several London merchants with whom he dealt. He interested
Jeremy Bentham, the great jurist and humanitarian, and Bentham proved
his faith by buying stock in the New Lanark Company.

Joseph Lancaster, the Quaker, a mill-owner and philanthropist, did the
same.

Owen paid a dividend of five per cent on his shares. A surplus was also
set aside to pay dividends in case of a setback, but beyond this the
money was invested in bettering the environment of his people.

New Lanark had been running fourteen years under Owen's management. It
had attracted the attention of the civilized world. The Grand Duke
Nicholas, afterwards the Czar, spent a month with Owen studying his
methods. The Dukes of Kent, Sussex, Bedford and Portland; the Archbishop
of Canterbury; the Bishops of London, Peterborough and Carlisle; the
Marquis of Huntly; Lords Grosvenor, Carnarvon, Granville, Westmoreland,
Shaftesbury and Manners; General Sir Thomas Dyce and General Brown;
Ricardo, De Crespigny, Wilberforce, Joseph Butterworth and Sir Francis
Baring--all visited New Lanark. Writers, preachers, doctors, in fact
almost every man of intellect and worth in the Kingdom, knew of Robert
Owen and his wonderful work at New Lanark. Sir Robert Peel had been to
New Lanark and had gone back home and issued an official bulletin
inviting mill-owners to study and pattern after the system.

The House of Commons asked Owen to appear and explain his plan for
abolishing poverty from the Kingdom. He was invited to lecture in many
cities. He issued a general call to all mill-owners in the Kingdom to
co-operate with him in banishing ignorance and poverty.

But to a great degree Owen worked alone and New Lanark was a curiosity.
Most mill towns had long rows of dingy tenements, all alike, guiltless
of paint, with not a flower bed or tree to mitigate the unloveliness of
the scene. Down there in the dirt and squalor lived the working-folks;
while away up on the hillside, surrounded by a vast park, with stables,
kennels and conservatories, resided the owner.

Owen lived with his people. And the one hundred fifty acres that made up
the village of New Lanark contained a happy, healthy and prosperous
population of about two thousand people.

There was neither pauperism nor disease, neither gamblers nor drunkards.
All worked and all went to school.

It was an object-lesson of thrift and beauty.

Visitors came from all over Europe--often hundreds a day.

Why could not this