The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-05-14
CENTENARY OF BEGINNING OF
 MODERN ENGLISH SOCIALISM.

This year may be said to mark the centennial of the beginning of mod ern socialism. in Great Britain, for it. was in 1915 that Robert Owen began those soci ciologica1 experiments which later led him to establish his ill-fated4 communistic colony at New Har-
 mony, Ind. Robert Ownes was born in Wales LA years ago today, May IA 1771 the son of a man who was the saddler, iron. monger and post master of the village of Newtown- At the age of nine Robert left school and was apprenticed to his brother, a London saddier. Later he went to work in the Manchester cotton mills and at twenty was appointed superin- tendent of a factory employing 800
 hands. He was a studious, thought fuI boy, and within a year he SO i'm proved the process of manufacture that he produced yarns running 300
 hanks to the pound instead of 120i hanks, the utmost fineness attained
 by his predecessor.
 Tn IT99 Robert Owen purchased a. cotton mill at New Lanark, ScotIand,H from David Dale, and married a
 daughter of MT. Dale. Before that he had become acquainted with Rob-
 ert Fulton, and had helped to finance, his scheme for the application of. steam power to navigation From his early manhood Owen was a reforner in politics, religion and industry He. was denounced as an ttinfide1'' by the lcIergy and aroused 9EIe afiLnosity of other mill owners by attempting to l secure. the passage of laws raising
 the age at which children could be
 employed in mills, and shortening
 their hours of labor. At that time. in- fants of five could be apprenticed to the mill owners. and their hours of i toll were from six in the morning to Sseven in the evening"
 About a century ago Owen pulp lslished his New View of Society," and
 various reforms, and in 1915 he com 4 pleted his plans for the fam ous infant
 school at New Lanark, which was lopened early in January of 1816.N So 1 far as England was concerneds Owen lthus became the father of a. new sys- Item of education,, in which books oe-
 cupied a secondary place in the Iteaching of the very young. 8
 After the close of the Napoleontc
 wars and the sudden disbandmept of I 100000 able bodied men who had been employed in the military and naval forces, the English labor mar I I1et was g1uttedt and the problem of illnen pIoynent became acute. Britain
 Twas filled with hungry, ragged men laseeking jobs, and wages fell to a very I low point. It was while the country
 was in this condition, late in 1915, I that Robert Owen first suggested his lcelebrated plan for the provision by the government of useful work for
 the unemployed, the promulgation of I which marked the beginning of mod 3ern socialism. He pointed out that 1 the constant Improvement of ma
 ehtnery must force more and more
 men out of employment, and declar- 1 ed that the only remedy which. could | save the working classes of Great Britain from starvation was the so- I ciaIization of the means of produc-
 ton. Owen spent $20.00O in securing I tpubHcity for his views, but they were Inot well received.
 In 1925 Owen bought from a re4 l Iigfous sect called the Rappitez the 1 village of New Harmony, Ind, with l all it's industries and 10000 acres of land, and founded there a, socialistic
 colony. After a few years the viI- Iagers renounced communism, and the experiment failed utterly, Owen
 losing $200.o00. the greater part of his fortune. in the experiment. Owen | died in 1858. His son, Robert Dale I Owen. was a congressman, diplomat and author. Another son of the fath- CT of British socialism. David Dale . Owen, also remained in America, and
 was noted as a geoIogist.