ABSTRACT
In 1800, the wealthy industrialist Robert Owen (1771–1858) took control of a cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland. Unlike other mill owners, Owen took great interest in the living conditions of his workers, providing them with decent housing and schools for their children. New Lanark became a great success, as Owen indicates in this excerpt from his address to his workers, and this success encouraged Owen to engage in other social experiments on a broader scale. One of these was the socialist community of New Harmony, Indiana, which Owen launched in 1824, only to see it collapse at great personal expense within four years.
