Worl War 2

Contents

Contents 1
Introduction 2
Early life 3
Commercial Success in Manchester (1790) 3
Philanthropy in New Lanark (1800) 3
Plans for alleviating poverty through Socialism (1817) 6
Community Experiment in America (1825) 7
London 8
Children 9
Works by Owen 9
Conclusion 11
Bibliography 12
Books 12
Internet 12


Introduction


I chose this topic for my Paper because Ihad read about something about Robert Owen, but nothing deep. I was interested in this theme, in knowing how the beginning of socialism was, and also how these ideas were developed and employed.

Beginning as a draper’s assistant in London, Robert Owen prospered by thrift and enterprise, and by the time he was thirty, he was manager and part-owner of important cotton mills at New Lanark.

Inthis context he started to develop his idea of socialism, giving his employees reasonable hours of work and good living wages.

But he was not taken into account by Parliament or other millowners. So he sold his mills and devoted the rest of his life to improve the lot of the working-class without parliamentary action.

This Practical work is divided into eight parts, among which we can findEarly Life, London and Children, and we can see also a list of works written by Owen.

After reading all the collected information I made a mental map in which I located Robert Owen in time and space. Then I wrote it down on a sheet of paper. From that chart I wrote this Paper. I based my opinions in what I read and conclude.

I hope you will enjoy this paper. It is really interesting.Early life



Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales on 14th May 1771, where his father had a small business as a saddler[1] and ironmonger[2]. Owen's mother came from one of the prosperous farming families. Here, young Owen received all his school education, which finished when he was ten. After serving in a draper's[3] shop for some years, he settledin Manchester.

Commercial Success in Manchester (1790)



He very rapidly gained success. When only nineteen years of age he became a worker of a cotton mill employing one hundred people, and by his administrative intelligence and energy soon made it one of the best establishments of the kind in Great Britain. In this factory, Owen used the first bags of American sea-island cottonever imported into the country; it was the first sea-island cotton from the Northern States. Owen also made remarkable improvement in the quality of the cotton spun; and indeed there is no reason to doubt that at this early age he was the first cotton-spinner in England, a position entirely due to his own capacity and knowledge of the trade. In 1794 or 1795 he became manager and one of the partnersof the Chorlton Twist Company at Manchester.

Philanthropy in New Lanark (1800)


During a visit to Glasgow he fell in love with Caroline Dale, the daughter of the New Lanark mill's proprietor David Dale. Owen induced his partners to purchase New Lanark, and after his marriage with Caroline in September 1799, he set up home there. He was manager and part owner of the mills (January1800). Encouraged by his great success in the management of cotton factories in Manchester, he hoped to conduct New Lanark on higher principles and focus less on commercial principles.
The factory of New Lanark had been started in 1791 by Dale and Richard Arkwright. The water power afforded by the falls of the Clyde made it a great attraction. About two thousand people had associations with themills. Five hundred of them were children who were brought at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The children had been well treated by Dale, but the general condition of the people was very unsatisfactory. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were...