Robert Owen

Uncommon card · No. 78818

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist, political philosopher and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, sought a more collective approach to child-rearing, and 'believed in lifelong education, establishing an Institute for the Formation of Character and School for Children that focused less on job skills than on becoming a better person'. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire, Owen worked in London before relocating at age 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in...

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