# Transcript

Lorna Davidson

And then there are the other ones, which are designed to have a harmonious community you have the injunction to parents to take responsibility for the behaviour of their children and householders for the responsibility, to be responsible for the behaviour of their lodgers and you can see how all this is working together to try and make people take responsibility for the way their community actually works

Ian Donnochie

This improvement in living conditions was accompanied by an improvement in working conditions. Owen banned the employment of children under 10 who had been such a large part of David Dale’s workforce. He reduced the adult working hours from 12 to 10. Initially however, not all of Owen’s reforms were met with approval from the workforce.

Lorna Davidson

They were used to the idea that children earned money, that as soon as they could earn a few pennies for the family they would be working.

So when Robert Owen said “your’re not going to do this” they were thinking, “well this is effectively a cut in wages, we don’t like this"

What he does is he institutes a system whereby the children will be taken into what we would call a workplace nursery and from the age they could walk alone as he says they were taken effectively into what we would call a creche, the important thing about that ws that of course freed up the mothers the women to take their place back in the factory very soon after giving birth and keeping up the family income without having to send the children to work.

Ian Donnochie

The turning point for the workforce in New Lanark came in 1808. An American embargo on the export of raw cotton hit the mills and the workforce faced great hardship. Owen however continued to pay his workers despite the fact that they couldn’t work. His philanthropy finally won the village over. Through the first decade of the 19th century Owen steadily continued his reforms the factory and the community.

Jim Arnold

The other things that would impact on you were things like health care, you know if you became ill, you know the doctor would look after you, there was a kind of pension scheme so that if you go, if you became sick you got sickness pension or if you became elderly you were looked after within the community and things like the village store, where it meant you brought good quality goods at reasonable prices.

Ian Donnochie

The village store became an important feature of New Lanark. Goods were bought in bulk which meant they could be sold cheaply. It made life easier as the villagers didn’t have the uphill journey into Lanark for food. It also kept them away from the temptations of the town.

Workers were paid with tickets for wages which could be exchanged for goods in the shop. This again encouraged thrift and abstinence.

The store was successful and profits helped to fund what was for Owen the most important reform – education. At the core of his ideology was the belief that man could be improved through his environment and he believed that the main agent of change was education. Dale had begun a system of education in the village but this was greatly expanded under Owen. Owen also pioneered and for the first time introduced an organised system of infant education.

David McLaren (University of Strathclyde)

Owen is building on the foundations of the school which Dale established but is introducing something entirely different, which is his philosophy if you can call it that of rationality, happiness, enlightenment ideas, none of which really had much to do with David Dale. And so that they system was entirely different and for the first time in Britain you have an emphasis on infant education, play and so on which were certainly not evident in Dales system.

Ian Donnochie

This school room could take over 100 children up to the age of 10. The methods of teaching in the school included for the time very innovative teaching techniques. Visual aids were used extensively – many of which were very expensive. This drawing was one of a batch which, at the time, cost almost 500 pounds. The curriculum was remarkably modern.

The children were taught natural history, geography, as well as the three Rs. But there was also an emphasis on physical activity. Singing and dancing were on the curriculum as well as music.

David McLaren

Whichever Owenite community you look at whether its here or in the states, dancing features prominently. Now there’s a whole number of reasons for that, often Owen talks about the moral benefits of dancing but clearly there are other benefits as well, there are physical benefits in that its exercise. Equally important for Owen was this sense of building a community through things like dance and social activities.

Ian Donnochie

Education, to Owen’s mind was about more than just learning to reading and write. It was the foundation for a new society. It was the means by which he could create the citizens of tomorrow.

David McLaren

Citizenship became I suppose, was always a huge issue for Owen. The whole purpose of education were the keys of the kingdom for the new moral world. And therefore, to be a to be a citizen in the new moral world was, the ultimate aim. Here it was to be a citizen of a new community with neighbouring communities perhaps not so far away. Living together, working together and so on, it meant living without sin, vice and so on. It meant living in a rational manner, it meant being happy, the happiness of the community. Citizenship was paramount for Owen and indeed, I think was the ultimate aim for most of his educational system.

Ian Donnochie

Education wasn’t just confined to the children. At the centre of the village he built what he called the Institute for the Formation of Character. Here he provided education and recreation for the adults. There would be music, singing and dancing as well as lectures on offer. His aim was to structure society so as to create a rounded environment for adults as well as children.

Lorna Davidson

He has the very practical experience of managing both the living and working conditions of the people in the village and I think he becomes completely convinced by that experience that you do need to apply a rational planning. You need to give people a proper structure to their lives, you need to provide them with the basic elements that will give them good housing. The opportunity to work in fair decent conditions. You need to provide education opportunities for recreation and an good environment. By that I mean a good physical environment and he did here at New Lanark plant lots and lots of trees and lay out footpaths and he felt that pleasant environment and surroundings were essential for healthy happy communities.

Ian Donnochie

Owen’s ideas were certainly innovative but what brought him so much attention was the fact that the mill made high profits. Robert Owen became one of the wealthiest mill owners of his day and by 1816 had amassed a huge personal fortune. To achieve profitability at the same time as improving conditions he had to impose a strict discipline on the workforce.

Greg Claeys

He is concerned with drunkenss, very clearly with lack of thrift, with dishonesty in the workforce and he sets forth a programme which will effectively try to curtail each of these vices in such a way that at the end of the day both by hook and crook – there is a punitive edge without doubt and we know that wen Owen began to implement this programme there was, what we might call today call a quasi authoritairal procedure followed in some respects and patrols went through the village at nght. You got three warnings if you were caught being drunk and then you were out. This is a factory village where Owen is King effectively