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The Family History of Robert Owen by ARTHURH

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The Family History of Robert Owen by ARTHURH The Family History of Robert Owen By ARTHURH. ESTABROOK Eugenics Record Office, Carnegie Institution of Washington This is a day of great achievements and momentous jumps in science, engineering and agriculture ; even in war. Recently new weapons of slaughter, poisonous gas, aerial bombs, gFns with a range of fifty miles and other inventions and develop- ments in every field of human activity have become matters of every-day occurrence. One day the world acknowledges the genius who accomplishes these things, the next he is for- gotten or overshadowed in the presence of so many other per- sons of marked ability. We have become accustomed to new methods of thought and procedure and new systems of govern- ment. A hundred years ago a man with a vision and a message stood out with striking prominence. Such a man was Robert Owen who lived for an ideal and whose ruling passion was, in the words of his son, Robert Dale Owen, “the love of his kind, individually and collectively.” Robert Owen at thirty-five had made almost a million dollars as a manufacturer ; he then re- tired from business and devoted the remainder of his life to the betterment of the working man, to the formation of co- operative societies, the carrying out of a community experi- ment, to agitation for the enactment of laws prohibiting child labor, for factory inspection laws, and for a better and fuller education of the children in the schools ; this all as long ago as the period of 1800. hobert Owen was born of humble parentage at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales, May 14, 1771. His schooling was limited, for at the age of ten years he went to London to work as an apprentice to a Stamford draper. He worked in the draper shops until the age of eighteen and during this time was a student of books and a great reader. He then went into a partnership with a wire-worker named Jones making new machinery, just then invented, for spinning cotton. He soon left Jones and went into business for himself. He prospered, and shortly became the superintendent of a Manchester cotton 63 64 Indiana Magazine of History mill. Here he came intimately in contact with the debased con- ditions of the working man, a thing which he had seen and noticed previously. He viewed with fear the frequent riots which showed the discontent in the factory towns. He saw children swallowed up at an early age in the industrial whirl, so young that they had no opportunity for schooling. Being eminently successful as a cotton mill superintendent, on January 1, 1800, he assumed control of the New Lanark (Scotland) cotton mills, which belonged to his father-in-law, David Dale. The latter had been a most considerate mill owner and yet Owen found the same miserable industrial and home eonditions in New Lanark. Owen established free schools for the children, reduced the hours of labor, and improved the conditions of the factory people by the teaching of cleanly habits. He established stores where the people could buy at a slightly higher price than the mere cost of the goods and soon the people of New Lanark showed the effects of these changed conditions in better efficiency in the factories. The place soon had an international reputation and visitors came from all over the world to study Owen’s methods and results. Thus Owen’s mills prospered, and at one time, when all other mills were closed for lack of cotton, Owen continued to pay wages to his employees, a thing previously unheard of. Even though Owen’s mills were eminently successful financially, his partners did not like his methods of dealing with the working Classes and many also accused him of heresy in his moral and religious teachings. He was finally forced out of the New Lanark mills, and sold his share in them for $800,000, but the working people in the town had become a prosperous and con- tented people because of the better conditions under which they lived and worked. From then on Robert Owen devoted all his time to his pub- lic activities and he and his followers became more active and. more insistent for the recognition of the rights of the workers. He constantly labored for laws protecting childhood in indus- try and for free education of all children in England. He secured the enactment of laws with the assistance of Sir Rob- ert Peel for the protection of child labor and these Iaws are the first on the statute books in the history of nations provid- ing for the interference of the government in local business Estabrook: Robert Owan 65 affairs. Owen wished to put his communistic theories into practice, and, upon hearing of the desire of the Rappites in Neu7 Harmony, Indiana, in the United States, to sell out, he enterod into negotiations with them with the result that he bought the “Harmonie” community for less than $150,000, using part of his own fortune for this purpose. Here he planned to experiment with his “new moral world” where an industrial democracy was to be the keynote and the highest type of education was to be given to all at no cost other thax to the community at large. The existing community at New Harmony had a religious bond tls a basis for its existence and was founded by George Rapp, a vine-dresser and farmer of plebian descent, but a man of unusual strength of character who, in 1803, had brought a group of Wiirtemburg peasants from Germany to Butler county, Pennsylvania, that they might worship in their ovm way, free from the religious domination present at tht time in Germany. Here they had the “community of equality,” with all work done in common, the funds and leadership be- ing in the hands of George Rapp, who was also their religious leader. This has been spoken of as a religious autocracy. The location In Pennsylvania was deemed unfit after a time be- cause of the distance from waterways where they might ship their Froducts, hence the community moved en masse to the east bank of the Wabash river in Indiana about 20 miles north of its confluence with the Ohio river. This was in 1815. IIere they proceeded to clear and till the very fertile land and built a new town calling it Harmonie. Nearly a thousand of the fol- low’ers of George Rapp lived here and it was therefore the largest town in the territory of Indiana [ ?] . Thirty thousand acres of land were held in common. The farming equipment and other utensils were brought from Pennsylvania. Houses, both log and frame, were soon erected. Later brick houses were built, the frame and the brick houses being constructed on the same design, and of equal size, because the Rappites, as they were called, believed in the equality of every one. School houses were built, and a large church. There were no grave- stones or other markers in the Rappite graveyard, indicating that even in death there was no difference, and today the moundless surface of the Rappite cemetery in New Harmony 66 Indium Magazine of Histo~y bears silent witness to this fact. The funerals took place with only the elders as witnesses and nothing was left on the spot to indicate the burial place of any one, though a plat was kept indicating the location of each grave. The Rappites worked hard, and, the land being very fertile, they prospered, shipping the products of the community to points along the Mississippi river. They had comfortable homes and plenty in a land that was then almost a wilderness. George Rapp then decided to sell the property, giving as a reason the maIarious condition of the country, the unpleasant weather and also the isolation and remoteness from the busi- ness centers of the United States. It is probable that Father Rapp, as he was called, felt that his hold over the people would lessen if the life in Harmonie became too easy because of plenty. The community had been built, the farms and in- dustries were prosperous and the need of the intense hard work had decreased, hence he decided to move to a new loca- tion where the pioneer trials and hard work incident to a new location would again firmly place the Harmonists under his leadership and generalship. Hence Robert Owen was wel- comed as a purchaser when he wished to buy Harmonie for the place of his community experiment. The Rappites then left in a body for a new site on the Ohio river just below Pitts- burgh and where they located Economy, where they remained. Robert Owen came to America bringing part of his family with him. He delivered addresses in February and March, 1825, in the hall of the house of representatives at Washing- ton, D. C., before twb of the most distinguished audiences ever gathered in Washington, which comprised the entire membership of both houses of congress, the judges of the supreme court, the President and his cabinet and many dis- tinguished citizens. He explained his “new moral world,” his plan for the improvement of the human race, and his imme- diate project at New Harmony, Indiana, and stated that he’ desired volunteers for the new community explaining that there was to be industrial equality and the best educational opportunities for all, especially the children. He spoke in many other places in the United States spreading his invita- tion broadcast. People of all kinds came to Harmonie to join his community.
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