S.R. Leonard.—"The people Mr. Owen had to deal with in Scotland were of the servile class, employees in his cotton-factories, and were easily managed, compared with those he collected here in the United States. When he went to Indiana, and undertook to manage a family of a thousand democrats, he began to realize that he did not understand human nature, or the principles of Association."
T.R. Noyes.—"The novelty of Owen's ideas and his rejection of all religion, prevented him from drawing into his scheme the best class in this country. Probably for every honest man who went to New Harmony, there were several parasites ready to prey on him and his enterprise, because he offered them an easy life without religion. Even if he might have got on with simple-minded men and women like his Lanark operatives, it was out of the question with these greedy adventurers."
G.W. Hamilton.—"At the west I met some persons who claimed to be disciples of Owen. From what I saw of them, I should judge it would be very difficult to form a Community of such material. They were very strong in the doctrine that every man has a right to his own opinion; and declaimed loudly against the effect of religion upon people. They said the common ideas of God and duty operated a great deal worse upon the characters of men, than southern slavery. There is enough in such notions of independence, to break up any attempt at Communism."
F.W. Smith.—"I understand that Owen did not educate and appoint men as leaders and fathers, to take care of the society while he was crossing the ocean back and forth. He undertook to manage his own affairs, and at the same time to run this Community. Our experience has shown that it is necessary to have a father in a great family for daily and almost hourly advice. I should think it would be doubly necessary in such a Community as Owen collected, to have the wisest man always at his post."
C.A. Burt.—"There are only two ways of governing such an institution as a Community; it must be done either by law or by grace. Owen got a company together and abolished law, but did not establish grace; and so, necessarily failed."
L. Bolles.—"The popular idea is that Owen and his class of reformers had an ideal that was very beautiful and very perfect; that they had too much faith for their time—too much faith in humanity; that they were several hundred years in advance of their age; and that the world was not good enough to understand them and their beautiful ideas. That is the superficial view of these men. I think the truth is, they were not up to the times; that mankind, in point of real faith, were ahead of them. Their view that the evil in human nature is owing to outward surroundings, is an impeachment of the providence of God. It is the worst kind of unbelief. But they have taught us one great lesson; and that is, that good circumstances do not make good men. I believe the circumstances of mankind are as good as Providence can make them, consistently with their own state of development and the well-being of their souls. Instead of seeking to sweep away existing governments and forms of outward things, we should thank God that he has given men institutions as good as they can bear. We know that he will give them better, as fast as they improve beyond those they have."
J.B. Herrick.—"Although the apparent effect of the failure of Owen's movement was to produce discouragement, still below all that discouragement there is, in the whole nation, generated in part by that movement, a hope watching for the morning. We have to thank Owen for so much, or rather to thank God, for using Owen to stimulate the public mind and bring it to that state in which it is able to receive and keep this hope for the future."
C.W. Underwood.—"Owen's experiment helped to demonstrate that there is no such thing as organization or unity without Christ and religion. But on the other hand we can see that Owen did much good. The churches were compelled to adopt many of his ideas. He certainly was the father of the infant-school system; and it is my impression that he started the reform-schools, houses of refuge, etc. He gave impulse, at any rate, to the present reformatory movements."
It is noticeable, as a coïncidence with our observations on the lust for land in a preceding chapter, that Owen succeeded admirably in a factory, and failed miserably on a farm. Whether his 30,000 acres had anything to do with his actual failure or not, they would probably have been the ruin of his Community, if it had not failed from other causes.