Chapter 8. Robert Owen

¹The Revolution in Mind and Practice, etc., p. 11.

¹Revolution in Mind and Practice, p. 29.

¹Sybil.

² Selection of Owen's works in Everyman series, p. 216.

¹ Frank Podmore: Robert Owen, p. 644.

¹ It is unwise to read too widely in Owen. All any reader need wish to have is contained in the admirable selection made by Mr. G. D. H. Cole for the Everyman series, under the title, A New View of Society, and other writings by Robert Owen. The reader goes outside this at his peril. References given, unless otherwise stated, are to this edition.

¹A New View of Society, Third Essay (Everyman), p. 45.

²Ibid. Fourth Essay, p. 65.

³Revolution in Mind and Practice, p. 1.

⁴A New View of Society, First Essay (Everyman), p. 20. The Owenite idea was, of course, in the air. As Mrs. B. (an admirable reflector of the Zeitgeist) said to Caroline in 1816: ‘Youth and innocence may be moulded into any form you chuse to give them’ (Mrs. Marcet, Conversations on Political Economy, p. 159). Youth we may define, even if arbitrarily. But who is innocent? According to Godwin, as we have seen, the innocence of childhood is already sullied in the first seven days of life.

⁵Ibid. p. 20.

¹A New View of Society, Second Essay, p. 37.

²Ibid. Fourth Essay, p. 72.

³Report to the County of Lanark (Everyman), p. 279.

⁴A New View of Society, Third Essay, p. 55.

⁵Ibid. Second Essay, p. 24.

¹A New View of Society, Second Essay, p. 23.

² One point of general interest may, however, be extracted. The boys of Owen's future settlements are to wear kilts, or, in more dignified language, ‘a dress somewhat resembling the Roman and Highland garb.’ ‘The Romans and Highlanders of Scotland,’ he says, ‘appear to be the only two nations who adopted a national dress on account of its utility, without, however, neglecting to render it highly becoming and ornamental.’ But it may be doubted whether Owen really understood the inner mechanism of the kilt (Report to the County of Lanark, pp. 277–278).

³A New View of Society, Third Essay, p. 49.

⁴Ibid. Fourth Essay, p. 80.

⁵Report to the County of Lanark, p. 284.

¹A New View of Society, Fourth Essay, p. 66.

²Ibid. Fourth Essay, p. 83.

³Ibid. p. 85.

¹A New View of Society (Everyman), pp. 8–9.

¹To the British Master Manufacturers (Everyman), p. 142.

²Ibid. pp. 143–144.

³Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System (Everyman), p. 121.

⁴Report to the County of Lanark (Everyman), p. 258.

¹Manifesto of Robert Owen.

²Report to the County of Lanark (Everyman), p. 269.

¹Address of 21st August, 1817 (Everyman), p. 215.

²Revolution in Mind and Practice, p. 111.

³An Address to the Working Classes (Everyman), p. 149.

¹An Address to the Working Classes (Everyman), pp. 150–151.

²Ibid. p. 153.

³ Owen's unsolicited testimonial to the well-meaningness of his fellow-employers may advantageously be compared with a somewhat similar utterance of Charles Kingsley later (1854), as representing the Christian Socialists: ‘There is no doubt that the classes possessing property have been facing, since 1848, all social questions with an average of honesty, earnestness and good feeling which has no parallel since the days of the Tudors, and that hundreds and thousands of “gentlemen and ladies” in Great Britain now are saying, “Show what we ought to do to be just to the workmen, and we will do it, whatsoever it costs.” They may not be always correct (though they generally are so) in their conceptions of what ought to be done; but their purpose is good and righteous; and those who hold it are daily increasing in number. The love of justice and mercy toward the handicraftsman is spreading rapidly as it never did before in any nation upon earth; and if any man still represents the holders of property, as a class, as the enemies of those whom they employ, desiring their slavery and their ignorance, I believe that he is a liar and a child of the devil, and that he is at his father's old work, slandering and dividing between man and man’ (Preface addressed to the Working Men of Great Britain prefixed to Alton Locke).

¹A New View of Society, Second Essay, p. 36.

²Ibid., Fourth Essay, p. 86.

³Report to the Committee for the Relief of the Manufacturing Poor, p. 157; Address of list August, 1817, p. 211.

⁴A Catechism of the New View of Society (Everyman), pp. 175, 180.

⁵Report to the County of Lanark, p. 266.

⁶Catechism of New View, p. 180.

⁷Report to the County of Lanark, Part III: Details of the Plan, p. 264.

¹Report to the County of Lanark, p. 247.

²Ibid. p. 270.

³Ibid. p. 259.

⁴Ibid. p. 248.

⁵Ibid. p. 250.

¹Report to the County of Lanark, p. 262.

²Revolution in Mind and Practice, p. 35.

³Ibid. p. 53.

⁴Catechism of the New View (Everyman), p. 181.

⁵Further Development of the Plan, etc. (Everyman), pp. 231–232.

⁶Address of 14th August, 1817 (Everyman), p. 201.

¹Further Development of the Plan, etc., p. 232.

²Report to the County of Lanark, p. 287.

³Revolution in Mind and Practice, p. 72.

⁴A New View of Society, Fourth Essay, p. 85.

⁵Catechism of the New View (Everyman), pp. 181–182.

⁶Revolution in Mind and Practice, p. 122.