Now Mr. Drinkwater had a son-in-law who looked in on things once a
month, signed his voucher and went away fox-hunting. He thought he was
helping run the mill. This man grew jealous of the young manager and
suggested that Drinkwater increase the boy's pay and buy off the
percentage clause in the contract, so as to keep the youngster from
getting megalocephalia.
Drinkwater asked Owen what he would take for the contract, and Owen
handed it to him and said, "Nothing." It gave him a chance to get out
into a larger field. Drinkwater never thought of the value of that
little Robert Owen label. No wise employer should ever allow a thing
like that.
Owen had won both name and fame among the merchants, and he now engaged
with several mills to superintend their output and sell their goods with
his label on each package. In other words, he was a Manufacturers'
Broker. From a five-hundred-pound-a-year man he had grown to be worth
two thousand pounds a year.
No mill owned him. He was free--he was making money. The dream of human
betterment was still in his heart.
On one of his trips to Glasgow to sell goods, he met a daughter of David
Dale, a mill-owner who was in active competition with him. Dale made a
fine yarn, too.
The girl had heard of Owen: they met as enemies--a very good way to
begin an acquaintance. It was Nature's old, old game of stamen, pistil
and pollen, that fertilizes the world of business, betterment and
beauty. They quarreled.
"You are the man who puts your name on the package?"
"Yes."
"And yet you own no mill!"
"True--but----"
"Never mind. You certainly are proud of your name."
"I am--wouldn't you be?"
"Not of yours."
Then they stared at each other in defiance. To relieve the tension, Mr.
Owen proposed a stroll. They took a walk through the park and discovered
that they both were interested in Social Reform. David Dale owned the
mills at New Lanark--a most picturesque site. He was trying to carry on
a big business, so as to make money and help the workers. He was doing
neither, because his investment in the plant had consumed too much of
his working capital.
They discussed the issue until eleven forty-five by the clock.
The girl knew business and knew Society. The latter she had no use for.
The next day they met again, and quite accidentally found themselves
engaged, neither of 'em knew how.
It was very embarrassing! How could they break the news to Papa Dale?
They devised a way. It was this: Robert Owen was to go and offer to buy
Mr. Dale's mills.
Owen went over to Lanark and called on Mr. Dale, and told him he wanted
to buy his business. Mr. Dale looked at the boy, and smiled. Owen was
twenty-seven, but appeared twenty, being beardless, slight and
fair-haired.
The youth said he could get all the money that was needed. They sparred
for a time--neither side naming figures. It being about noontime, Mr.
Dale asked young Mr. Owen to go over to his house to lunch. Mr. Dale
was a widower, but his daughter kept the house. Mr. Dale introduced Mr.
Owen to Miss Dale.
The young folks played their parts with a coolness that would have
delighted John Drew, and would have been suspicious to anybody but a
fussy old mill-owner.
Finally as the crumbs were being brushed from the rich man's table, Mr.
Dale fixed on the sum of sixty thousand pounds for his property.
Owen was satisfied and named as terms three thousand pounds and interest
each year for twenty years, touching the young lady's toe with his own
under the table.
Mr. Dale agreed. Mr. Owen had the money to make the first payment. The
papers were drawn up. The deal was closed--all but the difficult part.
This was done by rushing the enemy in his library, after a good meal.
"It keeps the business in the family, you see," said the girl on her
knees, pouting prettily.
The point was gained, and when Robert Owen, a few weeks later, came to
New Lanark to take possession of the property, he did as much for the
girl. So they were married and lived happily ever afterward.
* * * * *
Robert Owen took up his work at New Lanark with all the enthusiasm that
hope, youth and love could bring to bear.
Mr. Dale had carried the flag as far to the front as he thought it could
be safely carried--that is to say, as far as he was able to carry it.
Owen had his work cut out for him. The workers were mostly Lowland
Scotch and spoke in an almost different language from Owen. They looked
upon him with suspicion. The place had been sold, and they had gone with
it--how were they to be treated? Were wages to be lowered and hours
extended? Probably.
