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“The Steam Engine of the New Moral World”: Owenism and Education, 1817-1829

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

John F. C. Harrison
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Extract

The inscription on Robert Owen's monument in Kensal Green cemetery, London, begins: “He originated and organized infant schools.” This claim, though disputed during his lifetime, is now generally acknowledged and has become part of the familiar story of Owen. For fifty years after his death in 1858, however, Owen was remembered chiefly as a cooperator, secularist, and Utopian socialist, and Frank Podmore in his definitive biography of Owen published in 1906 observed that “the name of Robert Owen is little known to the present generation as an educational reformer.” Thanks to Podmore's work and later that of another Fabian, G. D. H. Cole, Owen's role as an educator became more fully recognized. Subsequent biographies and educational dissertations elaborated (or, perhaps more accurately, repeated) details of Owen's educational activities and ideas. More recently A. E. Bestor, through a brilliant examination of the American material, showed the close relationship between education and Owenite communitarianism.

In modern evaluations of Owen and his work a large place has thus been rightly accorded to education. The spectacular nature of the experiment at New Lanark, the advocacy of a nonviolent and widely acceptable method of social change, and Owen's repeated emphasis on the importance of education in character formation all contributed to a focusing of attention on this aspect of his achievement. “The basis of Owenism,” wrote Cole, “was his [Owen's] theory of education.” Evidence for this view came from Owen's statements on the relation between education and social reform and from descriptions of the detailed workings of his infant school.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , May 1967 , pp. 76 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1967

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References

1. Podmore, Frank, Robert Owen: A Biography (London, 1906), I, 102Google Scholar.

2. Cole, G. D. H., Robert Owen (London, 1925)Google Scholar; Owen, Robert, A New View of Society and Other Writings, ed. Cole, G. D. H. (London, 1927)Google Scholar, Introduction. Other Fabians also wrote on Owen, notably Margaret Cole, B. L. Hutchins, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Graham Wallas, and C. E. M. Joad. The following recent studies of Owen include descriptions of his educational experiments and principles: Harvey, Rowland Hill, Robert Owen, Social Idealist (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949)Google Scholar; Cole, Margaret, Robert Owen of New Lanark (London, 1953)Google Scholar; Morton, A. L., The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen (London, 1962)Google Scholar.

3. Bestor, Arthur Eugene Jr., Education and Reform at New Harmony: Correspondence of William Maclure and Marie Duclos Fretageot, 1820-1833 [Indiana Historical Society] (Indianapolis, 1948)Google Scholar; Bestor, A. E., Backwoods Utopias: the Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829 (Philadelphia, 1950)Google Scholar.

4. Cole, , Robert Owen, p. 96Google Scholar.

5. Owen's address after his arrival at New Harmony, Indiana, 27 Apr. 1825, New Harmony Gazette, I (1825–1826), 1.Google Scholar

6. Robert Owen, A New View of Society: or essays on the principle of the formation of the human character, was printed for private circulation in 1813-14 but not published until 1816.

7. The life of Robert Owen Written by Himself (London, 1857–1858)Google Scholar contains appendixes in which Owen reprinted his chief publications up to 1821. References to these writings are taken from this collection and cited as Owen, Life.

8. Ibid., I, 16.

9. With the exception of Owen, Robert, Observations on the Cotton Trade of Great Britain (Glasgow, 1803)Google Scholar.

10. A preliminary bibliography suggests at least two hundred items written by Owen himself, exclusive of articles and letters to the press, and a further two thousand items by or about Owenites.

11. Morgan, John Minter, Hampden in the Nineteenth Century: or colloquies on the errors and improvement of society (London, 1834), II, 83Google Scholar.

12. Archibald James Hamilton (1793-1834), the son of the laird of Dalziel and Orbiston, was a lieutenant in the Scots Greys at Waterloo. He became an ardent follower of Owen and was associated with Abram Combe in the Orbiston community experiment, for which he provided the land.

Abram Combe (1785-1827) was the son of an Edinburgh brewer and the brother of George Combe, the phrenologist. He made a prosperous living as a tanner and in 1821 became a convert to Owenism. After establishing an Owenite society known as the Edinburgh Practical Society (1821-22), he published several works on Owenism (1823-25) and in 1825 launched (with A. J. Hamilton) the Orbiston community.

Donald Macdonald (1791-1872) was a captain in the Royal Engineers and, while stationed in Edinburgh, became interested in Owenism and joined the Edinburgh Practical Society. He accompanied Owen on his tour of Ireland in 1822-23 and went with him to America on his first journey in 1824. He made a second journey to America in 1825-26 and was active in the New Harmony community.

