My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

;48 MY LIFEdenied free-will, because he advocated the abolitionof rewards and punishments as both unjust andunnecessary, and because (it was argued) to act onsuch a system would lead to a pandemonium of viceand crime. The reply to this is that, acting on theprinciple of absolute free-will, every government hasalike failed to abolish, or even to any considerabledegree todiminish, discontent, misery, disease, vice,and crime ; and that, on the other hand, Owen did,by acting on his own principle of the formation ofcharacter, transform a discontented, unhealthy, vicious,and wholly antagonistic population of 2500 personsto an enthusiastically favourable, contented, happy,healthy, and comparatively moral community, withoutever having recourse to any legal punishment whatever,and without, so far as appears, discharging anyindividual for robbery, idleness, or neglect of dutyand all this was effected while increasing the efficiencyof the whole manufacturing establishment, paying aliberal interest on the capital invested, and evenproducing a large annual surplus of profits which,in the four years 1809-13, averaged ;^4o,ooo a year,and only in the succeeding period, when the newshareholders agreed to limit their interest to 5 percent, per annum, was this surplus devoted to educationand the general well-being of the community.Although most people have heard of New Lanark,few have any idea of Owen's work there or of themeans by which he gradually overcame oppositionand achieved the most remarkable results. It will,therefore, not be out of place to give a short accountof his methods as explained in his autobiography,which I only had the opportunity of reading a fewyears ago.In the year 1800, he became partner and sole