Pilfering had been reduced to a system, and to get the start of the
soft-hearted owner was considered smart.
Mr. Dale had tried to have a school, and to this end had hired an
elderly Irishman, who gave hard lessons and a taste of the birch to
children who had exhausted themselves in the mills and had no zest for
learning. Mr. Dale had taken on more than two hundred pauper children
from the workhouses and these were a sore trial to him.
Owen's first move was to reduce the working-hours from twelve to ten
hours. Indeed, he was the first mill-owner to adopt the ten-hour plan.
He improved the sanitary arrangements, put in shower-baths and took a
personal interest in the diet of his little wards, often dining with
them.
A special school-building was erected at a cost of thirty thousand
dollars. This was both a day and a night school. It also took children
of one year old and over, in order to relieve mothers who worked in the
mills. The "little mothers," often only four or five years old, took
care of babies a year old and younger, all day.
Owen instructed his teachers never to scold or to punish by inflicting
physical pain. His was the first school in Christendom to abolish the
rod.
His plan anticipated the Kindergarten and the Creche. He called mothers'
meetings, and tried to show the uselessness of scolding and beating,
because to do these things was really to teach the children to do them.
He abolished the sale of strong drink in New Lanark. Model houses were
erected, gardens planted, and prizes given for the raising of flowers.
In order not to pauperize his people, Owen had them pay a slight tuition
for the care of the children, and there was a small tax levied to buy
flower-seeds. In the school-building was a dance-hall and an auditorium.
At one time the supply of raw cotton was cut off for four months. During
this time Owen paid his people full wages, insisted that they should
all, old and young, go to school for two hours a day, and also work two
hours a day at tree-planting, grading and gardening. During this period
of idleness he paid out seven thousand pounds in wages. This was done to
keep the workmen from wandering away.
It need not be imagined that Owen did not have other cares besides
those of social betterment. Much of the machinery in the mills was worn
and becoming obsolete. To replace this he borrowed a hundred thousand
dollars. Then he reorganized his business as a stock company and sold
shares to several London merchants with whom he dealt. He interested
Jeremy Bentham, the great jurist and humanitarian, and Bentham proved
his faith by buying stock in the New Lanark Company.
Joseph Lancaster, the Quaker, a mill-owner and philanthropist, did the
same.
Owen paid a dividend of five per cent on his shares. A surplus was also
set aside to pay dividends in case of a setback, but beyond this the
money was invested in bettering the environment of his people.
New Lanark had been running fourteen years under Owen's management. It
had attracted the attention of the civilized world. The Grand Duke
Nicholas, afterwards the Czar, spent a month with Owen studying his
methods. The Dukes of Kent, Sussex, Bedford and Portland; the Archbishop
of Canterbury; the Bishops of London, Peterborough and Carlisle; the
Marquis of Huntly; Lords Grosvenor, Carnarvon, Granville, Westmoreland,
Shaftesbury and Manners; General Sir Thomas Dyce and General Brown;
Ricardo, De Crespigny, Wilberforce, Joseph Butterworth and Sir Francis
Baring--all visited New Lanark. Writers, preachers, doctors, in fact
almost every man of intellect and worth in the Kingdom, knew of Robert
Owen and his wonderful work at New Lanark. Sir Robert Peel had been to
New Lanark and had gone back home and issued an official bulletin
inviting mill-owners to study and pattern after the system.
The House of Commons asked Owen to appear and explain his plan for
abolishing poverty from the Kingdom. He was invited to lecture in many
cities. He issued a general call to all mill-owners in the Kingdom to
co-operate with him in banishing ignorance and poverty.
But to a great degree Owen worked alone and New Lanark was a curiosity.
