greatest obstacle to human
improvement and happiness. During my life I have, to the best of my
ability, sincerely and strenuously exposed and opposed them, and die
with a firm conviction that Truth, Justice, and Liberty will never
be permanently established on earth till every vestige of priestcraft
and superstition be utterly destroyed.
Fourth,
I have ever considered that the only religion useful to man consists
exclusively of the practice of morality, and in the mutual interchange
of kind actions. In such a religion there is no room for priests and
when I see them interfering at our births, marriages and deaths pretending
to conduct us safely through this state of being to another and happier
world, any disinterested person of the least shrewdness and discernment
must perceive that their sole aim is to stultify the minds of the
people by their incomprehensible doctrines that they may the more
effectively fleece the poor deluded sheep who listen to their empty
babblings and mystifications.
Fifth,
as I have lived so I die, a determined opponent to the nefarious and
plundering system. I wish my friends, therefore, to deposit my remains
in unconsecrated ground, and trust they will allow no priest, or clergyman
of any denomination, to interfere in any way whatsoever at my funeral.
These are
my views and principles in quitting an existence that has been chequered
with the plagues and pleasures of a competitive, scrambling, selfish
system; a system by which the moral and social aspirations of the
noblest human being are nullified by incessant toil and physical deprivations;
by which, indeed, all men are trained to be either slaves, hypocrites
or criminals. Hence my ardent attachment to the principles of that
great and good man Robert Owen. I quit this world with a firm conviction
that his system is the only true road to human emancipation.
Robert
Owen Museum
Robert
Owen
Robert
Owen: Books
Robert
Owen and Education
Robert
Owen and the Cooperative Movement
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