example be extended indefinitely so that hundreds of
such villages should grow instead of only one? There could, there can
and there will be, but the people must evolve their own ideal
environment and not have to have it supplied for them.

By Owen's strength of purpose he kept the village ideal, but he failed
to evolve an ideal people. All around were unideal surroundings, and the
people came and went. Strong drink was to be had only a few miles away.
To have an ideal village, it must be located in an ideal country.

Owen called on the clergy to unite with him in bringing about an ideal
material environment. He said that good water, sewerage and trees and
flowers worked a better spiritual condition. They replied by calling him
a materialist. He admitted that he worked for a material good. His
followers added to his troubles by comparing his work with that of the
clergy round about, where vice, poverty and strong drink grouped
themselves about a steeple upon which was a cross of gold to which labor
was nailed--a simile to be used later by a great orator, with profit.

Owen was a Unitarian, with a Quaker bias. Any clergyman was welcome to
come to New Lanark--it was a free platform. A few preachers accepted the
invitation, with the intent to convert Robert Owen to their particular
cause. New Lanark was pointed out all over England as a godless town.
The bishops issued a general address to all rectors and curates warning
them against "any system of morals that does away with God and His Son,
Jesus Christ, fixing its salvation on flowerbeds and ragged schools."

New Lanark was making money because it was producing goods the world
wanted. But its workers were tabu in respectable society, and priestly
hands were held aloft in pretended horror whenever the name of Robert
Owen, or the word "Socialism," was used.

Owen refused to employ child labor, and issued a book directing the
attention of society to this deadly traffic in human beings. The
parents, the clergy and the other mill-owners combined against him, and
he was denounced by press and pulpit.

He began to look around for a better environment for an ideal community.
His gaze was turned toward America.

* * * * *

Robert Owen's plan for abolishing vice and poverty was simply to set the
people to work under ideal conditions, and then allow them time enough
for recreation and mental exercise, so that thrift might follow farming.
In re