Friederich Engels, a man not given to praising overmuch, has spoken of Owen with an enthusiasm which he rarely showed in his descriptions of men. He calls him, "A man of almost sublime and childlike simplicity of character," and declares, "Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers, links itself on to the name of Robert Owen."[11] And even this high praise from the part-author of The Communist Manifesto who for so many years was called the "Nestor of the Socialist movement," falls short, because it does not recognize the great influence of the man in the United States at a most important period of our history.

Robert Owen was born of humble parentage, in a little town in North Wales, on the fourteenth day of May, 1771. A most precocious child, at seven years of age, so he tells us in his "Autobiography," he had familiarized himself with Milton's "Paradise Lost," and by the time he was ten years old he had grappled with the ages-old problems of Whence and Whither and become a skeptic! It is doubtful whether his "skepticism" really consisted of anything more than the consciousness that there were apparent contradictions in the Bible, a discovery which many a precocious lad has made at quite as early an age, and the failure of the usual theological subterfuges to satisfy a boy's frank spirit. Still, it is worthy of note as indicating his inquiring spirit.

The great dream of his childhood was that he might become an educated man. He thirsted for knowledge and wanted above all things a university education. A passion for knowledge was the controlling force of his life. But his parents were too poor to gratify his desire for an extensive education. He was barely ten years old when his scanty schooling ended, and he set out to fight the battle of life for himself in London.

He was apprenticed to a draper, named McGuffeg, who seems to have been a rather superior type of man. From a small peddling business he had built up one of the largest and wealthiest establishments in that part of London, catering to the wealthy and the titled nobility. Above all, McGuffeg was a man of books, and in his well-stocked library young Owen could read several hours each day, and thus make up in a measure for his early lack of educational opportunities. During the three years of his apprenticeship he read prodigiously, and laid the foundations of that literary culture which characterized his whole life and added tremendously to his power.

This is not in any sense a biographical sketch of Robert Owen.[12] If it were, the story of the rise of this poor, strange, strong lad, from poverty to the very pinnacle of industrial and commercial power and fame, as one of the leading manufacturers of his day, would lead through pathways of romance as wonderful as any in our biographical literature. We are concerned, however, only with his career as a social reformer and the forces which molded it. And that, too, has its romantic side.

II

The closing years of the eighteenth century marked the beginning of a great and far-reaching industrial revolution. The introduction of new mechanical inventions enormously increased the productive powers of England. In 1770 Hargreaves patented his "spinning jenny," and in the following year Arkwright invented his "water frame," a patent spinning machine which derived its name from the fact that it was worked by water power. Later, in 1779, Crompton invented the "mule," which was really a combination of the principles of both machines. This was a long step forward, and greatly facilitated the spinning of the raw material into yarn. The invention was, in fact, a revolution in itself. Like so many other great inventors, Crompton died in poverty.

Even now, however, the actual weaving had to be done by hand. Not until 1785, when Dr. Cartwright, a parson, invented a "power loom," was it deemed possible to weave by machinery. Cartwright's invention, coming in the same year as the general introduction of Watt's steam engine in the cotton industry, made the industrial revolution. Had the revolution come slowly, had the inventors of the new industrial processes been able to accomplish that, it is most probable that much of the misery of the period would have been avoided. As it was, terrible poverty and hardship attended the birth of the new industrial order. Owing to the expense of introducing the machines, and the impossibility of competing with them by the old methods of production, the small manufacturers themselves were forced to the wall, and their misery, compelling them to become wage-workers in competition with other already far too numerous wage-workers, added greatly to the woe of the time. William Morris's fine lines, written a hundred years later, express vividly what many a manufacturer must have felt at that time:—

"Fast and faster our iron master,

The thing we made, forever drives."