Robert Owen

Biography

The industrialist

Owen was born with Newtown, in the Montgomeryshire, in Wales, where his/her father was blacksmith. The Owen young person followed short studies there. Then, worked as of the 10 years age as clerk in a merchant of Lincolnshire, and in a commercial firm of Manchester. The Owen young person from now on 18 years old, joined a craftsman to build spinning machines cotton. They very quickly will meet success, and at only nineteen years, one of the first spinning mills of Manchester engages it as director. Employing 4.500 people, it became quickly, thanks to its skill and its energy, one of the greatest establishments of Great Britain. In this manufacture, Owen used the first bags of Coton imported in the country since the States of the American South. Owen brought also remarkable improvements in the spinning mill of cotton. There is no reason to doubt that very young person he was not the first contractor of spinning mill of England, position due to his only genius and his knowledge as regards trade. In 1794 or 1795 he became the director and one of associated with Chorlton Twist Company in Manchester. At the time of a visit with Glasgow it fell in love with the girl with the owner with the spinning mill with New Lanark, David Dale. Owen encouraged its associates to acquire New Lanark and after its marriage with Miss Dalle, he became owner and to some extent owner of the spinning mills (1800). Encouraged by its successes in the management of cotton manufactures in Manchester, it then decided to direct New Lanack according to principles higher than the commercial rules into force.

Beginnings of social work

The manufacture of New Lanark was founded in 1784 per Dale and Richard Arkwright, It used the hydraulic power provided by the water falls of the Clyde. The spinning mill employed approximately two thousand people from including five hundred children resulting for the majority as of five or six years from the orphanages of Edinburgh and of Glasgow. The children were exceptionally well treated by Dale, but the living conditions of the workmen in general were deplorable. It was a miserable population, which could not be allowed to refuse the long work hours and the demoralizing drudgeries; flight and alcoholism were current, education and the neglected Hygiène, many families living in only one part. Owen then undertook prudently to raise the standard of living of its workmen. It improved the dwellings, and endeavoured to inculcate concepts of order, cleanliness and precaution. It opened a store or one could buy products of good quality at prices hardly higher than the cost prices. The alcohol sale was strictly regulated there. However, he knew his greater success in the education of youth, thing to which he held particularly. He was the creator of the elementary school in England; and, although the reformers of the continent preceded it on this ground, it seems to be inspired only by its only sights and convictions.

Principles

In all its projects Owen obtained great successes. Although the population was being wary in its connection in the beginnings, it acquired its confidence well quickly. However, in spite of the rise and business successes of the spinning mills, the practical application of certain projects of Owen implied enormous expenditure; what was not without displeasing with its associates. Wearied by these people who sought only the profit, Owen founded a new business thanks to which it was going to give free course to its philanthropic projects (1813). Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen (chemist) was her associates. The same Owen year published its first tests or it could expose the principles founders of its teaching system. Very young person, it had lost any religious belief and had created its own creed which it regarded as an original discovery. Its philosophy was founded on the idea that the man does not form his character itself; that it is worked by its destiny, on which it does not have any catch; what it is not therefore advisable to congratulate it for its efforts nor to blame it for its errors. From these principles it drew the following practical conclusion: the only way of working the character of the man consists in subjecting it as of its more young age to influences physical, suitable morals and social. These principles - irresponsibility of the man and receptivity of the young child - form the keystone of all the education system and social of Owen who exposed them in the first of his four tests entitled Nouveau Glance on the company or Essai on the principle of formation of the human character , published in 1813.

The following years, work of Owen with New Lanark knew a national and even European range. Its projects of education of the workers knew their apogee in the opening of a private hospital in New Lanark in 1816. It on the other hand was very disappointed by the Factory Act, project of industrial legislation, led in 1819, and of which he was an enthusiastic craftsman. He obtained interviews with the principal members of the government of which the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, like with many leaders and European statesmen. New Lanark became a place of pilgrimage very attended by the socialist reformers, statesmen, characters royal and even by Nicolas, future Tsar. General opinion of the visitors, the results obtained by Owen were extraordinary. The children were merry, pleasant, gracious and breathed health and the wellbeing. The Alcoolisme was unknown and the extremely rare illegitimate births. There existed between Owen and its workmen a real agreement which returned the operation of the spinning mill easy and harmonious. The results of the company felt some advantageously.

Work of Owen was well perceived like those of a philanthropist, with this difference due to its modernity, its originality and its unbearable satisfying. He approached the Socialisme since 1817 and its ideas were reported by the commission of the law on the poverty of the House of Lords.

Co-operative Utopia of Owen

General misery and economic stagnation due to the Napoleonean Guerres monopolized the attention of all the country. After having described the warlike causes which had contributed in this deplorable irrefutable fact, Owen establishes that the main cause of misery was to be sought in the competition between the working world and the system, and that the only parade for the men consisted in being linked to control the work tools. Its proposals to fight the Paupérisme (poverty) were based on these principles. He recommended the installation of communities of approximately thousand two hundred people; all recipients of an employment, alive in only one building with kitchens and dining rooms common; each couple having a private apartment and raising his/her children until the three years age; age to which those would have been taken charges some by the community. The family nevertheless would have found itself complete at the time of the meals and at other privileged times. The communities, rested by individuals, communes, counties or States, in all the cases, would have been supervised by highly qualified people. Owen was undoubtedly inspired by New Lanark to define the size of these communities; and it was to soon regard this project as only able to offer a new organization of company. In its most succeeded form, this project comprised an evolution. Owen considered that a number of five hundreds to three thousand people was ideal for an good organization of the work of the community. Primarily agricultural, this one should have modern material, offer number of different employment and be, as much as possible, autonomous. These cantons (as it named them), increasingly many, federate and plain would have developed per tens, hundreds, thousands; until gathering the whole world in an organization and an interest commun runs.

