154 EVOLUTION, SOCl^iL AND ORGANIC 



own buttons, his wife having left her fingers 

 among the cogs of uncovered machinery. 



Such would be the social heaven, operated 

 on the principles of the ''Manchester'' school 

 of politics, which mark the high-water of In- 

 dividualism, and of which Herbert Spencer 

 was the chief apostle. 



Compare this attitude of mind with that of 

 the Utopian Socialist, Robert Owen, over 

 whom Spencer had the advantage of the lapse 

 of a period of seventy years. In 1815 Owen 

 convened a large number of cotton manufac- 

 turers at Glasgow, Scotland, to consider the 

 state of the cotton trade which was then 

 in great distress. To that conference he 

 presented two proposals; one to help the 

 masters, the other to benefit the workers. 

 The first was that they should petition 

 parliament for the repeal of the tariff on 

 raw cotton; the second that they should re- 

 quest parliament to shorten the working 

 hours, and otherwise improve the conditions 

 of workers in the mills. The first proposal 

 carried unanimously, but the one on which 

 Owen's heart was set, was not even seconded. 



Knowing as he did the terrible condition of 

 the English working class of that period, the 

 callous brutality of these rapacious masters 

 roused him to irony and defiance. He deliv- 

 ered an address to the conference which he 



