“When eggs were spent, tongues peace desir’d,
The spoils of war had brought no crust,
The rebels fled, the troops retir’d,
Covered with glory, sweat and dust.”
In the old churchyard of Newtown may be seen the plain slab that covers the body of Robert Owen, the Socialist. He was born in the place, but his father was from Welshpool, and had set up business as saddler, ironmonger, and postmaster. Robert was born in 1771, and was sent to London to a situation in a haberdasher’s shop. Thence he removed to Manchester, where he started cotton-spinning. His life is too well known to be given in full here, but a few points may be mentioned. He had imbibed very strong anti-religious ideas, and he was persuaded that the whole social world was topsy-turvy, and required reorganising on the new principles that he had excogitated.
“Character,” said he, “is formed for and not by the individual, and society now possesses the most ample means and power to well form the character of everyone by reconstructing society on its own true principles”—that is to say, on those devised by Robert Owen.
In 1797 he started the “New Lanark Twist Company,” in which his theories were to be carried out; but although the system was nominally and theoretically democratic, Robert Owen ruled as an autocrat, and having a splendid organising and business head he made the scheme into a commercial success. Some of the partners could not agree to his plans, so he bought them out, but took in others, who also declined to let him rule despotically, and in disgust he went off to America to found a Socialistic community there on the wreck of an attempted German Communistic venture. This, however, failed, and when he returned to Scotland the partners in the New Lanark Twist Company had increased in number, and gave him to understand that they intended managing it in their own and not in his way.
Then he founded a Communistic Society at Orbiston, in Scotland, but this also slipped from his control. He next started a weekly paper, The Crisis, and an “Equitable Labour Exchange.” The latter came to a disastrous end in 1833. After this little was heard of Robert Owen.
One of his early theories was that the universe was one great self-acting laboratory, and that all life, movement, thought, were results of chemical action.
His conception of the formation of character was bound to end in disappointment. Minds are not mere bits of blank paper on which you may write what you like; souls are not lumps of putty to be moulded to what form you will.