Product Code Database
Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist, political philosopher and , and a founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental communities, sought a more collective approach to child-rearing, and 'believed in lifelong education, establishing an Institute for the Formation of Character and School for Children that focused less on job skills than on becoming a better person'. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating at age 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperative and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools.
Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be an apprentice draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire, for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teenage years.Estabrook, p. 63; Podmore, pp. 15–17. (online version) At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square.Podmore, pp. 23 and 41.A memorial plaque marks the firm's location.
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 proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up a home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield House in Lanark.Estabrook, p. 64.
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).Estabrook, pp. 72, 80 and 83 See also 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.Estabrook, p. 72.Pitzer, "Why New Harmony is World Famous," in Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, p. 11.
By the early 1790s, Owen's spirit and management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected as a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers.
In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power 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.Estabrook, p. 70.John F. C. Harrison, "Robert Owen's Quest for the New Moral World in America," in
Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respectable people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills.
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 shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day.
Owen and his son William sailed to the United States in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and that had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site 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.
Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses to the House of Representatives in Congress and to others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs.Estabrook, p. 66. See also The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement.
Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression. See also:
Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended.
Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827.Roger D. Branigin, "Robert Owen's New Harmony: An American Heritage", in Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 20.Forestville Commonwealth was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. See
Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle", and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists", with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in".
Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result ... It appeared that it was nature's inherent law of diversity that had conquered us ... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation".Warren, Periodical Letter II (1856) Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members.Estabrook, p. 68.
Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic co-operatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at East Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by the Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge.
In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system,Harrison, "Robert Owen's Quest for the New Moral World in America," in Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 36. a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected using labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, with a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834.
Socialism first 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.Harvey, Robert Owen, p. 211. Owen's secularism views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the cooperative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed.
As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline.Estabrook, p. 68. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death.
Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844.Leopold, Robert Dale Owen, A Biography, p. 327.
Some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. 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. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children.
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 behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform.Merle Curti, "Robert Owen in American Thought," in Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 62.
Relying on his observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society".Curti, "Robert Owen in American Thought", in Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 61. His philosophy 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 direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers."Panel Discussion", Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 85.
Owen hoped for a better and more harmonious environment that promoted mutual respect, love and moral values. He believed everyone would have a good education and better living condition to live righteously. He valued social and educational reforms for the middle class and rejected the capitalist power which elevated the powerful figures at the expense of others. Owen funded kids' schools and advocated for free education, equal rights and freedom. He participated in legislation to improve labourers' wages and working conditions.
Owen believed compassion, kindness and solidarity corrected bad habits, encouraged self-discipline and enhanced a person's attitude. Force oppressed people and affected their mental health. In his view, unless people were educated in a proper environment, obtained equal opportunities for jobs and maintained social norms, differences between labour classes, conflicts, and inequalities would persist just as in the British colonies. 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 public mentality by expanding voting rights.
Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education"., Harrison, "Robert Owen's Quest for the New Moral World in America", Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 40. Supporters of the methods argued that the manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way.
Perhaps one of Robert Owen's most memorable ideas was his silent monitor method. Owen was opposed to common corporal punishment; therefore, to have some form of discipline he developed the "silent monitor". In his mills, he would hang a four-sided block each displaying a different colour representing the behaviour of the employee.
Owen raised the demand 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 working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest".
Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham, who believed that and laissez-faire, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a Deism, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own.
Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade 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 it as the underlying cause of competition of human labour with machinery and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities.
Owen appealed to the self-interest of capitalists, pointing out that just as machines need proper care and treatment to guarantee they work smoothly and efficiently, so do humans.
Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its private apartment and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the 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 further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, county, or other governmental units. In each case, there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World".
Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in the circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by a common interest.
Owen grew to be known as a utopian socialist and his works are considered to reflect this attitude. Although he could be considered a member of the bourgeoisie his relationship with this class was often complicated. He fought to pass legislation that benefitted workers. He was an advocate for the Cotton Mills and Factories Act 1819. He supported socialist ideas so his views did not have an immediate impact in Britain or the United States.
Owen claimed to have had medium contact with the spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love."
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".
Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and his children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts.Branigin, "Robert Owen's New Harmony" in Robert Owen's American Legacy, pp. 21–23.
Owen's legacy 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 in New Harmony, Indiana:
Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, even though they viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Das Kapital, that it is the working class that is responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by its power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only 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 assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists to achieve the transition to socialism.
Collected works:
Archival collections:
Textile mills
While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, to enter into a partnership to make , a new invention for spinning cotton threads, but exchanged his business shares within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space.Podmore, pp. 42–43. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up his contract of partnership and left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock.Podmore, pp. 47–48.
American communal living experiments
To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting with communal living in the United States in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in the United States before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenism or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these.
Return to Great Britain
Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". See also Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas.
Philosophy and influence
Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable.Harrison, "Robert Owen's Quest for the New Moral World in America," in Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 37.
Education
Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive co-operation, and the founder of nursery schools". 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. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe.
Labor
Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time.
Socialism
In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. (2025). 9780871953872, Indiana Historical Society Press. ISBN 9780871953872 In this he writes:
Spiritualism
In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet 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.
Legacy
Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working 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 labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished.Harrison, "Robert Owen's Quest for the New Moral World in America," in Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 41. 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. 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,"Owen, Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race, p. 29. See also: Harrison, "Robert Owen's Quest for the New Moral World in America," in Robert Owen's American Legacy, p. 38. and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct.Owen, Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race, p. 59.
Honours and tributes
Criticism of Owen
Owen's project was considered unachievable because he did not establish a guideline that stipulated the administration of properties and the conditions of memberships. As a result, some critics found his plans unsatisfactory and ineffective because the overpopulation and shortage of supply created antagonism within the community. Owen's opponents view him as a dictator, and a blasphemer of Christianity because he rejected sacred beliefs and defied anyone who differed from his views. Owen perceived religion as a source of fear and ignorance. Therefore, people were unable to think rationally if they stayed attached to "fallacious testimonies" of religion.
Selected published works
See also
Sources
(2025). 9780871953872, Indiana Historical Society Press. ISBN 9780871953872
Further reading
Biographies of Owen
Other works about Owen
(1971). 9780838779521, Bucknell University Press. ISBN 9780838779521
External links
Categories: 1771 Births, 1858 Deaths, British Cooperative Organizers, European Democratic Socialists, Founders Of Utopian Communities, People From Newtown, Powys, Owenites, Utopian Socialists, Welsh Agnostics, Welsh Humanists, 19th-century Welsh Businesspeople, 18th-century Welsh Businesspeople, Welsh Business Theorists, Welsh Philanthropists, Welsh Socialists, British Social Reformers, Socialist Economists, British Textile Industry Businesspeople
|
|
