LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS, ETC. 103 



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 re- 

 moved 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 al- 

 most wholly self-supporting, and ultimately, when the majority 

 of the inhabitants had been trained from childhood under his 

 supervision, self-governing also. Had he done this, his beau- 

 tiful system of education, and the admirable social organiza- 

 tion founded on his far-seeing and fundamentally true philoso- 

 phy of human nature, might still have existed, as a beacon-light 

 guiding us toward a better state of industrial organization. 

 In that case we should not have now found ourselves, after 

 another century of continuous increase of wealth and com- 

 mand over nature, with a much greater mass of want and 

 misery in our midst than when he first so clearly showed the 

 means of abolishing them. 



Notwithstanding this one fatal error, an error due to the 

 sensitive nobility of his character and to his optimistic belief 

 in the power of truth to make its way against all adverse 

 forces, Robert Owen will ever be remembered as one of the 

 wisest, noblest, and most practical of philanthropists, as well 

 as one of the best and most lovable of men. 



I have a recollection of having once heard him give a 



