18253 The Experiment at New Harmony 



for about half a century, was a sweet-spirited and 

 devoted gentleman. 



Owen, oldest of the four, was a son of the noted 

 Robert Owen from Lanark, Scotland, who founded 

 with William Maclure of Philadelphia, a geologist 

 of note, the communistic experiment at New Har- 

 mony on the Wabash River below Vincennes — an 

 attempt remarkable for its success in bringing to- 

 gether forceful and original minds, as well as for 

 its total failure to solve the economic problems of so- 

 ciety. Richard Owen, like his distinguished brother, 

 David Dale, was a geologist with broad scholarship 

 and large sympathies, and a man of courtly man- 

 ners. Once I gave a lecture in the old hall at New 

 Harmony, with Dr. Owen in the chair. He was 

 then very old and heard not a word I said, but by 

 watching the faces of the audience he showed every 

 appropriate shade of feeling as I proceeded with 

 my talk. 



The importance of the New Harmony enterprise 

 in the intellectual development of Indiana seems to 

 me sufficient to warrant a digression at this point. 

 A century and more ago, the feeling was general Abolition 

 that the age of competition was past and the ]{-°^'^'' 

 world about to enter on a new social and industrial 

 period. Franklin asserted that if everybody would 

 work three hours a day on something useful, poverty 

 would be banished and all might spend the after- 

 noon of each day and the whole afternoon of life 

 amid the consolations of philosophy, the charms of 

 literature, or the delights of social intercourse. In 



C 189 a 



