Owen's first move was to reduce the working-hours from twelve to ten hours. Indeed, he was the first mill-owner to adopt the ten-hour plan. He improved the sanitary arrangements, put in shower-baths and took a personal interest in the diet of his little wards, often dining with them.
A special school-building was erected at a cost of thirty thousand dollars. This was both a day and a night school. It also took children of one year old and over, in order to relieve mothers who worked in the mills. The "little mothers," often only four or five years old, took care of babies a year old and younger, all day.
Owen instructed his teachers never to scold or to punish by inflicting physical pain. His was the first school in Christendom to abolish the rod.
His plan anticipated the Kindergarten and the Creche. He called mothers' meetings, and tried to show the uselessness of scolding and beating, because to do these things was really to teach the children to do them. He abolished the sale of strong drink in New Lanark. Model houses were erected, gardens planted, and prizes given for the raising of flowers.
In order not to pauperize his people, Owen had them pay a slight tuition for the care of the children, and there was a small tax levied to buy flower-seeds. In the school-building was a dance-hall and an auditorium.
At one time the supply of raw cotton was cut off for four months. During this time Owen paid his people full wages, insisted that they should all, old and young, go to school for two hours a day, and also work two hours a day at tree-planting, grading and gardening. During this period of idleness he paid out seven thousand pounds in wages. This was done to keep the workmen from wandering away.
It need not be imagined that Owen did not have other cares besides those of social betterment. Much of the machinery in the mills was worn and becoming obsolete. To replace this he borrowed a hundred thousand dollars. Then he reorganized his business as a stock company and sold shares to several London merchants with whom he dealt. He interested Jeremy Bentham, the great jurist and humanitarian, and Bentham proved his faith by buying stock in the New Lanark Company.
Joseph Lancaster, the Quaker, a mill-owner and philanthropist, did the same.
Owen paid a dividend of five per cent on his shares. A surplus was also set aside to pay dividends in case of a setback, but beyond this the money was invested in bettering the environment of his people.
New Lanark had been running fourteen years under Owen's management. It had attracted the attention of the civilized world. The Grand Duke Nicholas, afterwards the Czar, spent a month with Owen studying his methods. The Dukes of Kent, Sussex, Bedford and Portland; the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Bishops of London, Peterborough and Carlisle; the Marquis of Huntly; Lords Grosvenor, Carnarvon, Granville, Westmoreland, Shaftesbury and Manners; General Sir Thomas Dyce and General Brown; Ricardo, De Crespigny, Wilberforce, Joseph Butterworth and Sir Francis Baring—all visited New Lanark. Writers, preachers, doctors, in fact almost every man of intellect and worth in the Kingdom, knew of Robert Owen and his wonderful work at New Lanark. Sir Robert Peel had been to New Lanark and had gone back home and issued an official bulletin inviting mill-owners to study and pattern after the system.