OWEN, ROBERT, a social theorist and schemer, was b. May 14, 1771, at Newton. in 'Montgomeryshire. lie does not appear to have had any more than a merely commercial education to fit him for common business. The point from which his peculiar destiny in life may be said to have started, was his marriage in 1799 to the daughter of David Dale, the owner of the celebrated cotton mills at New Lanark, on the Clyde. This estab lishment was very successful as a money speculation, and it is curious that Jeremy Bent ham made a small fortune by investing' in it. 31i. Dale was known to be a thorough man of business, but whether Owen, by his peculiar faculties for organization, contrib uted to the prosperity of the establishment iu its early stages, is a doubtful question. It is certain that as his larger schemes developed themselves, he was felt to be a dangerous partner in a good business, and he was gradually- elbowed out of any voice in the man agement, and he finally disposed of his share in the property.
It should be remembered, however, of a man, whose life will go down to posterity as one long absurdity, that in his connection with the New Lanark mills he did real prac tical good on a settle by no means limited. He was naturally active and interfering, and being a humane man, it struck him that much degradation, vice, and suffering arose from the disorganized manner in which the progress of machinery and manufactures was huddling the manufacturing population together. Ile introduced into the New Lanark community education, sanitary reform, and various civilizing agencies, which philanthro pists at the present clay are but imperfectly accomplishing, in the great manufacturing districts. The mills became a center of attraction. They were daily visited by every illustrious traveler in Britain, from crowned heads downward, and it was delightful not only to see the decency and biller of everything, but to hear the bland persuasive elo quence of the garrulous and benevolent organizer.
A factory was, however, far too limited a sphere for his ambition. He wanted to organize the world; and that there might be no want of an excuse for his intervention, he set about proving that it was in all its institutions—the prevailing religion included— in as wretched a condition as any dirty demoralized manufacturing village. Such was the scheme with which he came out on the astonished world in 1816. in his V'ir Views of Society, or ]..,mays on the Formation of the Human Character; and he continued, in hooks, pamphlets, lectures and other available forms, to keep up the stream of excitation till it was stopped by his death. He had at least three grand opportunities of setting tip lim ited communities on his own principles—one at Romney, in America; a second at Ottis ton, in Lanarkshire; the third at Harmony hall, in Hampshire, so lately as the year 1844. They were, of course, all failures, and Owen attributed their failure to their not being sufficiently perfected on his principles. His life was a remarkable phenomenon. from the preternatural sanguineness of temperament which, in the face of failures, and a world ever growing more hostile, made him believe to the last that all his projects were just on the eve of success. In the revolution of 1848 he went to Paris, with hopes of course on the highest stretch; lint his voice was not loud enough to be beard in that great turmoil. lie appeared at the meet log of the social science association at Liverpool in the autumn of 1858, with all his schemes as fresh as ever. He died a few weeks afterward, on Nov. 17, 1853. A life of Owen by A. J. Booth appeared in 1869