Robert Owen at New Larnark

Presumably, anyone who has seriously studied the history of social justice since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is familiar with the name, Robert Owen. In my class on the history of the union movement at Brown University, we learned about Owen as one of the myriad of social reformers whose work influenced present-day working conditions. Yet, it was only after a visit to New Larnark, Scotland (forty minutes by train, from our flat), that his story came alive. Owen believed that the environment in which one lives and works is critical to the formation of character. As the manager and subsequently the owner of textile mills, he was appalled by the way some workers were being treated -- children as young as five or six working thirteen hours a day in miserable factories. When he was able to buy the New Lanark mills from his father-in-law, David Dale, in 1800, he set about creating a just environment that would lead to strong character. He believed that "that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold." Thanks to Owen's innovations, the 2,500 people (workers and their families) who lived in New Lanark were provided adequate housing, with child-care centers and schools for the children from age 3, and available for all the residents for a life time, with free health care in company clinics, with cultural and recreational activities and a village store that bought in bulk and sold at cost. All this in the expectation that a good environment contributes to peace and harmony. Many of his entrepreneurial peers were critical, questioning why he would sacrifice some of his own profits to benefit his workers. But his values were different. "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 sell dear; and to succeed in this art, the parties must be taught to acquire strong powers of deception, destructive of that open, honest sincerity without which man cannot make others happy , nor enjoy happiness themselves." (1816) During those years he wrote and spoke extensively, hoping that his vision would change the industrial landscape throughout Great Britain. In 1825 he left New Lanark in order to give full time to promoting his reform movement. Opposition from contemporary capitalists mounted, with enough strength to eviscerate the reform legislation that he had promoted in Parliament. Undaunted, he established a utopian community in New Harmony, Illinois, hoping the New World would be more receptive to his reforms. Robert Owen is today called the father of socialism, and is remembered as a pioneer in public education as well as the founder of the cooperative movement. He is also the co-founder of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union, a trade movment union that failed because of opposition from the government. All this is vividly communicated in a visit to the beautifully restored factory village of New Lanark. The school house, the factory, the village store, the health clinic and the worker's housing are all still there to visit. Some of the looms still operate, making yarn of great value. So much to be learned! Our struggle for economic equality has a long and glorious history and we can be proud to continue the campaign for justice to which others have contributed so massively. We may not totally share Owen's optimism in the perfectibility of human character, but I would rather cast my lot with him than with another Scotsman who believed that an invisible hand, operating in a free market economy, would bring about social and economic justice. THE PROBLEM IS WEALTH, NOT POVERTY: A comment from Thomas Wooler in Black Dwarf, 1817. "It is very amusing to hear Mr. Owen's talk of remoralizing the poor. Does he not think that the rich are a little more in wnat of remoralizing, and particularly that class of them that has contributed to demoralize the poor, if they are demoralized, by supporting measures that have made them poor and which now continue them poor and wretched?"