upon the shipment of raw cotton to that country. Everywhere
mills were shut down, and there was the utmost distress in consequence.
The New Lanark mills, in common with most others, were shut down for
four months, during which time Owen paid every worker his or her wages
in full, at a cost of over $35,000. Forever afterward he enjoyed the
love and trust of his work people. In spite of all his seemingly
reckless expenditure upon purely philanthropic work, the mills yielded
an enormous profit. But Owen was constantly in conflict with his
business associates, who sought to restrict his philanthropic
expenditures, with the result that he was compelled again and again to
change partners, always securing their interests and returning them big
profits upon their investments, until finally, in 1829, he left New
Lanark altogether.

During twenty-nine years he had carried on the business with splendid
commercial success and at the same time attracted universal attention to
New Lanark as the theater of the greatest experiments in social
regeneration the modern world had known. Every year thousands of persons
from all parts of the world, many of them statesmen and representatives
of the crowned heads of Europe, visited New Lanark to study these
experiments, and never were they seriously criticised or their success
challenged. It was a wonderful achievement. Had Owen's life ended in
1829, he must have taken rank in history as one of the truly great men
of the nineteenth century.

IV

Let us now consider briefly the forces which led this gentle
philanthropist onward to the goal of Communism. His experiences at New
Lanark had convinced him that human character depends in large part
upon, and is shaped by, environment. Others before Owen had perceived
this, but he must ever be regarded as one of the pioneers in the spread
of the idea, one of the first to give it definite form and to
demonstrate its truth upon a large scale. In the first of those keen
"Essays on the Formation of Human Character," in which he recounts the
results of his New Lanark system of education, Owen says, "Any general
character from the best to the worst, from the most ignorant to the most
enlightened, may be given to any community, even to the world at large,
by the application of proper means; which means are to a great extent at
the command and under the control of those who have influence in the
affairs of men."

We may admit that there is a good deal