Robert Owen was both the manager and the principal partner in the New Lanark mills. As the manager, Owen was already carrying out social welfare experiments and extending the mill’s profits to the employees: living articles were available at cost from the company store; medical services were free; spaces were provided for recreational facilities. Owen also sought to secure better working conditions for laborers through legislation by Parliament, only to meet frustration. His radical opinions and practices had provoked his business associates. Believing that New Lanark was overladen with the Old World’s long-lasting traditions and customs, Owen turned his attention to the New World. He seized the opportunity when the Harmony Society (a close-knit religious community) decided to move and was selling their village at New Harmony. Owen invested his own money to purchase the town, hoping to establish a community that would become the seed for other communities that he envisioned. For a time, life in New Harmony was well-organized and contented under Owen’s guidance, but divergences in the form of government and the role of religion eventually prevailed. In 1828, Owen withdrew from the community after losing 80 percent of his fortune.
Owen shares Mill’s idea about the capacity of human progress and the importance of education in elevating the man’s character. However, Mill’s group of political economists differed from the Owenites in that the former supported regulated systems of competition, while the latter called for systems of cooperation. It is worth noting that in the same year that Owen purchased New Harmony and started his experiment, Mill started taking part in the debate against Owenism (1825).
Source:
Carmony, Donald F., and Josephine M. Elliott. "New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Owen's Seedbed for Utopia." Indiana Magazine of History 76, no. 3 (1980): 161-261. Accessed February 21, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27790455.