DAVID DALE OWEN. 



501 



buildings of their settlement at New Harmony, Ind. The 

 Harmony Society was prosperous but wished to change its 

 location. Coming to America in the spring of 1825, he or- 

 ganized a community of about nine hundred persons on 

 a provisional plan, and then returned to Scotland to look 

 after his business, leaving his two oldest sons at New 

 Harmony. 



William Maclure, of Philadelphia, a man of means and de- 

 voted to philanthropy and the advancement of science, took 

 part in founding the community. He heard of Owen's scheme 

 on returning to the United States after an attempt to found 

 an agricultural labour school in Spain, and believed that it 

 would afford favourable conditions for carrying out his cher- 

 ished idea of an educational institute founded on rational 

 principles. He accordingly bought a large tract of land in 

 New Harmony and vicinity, and removed thither his library 

 and collection of minerals, which were extensive, and his valu- 

 able scientific apparatus. He induced Gerard Troost, C. A. 

 Lesueur, and Thomas Say, also Joseph Neef, the pioneer of 

 Pestallozzian education in America, to come into the commu- 

 nity with him, and to act as instructors in the institution pro- 

 posed. When the society was divided into a manufacturing 

 and educational, and an agricultural branch, Maclure became 

 the leading spirit in the educational division. 



Owen visited New Harmony a second time in the winter of 

 i825-*26. His third visit was made in the spring of 1828, and 

 by that time so many troubles had arisen that the community 

 was disbanded. The failure of the undertaking was due to 

 the one great cause that makes all communistic enterprises 

 impracticable in the present age the imperfections of human 

 nature. In the same year Mr. Owen went to Mexico, on the 

 invitation of the Mexican Government, to put his ideas into 

 practice there, but effected nothing because the Government 

 insisted that the state religion of the proposed community 

 should be Roman Catholic. Some experiments were afterward 

 tried by him in Great Britain, and he continued to advocate his 

 views with voice and pen until his death in 1858. His followers 

 received the name of " Owenites." He published a consider- 

 able number of writings, including an autobiography. 



When David Dale Owen was about four or five years of 

 age, Nicholas (afterward Czar of all the Russias) visited Rob- 



