capitalists. He was finally compelled to resign his position and abandon his experiment, because of the meddlesomeness of a Quaker partner in the enterprise, who was not satisfied with the quality and amount of the religious instruction given to the people.

There is no question that Owen himself was not an orthodox Christian; to-day he would probably be called a liberal Unitarian. But he did not try to propagate his views of religion among his work-people; on the contrary, he had established at New Lanark a complete system of religious liberty. Regarding persecution as a worse error than false doctrine, he held that the first duty of all men in matters of religion is a broad tolerance. It was his personal belief that men's religious ideas are the effect of the accident of birth and the resulting training education imparts these ideas, and therefore men are not responsible for holding them. He frankly avowed to an inquirer: "I am not of your religion, nor of any religion yet taught in the world. To me they all appear united with much—yes, with very much-error." But, holding such sentiments, he yet insisted on the full right of each man to the enjoyment of the utmost liberty of conscience. And therefore he could not be persuaded to have any system of faith inculcated at New Lanark as a sort of established religion. Instead of that, he was ready to cooperate in maintaining whatever forms of worship the people themselves desired. Official investigation of the conditions there showed that he was "not known to have in any one instance endeavored to alter the religious opinions of persons in his employment; that the desires of his workmen to attend their respective places of worship are complied with and aided to the utmost extent; that

a minister has long been paid by the proprietors. . for performing divine service in the Gaelic tongue to the Highland workmen; that Mr. Owen's house is a house of daily prayer."

Owen was now fifty-seven years of age; he had gained a modest competence, and resolved to devote himself thenceforth to philanthropic effort. During his work at New Lanark he had begun to write on social topics, and in his "New Views of Society," or "Essays on the Formation of Character" (1812) and his "Book of the New Moral World" (1826-1844), he set forth the ideas that underlay his social experiments. It is clear that the fundamental principle of his Socialism was a philosophic and practical determinism. He had also been profoundly influenced by the reading of Rousseau and other writers of the French Deistic school, not so much by their ideas of religion as by their theories of human nature. Environment and heredity, he believed, determine character, and of these the greatest is environment. Place men under proper influences from infancy, so that the right physical, moral, and social training may be given them, and right character will result.1 His remedy for all the ills of society was education; but by education he meant not merely impartation of knowledge, but the whole process of forming character. Education in this sense he believed to be omnipotent. His success in elevating the

1 We might suppose that Owen had gone farther back than to Rousseau, if we had any reason to think that he was familiar with Plato. "Our youth will dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason." - "Republic," Book III.

character of the New Lanark population naturally confirmed him in these views; his theory had seemed to work well in practice.

Out of this fundamental notion grew all the practical schemes of Owen. As early as 1817, he undertook to interest the influential classes of England in making trial of his ideas, in a report submitted to the House of Commons on the Poor Law. He proposed the establishment, at State expense and under State supervision, of communities of about twelve hundred persons on from one thousand to fifteen hundred acres of land each. The people were to live in one large building, each family having private apartments, but a public kitchen, dining rooms, etc. Children were to be cared for by their parents until three years old, after that to be educated by the community in a common school. Work was to be provided for all, and all were to share equally in its fruits. Each community would be mainly agricultural, but was to own machinery and offer to its members every variety of employment, so that it would be a self-dependent unit. It is not known how far Owen had read the French socialists, but there is more than a flavor of Fourierism in this.

It seemed at first that there might be at least a chance of making an experiment along the lines thus suggested. Considerable interest was roused and fair progress was making, when rumors of Owen's lack of religious orthodoxy began to be circulated. When questioned, he frankly avowed his beliefs. Prejudice was thus excited against him, and he did not lack actual detractors among the clergy. The Bishop of Exeter went so far as to charge him with "squandering his wealth in profligacy and lux

Those

ury, a charge as absurd as it was slanderous. who were looking for a decent pretext to turn the cold shoulder to his enterprise, or even to offer active opposition to it, found one here; while many timid people who might have been his supporters were effectually alienated. The whole scheme proved abortive.

Owen was more successful in his attempt to secure legislation that would protect the workers against the greed of their employers. An epidemic at Manchester, in 1802, first called the attention of the English people to factory conditions, and a statute was passed regulating the conditions of employment in factories. The reforms thus made were chiefly sanitary, and the hours of work were permitted to remain at what was then customary, twelve hours a day for each worker. In 1819 a Factory Act was passed by Parliament, but it was so emasculated through the influence of the wealthy manufacturers as to give little relief. Owen had sought to make the age limit for employment in factories ten years, and the time limit ten and a half hours a day; Parliament cut the age limit to nine years, and left the day's work at twelve hours. The chief gain was that the statute applied to all factories, whereas previous laws had been of partial application. It was not until 1847 that the day's work was lowered to ten hours, and then only for women and children. In the name of "free contract," the legislators refused to limit the sacred right of men to be overworked as much as employers could compel.1

1 How little is to be expected from the humanity of the capitalistic class is shown by the fact that eminent "reformers" like John Bright and Richard Cobden opposed the English statutes against child labor. It took fifty years of agitation to humanize English factories, but now they are far in advance of the United States in such particulars.

Failing to induce the English government to undertake socialistic experiments, Owen undertook them for himself. A socialistic colony, conducted on his principles, was attempted at Abram Combe, near Glasgow, but the experiment from which most was hoped was made at New Harmony, Indiana. The history of this belongs, however, to a later chapter. A bank on the principle of a universal labor exchange was another of Owen's enterprises. All of these attempts failed after a brief trial, as his critics predicted would be the case, but not for the reasons on which the predictions were based. The causes of the failure were elements that might have been and should have been excluded from the problem.

In spite of his business experience, Owen was not the man to conduct such enterprises to success. His experience had been that of a manufacturer; he knew little of trade or agriculture, less of banking and general business. He should have associated with himself one or more men of experience in those affairs of which he knew little. He was not skilled in judging men; he was too sanguine, too quixotic, too visionary. His philosophy of determinism had bred in him a faith in the essential goodness of human nature that would not permit him to see facts patent to every ordinary observer. No groups of perfectly rational and unselfish men can be created by magic out of vagrant adventurers and cranky enthusiasts, nor even out of the average stolid British worker. Every project of Owen's proved a magnet to draw to it precisely the men that would insure its failure: the over-sanguine, quick to be discouraged when their roseate fancies were not immediately realized; the odd and cranky, who will not fit into any scheme, and are everywhere a source of