102 MY LIFE 



class of manufacturing operatives at that period. There ap- 

 pears to have been not a single case of an individual or a 

 family being expelled for bad conduct ; so that we are com- 

 pelled to trace the marvellous improvement that occurred en- 

 tirely to the partial application of Owen's principles of human 

 nature, most patiently and skilfully applied by himself. They 

 were necessarily only a partial application, because a large 

 number of the adults had not received the education and train- 

 ing from infancy which was essential for producing their full 

 beneficial results. Again, the whole establishment was a 

 manufactory, the property of private capitalists, and the adult 

 population suffered all the disadvantages of having to work 

 for long hours at a monotonous employment and at low rates 

 of wages, circumstances wholly antagonistic to any full and 

 healthy and elevated existence. Owen used always to declare 

 that the beneficial results at which all visitors were so much 

 astonished were only one-tenth part of what could and would 

 be produced if his principles were fully applied. If the 

 labour of such a community, or of groups of such communi- 

 ties, had been directed with equal skill to produce primarily the 

 necessaries and comforts of life for its own inhabitants, with 

 a surplus of such goods as they could produce most ad- 

 vantageously for themselves, in order by their sale in the sur- 

 rounding district to be able to supply themselves with such 

 native or foreign products as they required, then each worker 

 would have been able to enjoy the benefits of change of occupa- 

 tion, always having some alternation of outdoor as well as in- 

 door work ; the hours of labour might be greatly reduced, and 

 all the refinements of life might have been procured and en- 

 joyed 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 main- 

 tained that a true system of education from infancy to man- 

 hood was essential to the best formation of character. His 