Most mill towns had long rows of dingy tenements, all alike, guiltless
of paint, with not a flower bed or tree to mitigate the unloveliness of
the scene. Down there in the dirt and squalor lived the working-folks;
while away up on the hillside, surrounded by a vast park, with stables,
kennels and conservatories, resided the owner.
Owen lived with his people. And the one hundred fifty acres that made up
the village of New Lanark contained a happy, healthy and prosperous
population of about two thousand people.
There was neither pauperism nor disease, neither gamblers nor drunkards.
All worked and all went to school.
It was an object-lesson of thrift and beauty.
Visitors came from all over Europe--often hundreds a day.
Why could not this example be extended indefinitely so that hundreds of
such villages should grow instead of only one? There could, there can
and there will be, but the people must evolve their own ideal
environment and not have to have it supplied for them.
By Owen's strength of purpose he kept the village ideal, but he failed
to evolve an ideal people. All around were unideal surroundings, and the
people came and went. Strong drink was to be had only a few miles away.
To have an ideal village, it must be located in an ideal country.
Owen called on the clergy to unite with him in bringing about an ideal
material environment. He said that good water, sewerage and trees and
flowers worked a better spiritual condition. They replied by calling him
a materialist. He admitted that he worked for a material good. His
followers added to his troubles by comparing his work with that of the
clergy round about, where vice, poverty and strong drink grouped
themselves about a steeple upon which was a cross of gold to which labor
was nailed--a simile to be used later by a great orator, with profit.
Owen was a Unitarian, with a Quaker bias. Any clergyman was welcome to
come to New Lanark--it was a free platform. A few preachers accepted the
invitation, with the intent to convert Robert Owen to their particular
cause. New Lanark was pointed out all over England as a godless town.
The bishops issued a general address to all rectors and curates warning
them against "any system of morals that does away with God and His Son,
Jesus Christ, fixing its salvation on flowerbeds and ragged schools."
New Lanark was making money because it was producing goods the world
wanted. But its workers were tabu in respectable society, and priestly
hands were held aloft in pretended horror whenever the name of Robert
Owen, or the word "Socialism," was used.
Owen refused to employ child labor, and issued a book directing the
attention of society to this deadly traffic in human beings. The
parents, the clergy and the other mill-owners combined against him, and
he was denounced by press and pulpit.
He began to look around for a better environment for an ideal community.
His gaze was turned toward America.
* * * * *
Robert Owen's plan for abolishing vice and poverty was simply to set the
people to work under ideal conditions, and then allow them time enough
for recreation and mental exercise, so that thrift might follow farming.
In reply to the argument that the workman should evolve his own standard
of life, independent of his employer, Owen said that the mill with its
vast aggregation of hands was an artificial condition. The invention,
ingenuity and enterprise that evolved the mill were exceptional. The
operators for the most part lacked this constructive genius, the proof
of which lay in the very fact that they were operators.
To take advantage of their limitations, disrupt their natural and
accustomed mode of life, and then throw the blame back upon them for not
evolving a new and better environment, was neither reasonable nor right.
The same constructive genius that built the mill and operated it should
be actively interested in the welfare of the people who worked in the
mill.
To this end there should be an ideal village adjacent to every great
mill. This village should afford at least half an acre of ground for
every family. In the way of economy, one building should house a
thousand people. It should be built in the form of a parallelogram and
contain co-operative kitchens, dining-rooms, libraries, art-galleries
and gymnasia. It should be, in fact, a great University, not unlike the
great collection of schools at Oxford or Cambridge. All would be
workers--all would be students.
The villages should be under the general supervision of the government,
in order to secure stability and permanency. If the mill management
failed, the government should continue the business, because even if the
government lost money in the venture, at times, this was better than
always to be building jails, prisons, insane asylums, almshouses and
hospitals.
In sections where there were no mills or factories, the government would
construct both mills and villages, to the intent that idleness and
ignorance might be without excuse. To this end Owen would ask all
landowners, or holders of estates of a thousand acres or more, to set
apart one-tenth of their land for ideal villages and co-operative mills
to be managed by the government.