Its projects of fight against misery were accommodated with great interest. The Times, the Morning Post and of many personalities approved them. The Duke of Kent, father of the queen Victoria, counted among one of its more enthusiastic supporters. Owen had already drawn the attention by proclaiming at the time of a conference in London its hostility towards any form of religion. The public opinion was shocked by it and the theories of Owen consequently became suspect because encountering a very strong religious feeling. But Owen was not moved any and consequently got busy to put its ideas into practice. In 1825, an experimentation life size was undertaken under the direction of one of its followers, Abraham Combe, with Orbiston (close to Glasgow) and the another following year, led by Owen itself to New Harmony in the Indiana (the United States). In both cases, it was a total failure at the end two years. It should be said that the population was extremely heterogeneous, accommodating as well decent people as vagrants or adventurers.

Josiah Warren, one of the members of this " New Harmony Society" claimed that the community was dedicated to the failure because of an absence of leaders and also because the private property did not exist there. He spoke about it in these terms: “We remade a world in miniature… We recreated the conditions which brought the French revolution by privileging the entity and while despairing the hearts… The natural laws of diversity took again the top… the unit interest was in opposition with individualities, the circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation of each one…” (Periodical Letter II, 1856). The remarks of Warren on the reasons of the failure of the community contributed to the development of the American individualistic Anarchisme of which he was the principal theorist.

After one long period of frictions with associated William Allen and its others, Owen gave up in 1828 any participation in New Lanark. Of return of the United States, it concentrated its activities on London. Disappointed by the failure of its community of New Harmony, it gave up its capitalist activities and took the head of a propaganda campaign mixing socialism and secularity. One of the major innovations of this movement was in 1832 the introduction of an equitable labor market based on advertisements of employment, and from where the usual intermediaries were removed.

The word “Socialisme” started to be often heard in the debates of the " Association off all Classes off all Nations " founded in 1835 by Owen. During all these years, its ideas on secularity gained sufficient ground in the workmen so that Westminster Review announces in 1839 qu ' a great part of them shared these sights.

Other experiments of the communist type were tried at that time, Ralahine in the county of Clare (Ireland) and Tytherly in Hampsire. The latter, founded in 1831, functioned during three years and half, then was sold by its owner, ruined by the play. Tytherly, founded in 1831 was also a failure.

In 1846, ideas of Owen however largely relayed by the newspapers, its writings and its conferences, did not remain any more that the co-operative movement, and time passing, disappeared gradually. Owen, during its last years turned to the Spiritualisme before dying in its birthplace the November 17th 1858.

His/her children

Robert Owen had four wire, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, which became all citizens of the United States.

Robert Paves Owen, the elder one (1801-1877), was in its country of adoption a burning defender of the doctrines of his father. He sat at the Room of the Representatives of the Indiana (1836 - 1839 and 1851 - 1852) and was elected representative with the Congress of the United States (1844 - 1847), where he wrote the law creating the Smithsonian Institution. He was elected member of the constitutional Convention of Indiana in 1850, where he pled so that widows and married women can enjoy their properties, and for the adoption of a common system of free school. He allowed later the introduction of a law facilitating the divorce. Between 1853 and 1858, he was ambassador of the the United States to Naples. He was a large partisan of the Spiritualisme and was the author of two books on the subject: Footfalls one the Boundary off Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872).

David Dale Owen (1807-1860), was named in 1839 geologist, and undertook extensive excavations in the North-West, which were published by the Congress.

the youngest child, Richard Owen (1810-1890), was professor of natural science at the university of Nashville. It should not be confused with its contemporary Richard Owen (1804-1892), a famous zoologist and British paleontologist.

Written works of Robert Owen

Draft of the system of education , 1825
fundamental Proposals of the social system , 1837
the Book of the new moral world , 1847
Address at the National Assembly of France , 1848
Short exposure of a rational social system , 1848
Dialog between France, the world and Robert Owen , 1848
Proclamation with French people , 1848

References

most of the article is drawn from Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911.

See too

Utopian socialism, Socialism
Social economy and interdependent, Co-operation
Jose María Arizmendiarrieta
Chartism

Bibliographies

Biographies

Life off Robert Owen written by himself (London, 1857)
Threading my Way, Twenty-seven Years off Autobiography , by Robert Paves Owen (London, 1874).

There are also Lives off Owen by:

A.J. Booth (London, 1869)
W.L. Sargant (London, 1860)
Lloyd Jones (London, 1889)
F.A. Packard (Philadelphia, 1866)
Frank Podmore (London, 1906)
G.D.H. Cole (London, Ernest Ben Ltd., 1925)

Other works

H. Simon, Robert Owen: center Leben und the Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart (Jena, 1905)
E. Dolleans, Robert Owen (Paris, 1905)
G.J. Holyoake, History off Co-operation in England (London, 1906)
Robert Owen, utopian Socialist, 1771-1858 , Serge Dupuis, National center of the scientific research, 1999.
Robert owen 1771-1858 , Dolleans Edouard, 1905
Study on the contemporary or socialist reformers modern Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen… , Reybaud
Robert Owen & New Lanark , Robert Paves Owen

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