Robert Owen

Robert Owen was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He is known among other things for efforts to improve his factory's working conditions, promoting experimental socialistic communities, and proposing a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He became wealthy in the early 1800s as an investor and eventual manager of a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. He had trained initially as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire and worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he travelled to America and invested most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary model for Owen's Utopian society. It lasted about two years; other Owenite Utopian communities likewise failed. In 1828, Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead the development of cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support the passage of child labour laws and free co-educational schools.