As proof that his plans were feasible, Owen pointed to New Lanark and
invited investigation.
Among others who answered the invitation was Henry Hase, cashier of the
Bank of England. Hase reported that New Lanark had the look of a place
that had taken a century to evolve, and in his mind the nation could not
do better than to follow the example of Owen. He then added, "If the
clergy, nobility and mill-owners will adopt the general scientific
method proposed by Mr. Owen for the abolition of poverty, ignorance and
crime, it will be the greatest step of progress ever seen in the history
of the world."
In proposing that the clergy, nobility and mill-owners should unite for
the good of mankind, Mr. Hase was not guilty of subtle humor or ironical
suggestion. He was an honest and sincere man who had been exposed to the
contagious enthusiasm of Mr. Owen.
Owen was fifty-seven years of age, practical man that he was, before he
realized that the clergy, the nobility and the rich mill-owners had
already entered into an unconscious pact to let mankind go to
Gehenna--just so long as the honors, emoluments and dividends were
preserved. That is to say, the solicitation of the Church is not and
never has been for the welfare of the people; it is for the welfare of
the Church for which churchmen fight. All persecution turns on this
point.
If the stability of the Church is threatened, the Churchmen awake and
cry, "To Arms!" In this respect the Church, the nobility and vested
capital have everything in common--they want perpetuity and security.
They seek safety. All of the big joint-stock companies had in their
directorates members of the nobility and the clergy. The bishops held
vast estates--they were Lords.
Robert Owen did not represent either the Church or the nobility. He was
a very exceptional and unique product; he was a workingman who had
become a philanthropic capitalist. He was a lover of humanity, filled
with a holy zeal to better the condition of the laborer.
* * * * *
The mills at New Lanark were making money, but the shareholders in
London were not satisfied with their dividends. They considered Owen's
plans for educating the workingman chimerical. In one respect they knew
that Owen was sane: he could take the raw stock and produce the quality
of goods that had a market value. He had trained up a valuable and
skilled force of foremen and workers. Things were prosperous and would
be much more so if Owen would only cease dreaming dreams and devote
himself to the commercial end of the game.
If he would not do this, then he must buy their stock or sell them a
controlling interest of his own.
He chose the latter.
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five, when he was fifty-five years old, he
sailed for America. He gave lectures in New York, Boston, Philadelphia
and Washington on his new order of economics. He was listened to with
profound attention. At Washington he was the guest of the President, and
on invitation addressed a joint session of the Senate and the House,
setting forth his arguments for Socialism.
The Moravians at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had founded their colony as
early as Seventeen Hundred Twenty. The Zoarites, the Economites, the
Separatists, the Shakers and the Rappites had been in existence and
maintained successful communities for a score of years.
Robert Owen visited these various colonies and saw that they were all
prosperous. There was neither sickness, vice, poverty, drunkenness nor
disease to be found among them. He became more and more convinced that
the demands of an advancing civilization would certainly be co-operative
in nature. Chance might unhorse the individual, but with a community the
element of chance was eliminated. He laid it down as a maxim, evolved
from his study, observation and experience, that the community that
exists for three years is a success. That no industrial community had
ever endured for three years, save as it was founded on a religious
concept, was a fact that he overlooked. Also, he failed to see that the
second generation of communists did not coalesce, and as a result that
thirty-three years was the age limit for even a successful community;
and that, if it still survived, it was because it was reorganized under
a strong and dominant leadership.
Communists or Socialists are of two classes: those who wish to give and
those who wish to get. When fifty-one per cent of the people in a
community are filled with a desire to give, Socialism will be a success.
Perhaps the most successful social experiment in America was the Oneida
Community, but next to this was the Harmonyites, founded by George Rapp.
The Harmonyites founded Harmony, Indiana, in Eighteen Hundred Fourteen.