13. John Minter Morgan (1782-1854) inherited “an ample fortune” from his father, a wholesale stationer of London, and spent his life pursuing philanthropic interests. As early as 1819 he published a defence of Owen's views, and his Revolt of the Bees (London, 1826)Google Scholar was one of the most widely read of the popularizations of Owenism. He was a member of the Church of England and sought to reconcile his Christian beliefs with Owenite community projects.

William Thompson (1775-1833), an Irish landowner, identified himself completely with the Owenite movement and developed the most complete exposition of Ricardian-Owenite socialism. As a young man he was influenced by the French Revolution and was later a friend of Jeremy Bentham. In addition to his Benthamite and Owenist interests, he was a champion of women's rights.

John Gray (1799-1883) joined a “large manufacturing and wholesale house” in London at the age of fourteen and subsequently had a prosperous commercial career. He intended to join the Orbiston community but withdrew and published a criticism of it. His Lecture on Human Happiness (London, 1825)Google Scholar was a defence of Owenism and Ricardian socialism, though he never accepted all Owen's theories. From 1832 he repudiated his earlier connections with Owenism and devoted himself to plans for monetary reform.

14. George Mudie, a Scots journalist and printer, came to London about 1820. He was already familiar with Owen's views, and in January 1821 he started a weekly journal, the Economist, to promote Owenism. In the same year he established a Practical and Economical Society, which started an experiment in cooperative housing in Spa Fields, London. He probably joined the Orbiston community and in the 1840s was still active as a social reformer.

Henry Hetherington (1792-1849) served his apprenticeship with Luke Hansard, the parliamentary printer. He was active in practically all the great working-class agitations from the 1820s to the 1840s — Chartism, trade unionism, secularism — but was best known for his part in the struggle for the unstamped press, in which his paper, the Poor Man's Guardian, was central. He was imprisoned several times for his publishing activities and was a lifelong Owenite.

15. Cornelius Camden Blatchly was a New York physician and member of the Society of Friends. He had originally reached a social philosophy similar to, but independent of, that of Owen, and after reading A New View of Society, he welcomed it as confirmation of his own views.

16. See Bestor, , Backwoods Utopias, p. 100Google Scholar. William Maclure (1763-1840) was a Scottish merchant who acquired a fortune and then retired to pursue his educational and scientific interests. He moved to Philadelphia and became an American citizen. He was in contact with the leading scientific figures of the age and experimented with Pestalozzian schools in Philadelphia. From his educational work he was led into more general schemes for social reform.

17. Owen, Robert Dale, Threading My Way: Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography (London, 1874), p. 67Google Scholar.

18. See Fraser, E. M., “Robert Owen in Manchester, 1787-1800,” Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, LXXXII (1937–1938), 29–41Google Scholar.

19. Bryson, Gladys, Man and Society: the Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1945), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This Scottish group included David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart, Lord Kames (Henry Home), Lord Monboddo (James Burnet). See also Lehmann, William C., John Millar of Glasgow, 1735-1801; His Life and Thought and His Contributions to Sociological Analysis (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar; Meek, Ronald L., “The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology,” in Saville, John (ed.), Democracy and the Labour Movement (London, 1954), pp. 84–102Google Scholar.

20. Owen, , Life, I, 107.Google Scholar

21. Letter to the editor of the Glasgow Chronicle, 23 Oct. 1823, reprinted in Combe, Abram, Metaphorical Sketches of the Old and New Systems (Edinburgh, 1823), pp. 174–75Google Scholar.

22. E.g., Morgan, , Revolt of the Bees, p. 69Google Scholar, and Hampden in the Nineteenth Century, I, 16, 36, 115, and II, 77, 275Google Scholar.

23. See Menger, Anton, The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, tr. Tanner, M. E. (London, 1899)Google Scholar; Lowenthal, Esther, The Ricardian Socialists (New York, 1911)Google Scholar.

24. Owen, Robert, Permanent Relief for the British Agricultural and Manufacturing Labourers and the Irish Peasantry (n.p., 1830?), p. 7Google Scholar.

25. For a general exposition of the communitarian philosophy see Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, ch. i.

26. Economist, I (1821), 61-62, 66.Google Scholar

27. SirSinclair, John, Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1791–1799), XV, 34–38Google Scholar; Economist, I, 227–33Google Scholar.

28. This attitude was at the root of the famous decision in 1795 of the Justices of the Peace in the village of Speenhamland, Berkshire, to grant outdoor relief on a scale determined by the price of bread and the size of the laborer's family. The intention was to help the poor by ensuring that each family had a minimum income sufficient for its needs.

29. Reports, Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (London, 1798–1808), I, ii–ivGoogle Scholar.

30. Bestor, , Education and Reform at New Harmony, p. 371Google Scholar.

31. For an introduction to the material on Shakerism, see Andrews, Edward Deeming, The People Called Shakers: a Search for the Perfect Society (New York, 1953)Google Scholar.

