truments of production, but against the mode
in which they are used."[22]

III

Under the new industrial regime, Robert Owen, erstwhile a poor draper's
apprentice, soon became one of the most successful manufacturers in
England. At eighteen years of age we find him entering into the
manufacture of the new cotton-spinning machines, with a borrowed capital
of $500. His partner was a man named Jones, and though the enterprise
was successful from a financial point of view, the partnership proved to
be most disagreeable. Accordingly it was dissolved, Owen taking three of
the "mules" which they were making as a reimbursement for his
investment. With these and some other machinery, Owen entered the cotton
manufacturing industry, employing at first only three men. He made $1500
as his first year's profit.

Erelong Owen ceased manufacturing upon his own account, and became
superintendent of a Manchester cotton mill, owned by a Mr. Drinkwater,
and employing some five hundred work people. A most progressive man, in
his new position Owen was always ready to introduce new machinery, and
to embark upon experiments, with a view to improving the quality of the
product of the factory.[23] In this he was so successful that the goods
manufactured at the Drinkwater mill soon commanded a fifty per cent
advance above the regular market prices. Drinkwater, delighted at
results like these, made Owen his partner. Thus when he was barely
twenty years of age Owen had secured an eminent position among the
cotton manufacturers of the time. It is interesting to recall that Owen,
in that same year, 1791, used the first cotton ever brought into England
from the United States. "American sea island cotton," as it was called
from the fact that it was then grown only upon the islands near the
southern coast of the United States, was not believed to be of any value
for manufacture on account, chiefly, of its poor color. But when a
cotton broker named Spear received three hundred pounds of it from an
American planter, with the request that he get some competent spinner to
test it, Owen, with characteristic readiness, undertook the test and
succeeded in making a much finer product than had hitherto been made
from the French cotton, though inferior to it in color. That was the
first introduction of American cotton, destined soon to furnish English
cotton mills with the greater part of their raw material.

Owen did not long remain with Mr. Drinkwater. He