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<title> "The New Order of Things Proposed" Vision and reality in Robert Owen's New Lanark and New Harmony </title>
During the first decades of the 19th century, people's conditions were changing radically because of the Industrial Revolution. Factories needed workers; a lot of people moved to the expanding cities, where poverty was becoming more and more apparent. Of course, a desire for a change of society arose out of these conditions. 

Robert Owen (1771-1858) became at an early age the manager of the cotton mills in New Lanark, Scotland. Seeing all the evilness of the Revolution he formed his ideas of a New View of Society, in which educated, industrious people would be living together in happiness. Owen believed that this could be achieved through the making of social experiments in small communities, and came to dedicate his entire life to his philosophies. However, while the experiment of New Lanark was a great success which gave Owen and his ideas international reputation, his community in New Harmony, Indiana, was a complete failure. What did Robert Owen mean by a New View of Society, and why did these visions come out different in New Lanark and New Harmony?

Robert Owen grew up in Wales, but came to work in Manchester at the age of 14. His manufacturing career soon made him the manager of about 500 employees, and in January 1800 he bought the New Lanark mills in Scotland. Having been in the middle of the developing industry in a city as Manchester, Owen was aware of the exploiting of human beings, adults as well as children. Though New Lanark was a small village of 2000 inhabitants, conditions were the same: poverty, crime, lack of education, child labour and disorder in general. The gap between employers and employees was far too wide. Owen saw that this was not the people's fault, but that these circumstances were due to that the inhabitants of New Lanark were not allowed to control their own lives. Individual responsibility and the belief of the competence of the human brain had been set aside. The factory workers were mere objects. Now, when Owen became the manager, he saw his opportunity to set up an experimental community where his ideas of a new life for the workers could be tried out. Housing and sanitary conditions, education and general working conditions were improved, and Owen's work became well known all over Europe. Social reformers as well as important statesmen and royalties came to visit. The success of the New Lanark experiment was used as evidence that the ideas were practically feasible. 

Over the years, Robert Owen developed his philosophies. In 1813-1814 he had won national fame and printed the four essays A New View of Society: or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice, in which he proposed that social experiments, similar to that in New Lanark, should be set up. One year later, he made a proposal to the Government that child labour should be prohibited before the age of 10, and that the working-hours of under-eighteens ought to be restricted. Children's education was of special concern to him throughout, and in 1816 Owen opened Britain's first infant school. In a series of letters published in the London newspapers in 1817, he made a number of guidelines for how a reform of society was to be made, showing all the differences between the Manufacturing Towns of the present and the Proposed Villages. In the future, people would be living together in happiness and abundance. Happiness was, according to Owen's beliefs, the "object of all human exertions" (in Fogarty, p. 39). Owen was a humanist, thinking one step further than his fellow managers, to whom he argued:

(...) If then, due care to the state of your inanimate machines can produce such beneficial results, what may not be expected if you devote equal attention to your vital machines, which are far more wonderfully constructed? (in Bestor, p. 65)

I will now turn to Robert Owen's community of New Harmony, Indiana, which he bought in 1825 from the religious Rappite sect. Here, yet another experimental community was formed. Owens ideas had at first been matters of industrial reform, but were now concerning a change of the whole society. He invited all the "industrious and well disposed of all nations" (in Fogarty, p.44) to come and settle in New Harmony. Owen told his newcomers the necessity of a preliminary system, governed by a Preliminary Committee, since one could not expect that well-educated people like them should at once turn from one system of society to a completely new one. When Owen returned after a visit to Europe, the Preliminary Society became the New Harmony Community of Equality. (Some people did object to this, and formed a community of their own.) The Community of Equality was led by an Executive Council, the members of which were appointed by Robert Owen himself. The development was fast - and devastating. Within three years, life in New Harmony came to concern negotiations, business and politics, and the government consisted of appointed men. More and more people broke free from Owen's Community and formed own groups. Naturally, this led to conflicts and fights. In June 1828, Owen left America and the people of New Harmony either moved away or went back to leading their own lives as individual farmers or mechanics. 

What had gone wrong in New Harmony? At New Lanark, the aim had been to save the population from being governed by elected groups of people, having the individual's competence in mind. As we see, this was not the case in New Harmony. There was also the problem of overpopulation; so many people gathered in the community that it became difficult to control. One aspect of the failure is that Robert Owen had overlooked the political matters of a community, and had a naive and negative approach to such important issues. In New Lanark, no political problems had arisen, and the work only had concerned preventing governmental problems such as elections. So when the inevitable occurred in New Harmony, there were no solutions to the problems of opposition between groups. The New View of Society had not been shown possible to be put into practice in the large scale Owen had wished. In 1817 he had stated optimistically:
	 
	 On the contrary, extraordinary as it may seem, the change will be most easy. No difficulty or obstacle of magnitude will be found in the whole process. THE WORLD KNOWS AND FEELS THE EXISTING EVIL; IT WILL LOOK AT THE NEW ORDER OF THINGS PROPOSED - APPROVE - WILL THE CHANGE - AND IT IS DONE. (in Fogarty, p. 39)

It appeared to be not all that easy.
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