Note 514 — Chapter III · : THE ASSOCIATIVE SOCIALISTS

It is quite possible that Owen regarded the term as his own invention, but we now know that it had been previously employed by Pierre Leroux, the French socialist. The publication of Owen’s What is Socialism? in 1841, however, is the earliest instance of the term being employed as the title of a book.

Owen lived an extremely active life, and died in 1857 at the advanced age of eighty-seven. Of Welsh artisan descent, he began life as an apprentice in a cotton factory, setting up as a master spinner on his own account with a capital of £100, which he had borrowed from his father. His rise was very rapid, and at the age of thirty he found himself co-proprietor and director of the New Lanark Mills. It was then that he first made a name for himself by his technical improvements and his model dwellings for his workmen. It was at this period that his ideas on education also took shape. By and by it became the fashion to make a pilgrimage to view the factory at New Lanark, and among the visitors were several very distinguished people. His correspondents also included more than one royal personage. Among these we may specially mention the King of Prussia, who sought his advice on the question of education, and the King of Holland, who consulted him on the question of charity.

The crisis of 1815 revealed to Owen the serious defects in the economic order, and this marks the beginning of the second period of his life, when he dabbled in communal experiments. In 1825 he founded the colony of New Harmony in Indiana, and the same year witnessed the establishment of another colony at Orbiston, in Scotland. But these lasted only for a few years. In 1832 we have the National Equitable Labour Exchange, which was not much more successful.

Owen, sixty-three years of age, and thoroughly disappointed with his experiments, but as convinced as ever of the truth of his doctrines, entered now upon the third period of his life, which, as it happened, was to be a fairly long one. This period was to be devoted wholly to propagating the gospel of the New Moral World—The New Moral World being the title of his chief work and of the newspaper which he first published towards the end of 1834. He took an active part in the Trade Union movement, but does not seem to have been much interested in the co-operative experiments which were started by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844, although curiously enough this is his chief claim to fame.

Owen was in no sense a littérateur, being essentially a man of affairs, and we are not surprised to find that the number of books which he has left behind him is small. But he was an indefatigable lecturer, and wrote a good deal for the press. We must confess, however, that it is not easy, as we read his addresses and articles to-day, to account for the wonderful contemporary success which they had.

There is an excellent French work by Dolléans dealing with his life and doctrines (1907). The best English life, that of Podmore, is unfortunately out of print.