name of political economy and in the name of Christ, that Socialism had its first beginning among them.

II

The leader in the socialistic movement was Robert Owen (1771-1858), a native of Wales, where he received the little education that he ever received in schools. The rest of his training came from life, and from books that he read in his leisure hours; and, having a mind both acute and receptive, he obtained thus a more adequate education than he could have been given at any university of his time. At nine years of age poverty compelled him to go to work. His qualities of body and mind may be inferred from the fact that, with such beginnings, he was, at the age of nineteen, the manager of a cotton mill, in which five hundred workers were employed. We are not surprised to read of him that he formed the habit of early rising, was an incessant reader as well as a diligent worker, and that his habits were faultless, all his life he was a total abstainer from alcohol and tobacco. Such a boy was bound to rise. Even before his becoming a manager of the factory, he had borrowed a little money and established a small business of his own, in which he made a profit of £300 the first year. He thoroughly mastered the business of cotton spinning, and made his concern a model mill. As long as he remained in business, his enterprises were successful. It is important to remember that the first English socialist was not a mere man of books, an impractical dreamer of dreams, but a successful manufacturer.

These early years of Owen's experience in the cotton mill were probably the time when the laboring class of

England was at its lowest point of wretchedness. The Combination acts were in full force, and employees were completely at the mercy of the employer. The capitalist was taught by economists that labor was a commodity, like any other, and that it was his first duty to recognize and obey the great law of supply and demand. He was concerned only to get his labor at the lowest possible price and to sell his product at the highest possible price. And he was assured by the economists that to do the best for himself was in the end to do the best for others. For the welfare of his laborers he was in no way responsible. To hold that he was his brother's keeper, was to defy the sacred "laws" of political economy.

The profit of the manufacturer was enormous, incredible. Owen's biographer tells us that he was able to buy a pound of raw cotton for five shillings, and when he had made it into yarn to sell it for £9 18s. 6d. Such possible gains stimulated the greed of mill owners until their conduct passed the bounds of all belief, if the facts were not so well accredited. Employers found that child labor was most profitable of all, because it cost almost nothing. They obtained large numbers of children from the workhouses to be "apprentices." These apprentices were housed and bedded in sheds, fed upon the cheapest food and not enough of that, clothed mainly in rags, and worked in shifts night and day, so that the beds in which they slept were never cold. The sufferings of these workers were terrible, but not until disease bred under such conditions attacked the well-to-do was their attention aroused. There is no more appalling episode in the history of the English people than this condition of the factory workers a hundred years ago. Statesmen taught

employers that any interference by law with such conduct of their business was curtailment of liberty; economists taught them that shortening the hours of labor necessarily meant lower wages for the workers; while their own selfishness assured them that more humane treatment of their work-people meant a lessening of their profits. What wonder the abuses continued?

Robert Owen was by nature a quiet, tolerant, patient man, the reverse in temperament of the ordinary social agitator, but he could not look on these evils and do nothing for their abatement. He set himself the lifelong task of doing what he could to improve the condition of England's laboring classes. He had but to persevere as he had begun to make an immense fortune, and accomplish the ambition of most Englishmen, the "founding of a family"; that is, establishing his descendants as landowners, and possibly as nobles, thenceforth for generations to be supported in idleness and luxury by these hopeless toilers. This he could not do. On the contrary, he began to provide decent homes for the people in his mill, and to encourage them to form habits of cleanliness and thrift.

In 1800, Owen became manager of mills at New Lanark, near Glasgow, which he had persuaded some English capitalists to purchase, with a view of giving his methods a better trial. He looked upon the enterprise as a great commercial and social experiment, not a mere business, but it was necessary first of all that it should be so managed as to return a reasonable profit on the capital involved. This, from first to last, Owen succeeded in doing. He found at New Lanark a population of about two thousand, considerably below the average in moral char

acter, as a prejudice against factory employment at that time prevailing in Scotland naturally caused the workers to be recruited from the lowest grade of the people. They were suspicious of the new manager, and slow to be convinced that he really sought their good, but in time his efforts overcame their prejudices and gained for him their devoted affection. His first task was to provide decent houses for them, and the next to establish schools in which their children might be trained. He was firmly convinced that by thus altering the conditions and surroundings of the people, teaching them cleanliness and self-respect and raising the standard of intelligence among them, a corresponding change would be effected in their character. And though all who heard of his plans regarded his scheme as visionary and impractical, he was given a free hand; and, by the testimony of all who knew the facts, he did effect a great change in the character of the people of New Lanark.

In his attempt to make his mills model concerns, Owen was forced to rebuild or rearrange them; to improve the sanitary condition of the buildings and surroundings; to secure ample light and air. No more pauper children were received; hours of labor were shortened. Finding that the local shops sold goods of poor quality, at the highest market price, the company established shops under Owen's direction, that furnished the best goods at a saving of twenty-five per cent to the workmen. But, though a good profit was returned from the business, the investors became dissatisfied at the spending of so much money in improvements, instead of distributing it as additional dividends, and twice Owen was compelled to reorganize his company and obtain the support of other

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