vi] LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS, ETC. 103 



comforts of life for its own inhabitants, with a surplus of such 

 goods as they could produce most advantageously for them- 

 selves, in order by their sale in the surrounding district to be 

 able to supply themselves with such native or foreign pro- 

 ducts as they required, then each worker would have been 

 able to enjoy the benefits of change of occupation, always 

 having some alternation of outdoor as well as indoor work ; 

 the hours of labour might be greatly reduced, and all the 

 refinements of life might have been procured and enjoyed 

 by them. 



On considering the whole course of Owen's life, the one 

 great error he committed was to give up the New Lanark 

 property and management, and spend his large fortune in 

 the endeavour to found communities in various countries of 

 chance assemblages of adults, which his own principles 

 should have shown him were doomed to failure. He 

 always maintained that a true system of education from 

 infancy to manhood was essential to the best formation of 

 character. His infant schools had only been about ten years 

 in existence, when, owing to some difficulties with his Quaker 

 partners, who had always objected to the dancing and drill, 

 he gave up the management into their hands. 



This was a weakness due to his amiable temper, which 

 could not bear to be the cause of difference with his friends. 

 Under the circumstances he might well have refused to give 

 up an establishment which was wholly his own creation, and 

 whose splendid success was unequalled in the world. He 

 possessed nearly half the shares, and the profits were so large 

 that he could soon have paid off the remainder, and become 

 the sole owner. If they had absolutely refused to sell, he 

 might have sold his interest and started another community 

 on improved lines, to which it is almost certain the whole of 

 the inhabitants of New Lanark would have voluntarily 

 removed in order to be under his beneficent rule. He would 

 thus have had all the advantages of not losing the young 

 people he had so thoroughly trained, and might have gone on 

 during his life extending the establishment till it became 

 almost wholly self-supporting, and ultimately, when the 