32. Similarly, for English millennialism see the account of Southcottianism in Balleine, G. R., Past Finding Out: the Tragic Story of Joanna Southcott and Her Successors (London, 1956)Google Scholar.

33. Thompson, Edward P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963), p. 375Google Scholar.

34. Report to the County of Lanark, in Owen, , Life, IA, 281.Google Scholar

35. A New View of Society, in ibid., I, 300.

36. Glasgow Herald, 20 Apr. 1812.

37. The Practical Society of Edinburgh was an attempt to run an Owenite society in the years 1821-22. Its founder was Combe. The membership was said to be five hundred to six hundred “heads of families,” mostly mechanics and laborers. A day school with 128 children was established. See Macdonald, Donald's account in the New Harmony Gazette, I, 173–74Google Scholar; obituary of Abram Combe in the Orbiston Register, 19 Sep. 1827, pp. 65–71Google Scholar.

38. Orbiston was the first British Owenite community to be organized and was on the Hamilton estate, about nine miles from Glasgow. The plan was begun in 1825 by Combe and Hamilton and came to an end after the death of Combe in 1827. The fullest account is in Cullen, Alexander, Adventures in Socialism (Glasgow and London, 1910)Google Scholar; but see also Armytage, W. H. G., Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England, 1560-1960 (London, 1961), pp. 96–104Google Scholar.

39. The account of New Harmony in Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, largely supersedes previous treatments of the subject.

40. The London Cooperative and Economical Society was a working-class organization to promote Owenism, established in 1821 by a group of printers. A cooperative housing experiment at Spa Fields and a cooperative store were established. The goal was to set up a community but this was not attained. Information about the Society is mainly from Mudie's, Economist (1821–1822)Google Scholar; see also Armytage, , Heavens Below, pp. 92–95Google Scholar.

41. The British Association for Promoting Cooperative Knowledge was formed in 1829 by a group of working-class radicals in London, with the aim of adapting Owen's basic ideas to working-class needs. It was mainly concerned with the promotion of cooperative stores. With the development of the agitation for parliamentary reform in 1831, its leading members became absorbed into the National Union of the Working Classes. See the Cooperative Magazine and Monthly Herald (1826-30); Lovett, William, Life and Struggles (London, 1876)Google Scholar.

42. Report to the County of Lanark, in Owen, , Life, IA, 297Google Scholar. See also the rules for an infant school laid down in ten points in ibid., I, 232-33.

43. Ibid., I, 250.

44. See Mill, James, The Article “Education” Reprinted from the Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica (London, 1824)Google Scholar.

45. Stewart, Dugald, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792–1827)Google Scholar, in SirHamilton, William (ed.), Collected Works of Dugald Stewart (Edinburgh, 1854–1860), II, 76Google Scholar.

46. Ibid., II, 73.

47. Report to the County of Lanark, in Owen, , Life, IA, 297.Google Scholar

48. A New View of Society, in ibid., I, 285.

49. Economist, I, 24 Mar. 1821.Google Scholar

50. Maclure, William, Opinions on Various Subjects, Dedicated to the Industrious Producers (New Harmony, 1831–1838), I, 89Google Scholar.

51. New Moral World, 5 Dec. 1835.

52. See Bernard, Thomas, Of the Education of the Poor: a digest of the reports of the society for bettering the condition of the poor (London, 1809)Google Scholar. Also Davis, William, Hints to Philanthropists (Bath, 1821)Google Scholar.

53. Biographical details are from Iatros [Yeats, Grant David], A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Writings of Patrick Colquhoun, Esq., LL.D. (London, 1818)Google Scholar.

54. Colquhoun, Patrick, A Treatise on Indigence (London, 1806), p. 166Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., p. 140.

56. New Harmony Gazette, I, 383Google Scholar.

57. Ibid., I, 38.

58. Letter in Cooperative Magazine, III (1828), 43.Google Scholar

59. Thompson, William, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness (London, 1824), p. 427Google Scholar.

60. Pare, William, An Address Delivered at the Opening of the Birmingham Cooperative Society (Birmingham, 1828), pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

61. See Thompson, William, Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities (London, 1830), pp. 205–25Google Scholar (“Education and Mental Pleasures”).

62. For a remarkable example of contemporary (non-Owenite) Utopian literature of this kind, see Ellis, G. A., New Britain (London, 1820)Google Scholar, which describes an imaginary Utopia, settled by British emigrants, in the Middle West. See also Morgan, Hampden in the Nineteenth Century, esp. the romantic illustrations. This was of course a vision which Owenism shared with the great tradition of Utopians, from Sir Thomas More, through William Godwin, to William Morris and beyond.

63. Combe, , Metaphorical Sketches, p. 99Google Scholar.

64. See also Owen, , Life, IA, 102, 218.Google Scholar

65. Economist, I, 96Google Scholar.