Note 515 — Chapter III · : THE ASSOCIATIVE SOCIALISTS

To his fellow-employers who complained of his almost revolutionary proposals Owen made reply as follows—and his words are quite as true now as they were then: “Experience must have taught you the difference between an efficiently equipped factory with its machinery always clean and in good working order and one in which the machinery is filthy and out of repair and working only with the greatest amount of friction. Now if the care which you bestow upon machinery can give you such excellent results, may you not expect equally good results from care spent upon human beings, with their infinitely superior structure? Is it not quite natural to conclude that these infinitely more delicate and complex mechanisms will also increase in force and efficiency and will be really much more economical if they are kept in good working condition and treated with a certain measure of kindness? Such kindness would do much to remove the mental friction and irritation which always results whenever the nourishment is insufficient to keep the body in full productive efficiency, as well as to arrest deterioration and to prevent premature death.”