# Transcript

Ian Donnochie

New Lanark. At its height this village was home to 2000 mill workers. At the beginning of the 19th century it was one of the biggest and most successful cotton mills in the country . It was also the site of an extraordinary social experiment. An experiment carried out by the industrialist and reformer Robert Owen.

By 1817, this lowland Scottish village had a world wide reputation, thousands of visitors would visit every year to see the experiment at work. Its owner Robert Owen was world renowned – he seemed to have done the impossible. He had created a community which cared for its workers, provided housing and conditions unlike most of his contemporaries but at the same time he created huge profits. We’re going to look at what Robert Owen achieved at New Lanark, what was revolutionary about his experiment and what motivated him.

Owen himself came from relatively humble beginnings. He was the son of a Welsh shopkeeper. The beginnings of factory employment in Britain offered Owen opportunities. He worked in small factories in Manchester and then in 1791 he went to manage the large Drinkwater Mill.

Greg Claeys (Royal Holloway College, University of London)

One must recall, that when he assumes the management of the Drinkwater mill in Manchester he’s only 20 years old and he’s supervising 500 people, an astonishing thing in all this is one of the largst mills in the country, Drinkwater is told by all his friends, its quite impossible to imagine that a young man of this inexperience is going to succeed at this task. But Owen already at this point at the age of 20 has in mind that its possible for him to do something other than merely manage a mill in the traditional sense.

Ian Donnochie

His ascent into Manchester society and business connections in Glasgow, brought him into contact with his future wife, Caroline Dale. Caroline’s father was David Dale who had founded the mills at New Lanark in 1785. The village itself is situated about a mile down river from the famous Falls of Clyde. It was there that Dale conceived the idea that the river would be a perfect source of power for a spinning mill.

Lorna Davidson (Deputy Director, New Lanark Conservation Trust)

He established the foundations here of the community that his future son in law Robert Owen was to bring to world attention but we shouldn’t forget that new Lanark was very well known even in David Dale’s time and his treatment, particularly of the parish apprentices of which he had a small army working in the mills was regarded as exemplary. Horrifying though it may seem to us to bring children to work in the mills for long hours in return not for wages but for board and lodging and a basic education. In fact he was highly praised for that and by the standards of this time. Those children were certainly far better off here in New Lnark than they would have been in the Work Houses of the City slums.

Ian Donnochie

During the years which Dale built up the village Robert Owen was building his own intellectual ideas, particularly about public health and education. His experience of the appalling conditions endured by factory workers also led him to consider how environment impacts on behaviour.

Greg Claeys

He gives a number of papers. One of which in 1797 crucially focuses upon the moral virtue of the population. He wants to know what has particular impact upon peoples self conception of their moral identity. We know that he’s interested in, association of psychology that his basic sense of what the individual is, is a series of impressions formed by experience basically upon an empty of blank beginning. There is no fundamental predisposition towards good or evil, this is the crucial Owenite point. The notion that man does not form his own character, but it is formed by his environment.

Ian Donnochie

When he arrived at New Lanark in 1800 Owen found the perfect place to test his theories. An isolated community far away from the temptations of the city. The mill employed the entire village. Owen realised that this was an ideal opportunity. He would have enough control to experiment with a different system.

Greg Claeys

The characteristic problems we know that the essays address, drunkenness, dishonesty, illegitimacy profligacy, inability to save and so on all of these are evident in the moral outlook, behaviour of the population in New Lanark at the time that Owen arrives. It is not from an employers point of view a paradise by any means. The amount of pilferage is astonishing, its noted that it seems that the workforces treats Dale’s property as if it were public property. There is not probably more drunkenness, not probably more illegitimacy than anywhere else, but it remain s by Owen’s standards very clearly a problem.

Ian Donnochie

The task which Owen set himself at New Lanark would have appealed even to the more conservative reformers of the time. Was it possible to improve the moral behaviour of the working classes, particularly those in factories. What was more radical was the solution. This was founded on the belief that moral reform could only come through reform of the environment. Give the workforce better conditions and they will behave better. In the first decade of his time at New Lanark Owen instituted many radical reforms.

Jim Arnold (Director, New Lanark Conservation Trust)

I think probably the most immediate thing that would strike you if you were living here was the high quality of the housing accommodation that you got. You know your boss Robert Owen was living right here among you, he living in a little house next door to you and so he shared the circumstances of the community with you. You know everyone had a fireplace an open fire, slate roofs, some glass in the windows, not as much as you have now. But certainly what people thought as being high quality housing accommodation.

Ian Donnochie

The quality of the housing was accompanied by rules and regulations about how the community should be managed. He brought a strong sense that a community should take responsibility for itself. But Owen set down strong guide lines on cleanliness and hygiene. Streets had to be kept free of animals. Waste had to be properly disposed of and windows and doors had to be kept spotless, and there were regular inspections.

Jim Arnold

The famous bug hunters who used to go and visit and used to recce you know if you’re a housewife n the village and you had your house inspected to see how clean it was being kept, which you needed to do in a collective community like this. The idea was that you had a potted plant from Mrs Owen if you were doing well.

Ian Donnochie

Despite the rules Owen also believed that the community should take responsibility for its own moral behaviour.

Lorna Davidson

I think its often forgotten now that he did try very hard to involve the community in their own, taking responsibility for their own lives and how the community was organised through his system of neighbour divisions, where each person, each of the twelve neighbour division into which the village was divided elected and held a ballot to elect a spokesperson and these twelve people became a kind of community council if you like who met with Owen to discuss village affairs and also to adjudicate in cases of dispute between neighbours.