They moved from Pennsylvania and had been located at their present site
for eleven years. They owned thirty thousand acres of splendid land at
the junction of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers. They had built more than a
hundred houses, and had barns, stores, a church, a hall, a sawmill, a
hotel and a woolen-factory.
Now when Owen went to Pittsburgh, he floated down the Ohio to Cincinnati
and then on to Harmony. He was graciously received and was delighted
with all he saw and heard.
Owen saw the success of the woolen-mill, and declared that to bring
cotton up by steamboat from the South would be easy. He would found
cotton-mills, and here New Lanark should bloom again, only on an
increased scale.
Would the Rappites sell?
Yes; they wanted to move back to Pennsylvania, where there were other
groups of similar faith.
Their place, they figured, was worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Owen made an offer of one hundred fifty thousand dollars, which to his
surprise was quietly accepted. It was a quick deal.
The Rappites moved out, and the Owenites moved in.
Just across the Ohio River they founded the town of Owensboro.
Then Owen went back to England and sent over about three hundred of his
people, including his own son, Robert Dale Owen.
Robert Owen had large interests in England, and New Harmony on the
banks of the Wabash was incidental. Robert Dale Owen was then
twenty-five years old. He was a philosopher, not an economist, and since
the place lacked a business head, dissensions arose. Let some one else
tell how quickly a community can evaporate when it lacks the cement of
religious oneness:
For the first few weeks, all entered into the new system with a
will. Service was the order of the day. Men who seldom or never
before labored with their hands devoted themselves to agriculture
and the mechanical arts with a zeal which was at least commendable,
though not always well directed. Ministers of the gospel guided the
plow and called swine to their corn instead of sinners to
repentance, and let patience have her perfect work over an unruly
yoke of oxen. Merchants exchanged the yardstick for the rake or
pitchfork; and all appeared to labor cheerfully for the common
weal. Among the women there was even more apparent self-sacrifice.
Those who had seldom seen the inside of their own kitchens went
into that of the common eating-house (formerly a hotel) and made
themselves useful among pots and kettles. Refined young ladies who
had been waited upon all their lives took turns in waiting upon
others at the table. And several times a week all parties who
chose, mingled in the social dance in the great dining-hall.
But notwithstanding the apparent heartiness and cordiality of this
auspicious opening, it was in the social atmosphere of the
Community that the first cloud arose. Self-love was a spirit which
could not be exorcised. It whispered to the lowly maidens, whose
former position in society had cultivated the spirit of meekness,
"Thou art as good as the formerly rich and fortunate; insist upon
your equality." It reminded the former favorites of society of
their lost superiority, and despite all rules tinctured their words
and actions with "airs" and conceit. Similar thoughts and feelings
soon arose among the men; and though not so soon exhibited they
were none the less deep and strong. Suffice it to say, that at the
end of three months--three months!--the leading minds in the
Community were compelled to acknowledge to one another that the
social life of the Community could not be bounded by a single
circle. They therefore acquiesced, though reluctantly, to its
division into many. But they still hoped, and many of them no doubt
believed, that though social equality was a failure, community of
property was not. Whether the law of mine and thine is natural or
incidental in human character, it soon began to develop its sway.
The industrious, the skilful and the strong saw the product of
their labor enjoyed by the indolent, the unskilled and the
improvident; and self-love rose against benevolence. A band of
musicians thought their brassy harmony was as necessary to the
common happiness as bread and meat, and declined to enter the
harvest-field or the workshop. A lecturer upon natural science
insisted upon talking while others worked. Mechanics, whose single
day's labor brought two dollars into the common stock, insisted
that they should in justice work only half as long as the
agriculturist, whose day's work brought but one.
Of course, for a while, these jealousies were concealed, but soon
they began to be expressed. It was useless to remind all parties
that the common labor of all ministered to the prosperity of the
Community. Individual happiness was the law of Nature and it could
not be obliterated. And before a single year had passed, this law
had scattered the members of that society which had come together
so earnestly and under such favorable circumstances, and driven
them back into the selfish world from which they came.
