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

56 MY LIFEbeneficial results at which all visitors were so muchastonished were only one-tenth part of what could andwould be produced if his principles were fully applied-If the labour of such a community, or of groups ofsuch communities, had been directed with equal skillto produce primarily the necessaries and comforts oflife for its own inhabitants, with a surplus of suchgoods as they could produce most economically, inorder by their sale in the surrounding district to beable to supply themselves with such native or foreignproducts as they required, then each worker wouldhave been able to enjoy the benefits of change ofoccupation, always having some alternation of outdooras well as indoor work ; the hours of labourmight be greatly reduced, and all the refinementsof life might have been procured and enjoyed bythem.The one great error Owen committed was givingup the New Lanark property and management, andspending his large fortune in the endeavour to foundcommunities in various countries of chance assemblagesof adults, which his own principles should haveshown him were doomed to failure. He always maintainedthat a true system of education from infancyto manhood was essential to the best formation ofcharacter. His infant schools had only been aboutten years in existence, when, owing to some difficultieswith his Quaker partners, who had alwaysobjected to the dancing and drill, he gave up themanagement into their hands.Notwithstanding this one fatal error, an error dueto the sensitive nobility of his character and to hisoptimistic belief in the power of truth to make its wayagainst all adverse forces, Robert Owen will be rememberedas one of the wisest, noblest, and most