Robert Owen

Robert Owen was born on May 14, 1771, in Newtown, Wales, the son of a saddler and ironmonger.1 By the age of nineteen he was superintendent of a large cotton mill in Manchester. In 1799, he married Caroline Dale, the daughter of David Dale, proprietor of the New Lanark Mills in Scotland, and formed a partnership to purchase the operation.

When Owen arrived at New Lanark, children as young as five worked thirteen-hour days in the mills.2 Owen reduced working hours, refused to employ children under ten, and opened an Institute for the Formation of Character in 1818 that provided free education from infancy to adulthood. He raised the demand for a shorter workday as early as 1810 and by 1817 had formulated the slogan that would outlast all his other accomplishments: "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest."3

New Lanark became an international destination. Between 1815 and 1825, thousands of visitors came to observe the experiment, including reformers, statesmen, and the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.4 Owen published A New View of Society in 1813, arguing that human character was formed by environment, not by innate qualities, and that rational design of living and working conditions could produce a rational population.

In 1824, Owen sailed to the United States and invested most of his fortune in New Harmony, Indiana, an experimental community intended to model his principles at scale. The community lasted approximately two years.5 Owen returned to Britain and spent the remaining decades of his life advocating for trade unions, child labor laws, and cooperative enterprise. The word "socialism" first appeared in print in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine in November 1827.6 Owen died on November 17, 1858, in Newtown, the town where he was born.