The writer of this sketch has since heard the history of that
eventful year reviewed with honesty and earnestness by the best men
and most intelligent parties of that unfortunate social experiment.
They admitted the favorable circumstances which surrounded its
commencement; the intelligence, devotion and earnestness which were
brought to the cause by its projectors, and its final total
failure. And they rested ever after in the belief that man, though
disposed to philanthropy, is essentially selfish, and a community
of social equality and common property is an impossibility.
* * * * *
The loss of two hundred thousand dollars did not dampen the ardor of
Robert Owen. He paid up the debts of New Harmony, had the property
surveyed and subdivided, and then deeded it to his children and
immediate relatives and a few of the "staunch friends who have such a
lavish and unwise faith in my wisdom"--to use his own expression.
To give work to the unemployed of England now became his immediate
solicitation. He was sixty years old when he inaugurated his first
co-operative store, which in fact is the parent of our modern
Department-Store.
In this store he proposed to buy any useful article or product which any
man might make or produce, figuring on cost of the raw material and
sixpence an hour for labor. This labor was to be paid for in Labor
Script, receivable in payment for anything the man might want to buy.
Here we get the Labor Exchange. Owen proposed that the Government should
set delinquent men to work, instead of sending them to prison. Any man
who would work, no matter what he had done, should be made free. The
Government would then pay the man in Labor-Exchange Script. Of course,
if the Government guaranteed the script, it was real money; otherwise,
it was wildcat money, subject to fluctuation and depreciation. Very
naturally, the Government refused to guarantee this script, or to invest
in the co-operative stores. To make the script valuable, it had to be
issued in the form of a note, redeemable in gold at a certain time.
The stores were started, and many idle men found work in building mills
and starting various industries. Three years passed, and some of the
script became due. It was found to be largely held by saloonkeepers who
had accepted it at half-price. Efforts had been constantly made to hurt
Owen's standing and depreciate the market value of this currency.
The Labor Exchange that had issued the script was a corporation, and
Robert Owen was not individually liable, but he stepped into the breach
and paid every penny out of his own purse, saying, "No man shall ever
say that he lost money by following my plans."
Next he founded the co-operative village of Harmony or Queenswood. The
same general plan that he had followed at New Lanark was here carried
out, save that he endeavored to have the mill owned by the workers
instead of by outside capital.
Through his very able leadership, this new venture continued for ten
years and was indeed a school and a workshop. The workers had gardens,
flowers, books. There were debates, classes, and much intellectual
exercise that struck sparks from heads that were once punk. John Tyndall
was one of the teachers and also a worker in this mill. Let the fact
stand out that Owen discovered Tyndall--a great, divinely human
nautilus--and sent him sailing down the tides of Time.
At eighty years of age, Owen appeared before the House of Commons and
read a paper which he had spent a year in preparing, "The Abolition of
Poverty and Crime." He held the Government responsible for both, and
said that until the ruling class took up the reform idea and quit their
policy of palliation, society would wander in the wilderness. To gain
the Promised Land we must all move together in a government "of the
people, by the people and for the people." He was listened to with
profound respect and a vote of thanks tendered him; but his speech never
reached the public printer.
Robert Dale Owen became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and
for several years was a member of Congress, and at the time of the death
of his father was our minister to Italy, having been appointed by
President Pierce.
He was in England at the time of the passing of Robert Owen, and
announced the fact to the family at New Harmony, Indiana, in the
following letter:
Newtown, Wales, November 17th, 1858.
It is all over. Our dear father passed away this morning, at a
quarter before seven, as quietly and gently as if he had been
falling asleep. There was not the least struggle, not the
contraction of a limb or a muscle, not an expression of pain on his
face. His breathing stopped so gradually that, even as I held his
hand, I could scarcely tell the moment when he no longer lived. His
last words, distinctly pronounced about twenty minutes before his
death, were: "Relief has come."