had been reduced to a system, and to get the start of the
soft-hearted owner was considered smart.

Mr. Dale had tried to have a school, and to this end had hired an
elderly Irishman, who gave hard lessons and a taste of the birch to
children who had exhausted themselves in the mills and had no zest for
learning. Mr. Dale had taken on more than two hundred pauper children
from the workhouses and these were a sore trial to him.

Owen's first move was to reduce the working-hours from twelve to ten
hours. Indeed, he was the first mill-owner to adopt the ten-hour plan.
He improved the sanitary arrangements, put in shower-baths and took a
personal interest in the diet of his little wards, often dining with
them.

A special school-building was erected at a cost of thirty thousand
dollars. This was both a day and a night school. It also took children
of one year old and over, in order to relieve mothers who worked in the
mills. The "little mothers," often only four or five years old, took
care of babies a year old and younger, all day.

Owen instructed his teachers never to scold or to punish by inflicting
physical pain. His was the first school in Christendom to abolish the
rod.

His plan anticipated the Kindergarten and the Creche. He called mothers'
meetings, and tried to show the uselessness of scolding and beating,
because to do these things was really to teach the children to do them.
He abolished the sale of strong drink in New Lanark. Model houses were
erected, gardens planted, and prizes given for the raising of flowers.

In order not to pauperize his people, Owen had them pay a slight tuition
for the care of the children, and there was a small tax levied to buy
flower-seeds. In the school-building was a dance-hall and an auditorium.

At one time the supply of raw cotton was cut off for four months. During
this time Owen paid his people full wages, insisted that they should
all, old and young, go to school for two hours a day, and also work two
hours a day at tree-planting, grading and gardening. During this period
of idleness he paid out seven thousand pounds in wages. This was done to
keep the workmen from wandering away.

It need not be imagined that Owen did not have other cares besides
those of social betterment. Much of the machinery in the mills was worn
and becoming obsolete. To replace this he borrowed a hundred thousand
dollars. Then he reorganized his business as a stock company and sold
shares to