Robert
Owen was a successful Welsh businessman during the Industrial Revolution in Britain,
but he left his mark on history as one of the leading social reformers of his
time. A utopian, Robert Owen is considered the "father of the cooperative
movement." At the time, most workers lived and worked in poor conditions
for little wages. After amassing a fortune as an industrialist, Robert Owen set
out to make his new cotton factory, New Lanark Mills in Scotland, a cooperative
factory community that focused more on the well-being of the community than on
profits. During the early 1800s poor children were expected to work in factories
at an early age; For his mill, Robert Owen set up an infant school, a day care
center for working mothers, providing education and health care to children starting
when they were three. Children did not have to work in the mill until they were
10, which was revolutionary at the time. He also set up a cooperative shop that
provided high quality goods at reasonable costs for the mill's workers and their
families. Owen believed that education and safe cooperative work conditions would
promote a happy, healthy and productive community of workers. This would not only
be good for the business, but for the entire society as well. The Mill became
a successful model that prominent social reformers and industrialists visited.
Owen published many works promoting his cooperative ideas and attempted to establish
several utopian communities, including one in the United States in Indiana. This
visionary philanthropist's ideals have continued to inspire many trade and cooperative
movements for the past 150 years.
