# Transcript

Ian Donnochie

In the factory too the workers were constantly scrutinised and their productivity recorded. Owen used what he called a silent monitor. This block of wood hung beside each worker. The different colours represented how well the worker was performing.

Jim Arnold

So this, this is the silent monitor, which Owen used and it was a mechanism for social control, and the what colour it was, was moved, was exposed by your supervisor during the day and it was recorded in a book, you know and can still go and look at them and so Owen characterised himself as called himself the recording Angle and had that benign feeling about it. The interesting thing about it was the recording wasn't actually only about your performance, in terms of economics. For example white was excellent an excellent state of morals, but it was actually both your morale and economic performance. So if you put up a black, black side, it was excessively naughty. But when they weren't working it was that morally you were deficient and it's quite interesting when you go to other textile mills, you hear what happened to the people, the corporal punishment and beating was quite a normal thing, the people were treated almost like slaves, like chattels like commodities there was no consideration of the individual, to the tremendous different that there was here which really would have been an absolutely totally different work experience for people.

Ian Donnochie

As well as imposing a discipline on the workers, Owen was himself a skilled operator and understood how to run a mill effectively.

Jim Arnold

I think one of the things that people forget is what a good technologist, what a good manager Robert Owen was and this was a big complicated factory to run. He introduced things like stock control and process control to he know what was happening.

He must have been something of a control freak in that sense, in a sense that he knew what was happening to the processes going through and he was technically extremely good at it. So that the product going out the door here was saleable anywhere, it was they just walked of the shelf. So he was an extremely successful factory organiser.

Ian Donnochie

Robert Owen seemed to be doing the impossible, he was introducing reforms far in advance of any other manufacturer yet still making money. He was also making a name for himself as a propagandist. Dale had exploited the Clyde for its power and the falls of continued to play a part in New Lanark’s history. It became a popular attraction from the lake district to the Scottish highlands.

Lorna Davidson

People were drawn to the beautiful romantic scenery, the picturesque, the huge interest in that. So poets and painters and writers and philosophers were coming to see the Falls of Clyde and as it happened they could also see this wonderful new community that Robert Owen was developing while they were here, so it became an added attraction. It made a very interesting extra feature to their journey and they’re another interesting thing to write about in their travel journals and that’s what did happen of course people like Dorothy Wordsworth notably accompanying William to the picturesque beauty, is just as fascinated I think in the community that she found here.

Ian Donnochie

At the same time as New Lanark was becoming a curiosity for the wealthy tourist, Owen was becoming a successful publicist for reform. During his years at New Lanark he began to associate with other influential radical thinkers, including Jeremy Bentham and William Godwin. Both of these enlightenment figures greatly influenced Owen’s thinking. He was also influenced by the religious reformer Thomas Chalmers.

By the time the essays were published New Lanark was a manufacturing phenomenon. Owen had a firm belief that his system could be replicated across the country. He wanted to use his wealth and influence to convert others to his cause.

Greg Claeys

Now the period from eighteen O five O six perhaps, and eighteen twelve fourteen, is one of mounting frustration in this regard, and if one wants to ask the fundamental question, about what takes us from, Owen number one to Owen number two, the two great images of Owen. When the great capitalist who's also a philanthropist, but is essentially a benevolent capitalist. To Owen the founder of socialism, the answer in one word is, frustration. He takes this programme of reform, to fellow reformers, to members of parliament and so on, essentially they want nothing to do with it.

Ian Donnochie

The reasons why so few manufacturers wanted to follow Owen’s example despite the publicity it attracted are mixed. In part however he was viewed with suspicion, particularly by the church. He himself did not have a faith but at New Lanark he encouraged religious tolerance.

Greg Claeys

He thought, that they would go through the same essential development of thought that he himself had in his youth. Namely by comparing the different religions and the different sects of the Christian religion. Against each other you’d end up at the end of the day with a sense of the palpable absurdity of the whole business, of the sense the way you believe was effectively a function of where your were brought up and as a result of this that they would end up philosophically in the position that Owen himself was in. In other words toleration had a hidden agenda to it.

Ian Donnochie

These ideas published in his essays brought him into conflict not only with the church but with his partners. One partner William Allen, a devout Quaker, became a vehement critic of Owen. But by 1816 there were other reasons why his so few manufacturers followed his example.

Greg Claeys

The period after eighteen sixteen clearly is very different from that beforehand. The end of the war is a major watershed, here there had been high employment, great demand high profit throughout the wartime period, this is the greatest boom of the industrial system. All of a sudden, there's a tremendous drop in demand particularly for cotton goods, all of a sudden, hundreds of thousands of people are demobilised from the army the navy and so on, a sever recession begins.

Ian Donnochie

Owen remained proprietor at New Lanark until 1825. However from 1816, he spent less time in the community Owen relied more heavily on managers as he himself concentrated on taking his message to the rest of the country. Nevertheless his dream of creating new types of communities remained at the heart of all his activities.

David McLaren

Even before New Lanark was established he has this idea that it will transform the world. When it's established it is successful if controversial and so on. And it's no surprise then that off he goes in 1824 to establish a community in America. As far as possible on the same kind of basis as New Lanark. It was the model which he thought would transform the entire world.

Ian Donnochie

New Lanark remained the basis for all Owen’s later ideas. His experiments with model communities in Britain and America were all based on New Lanark and the community remained an important influence on later reformers.

Many of the things Owen introduced there had lasting consequences. The village store became the inspiration for the co-operative movement which sprung up later in the 19th century and still exists today. His views on infant and popular education were picked up by many other reformers and his notion of citizenship and the environment still have resonance today. Of all the experiments which the great idealists and thinkers of this age tried out, it was this community that demonstrated the power of enlightened ideas to change society.