Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/98

() V E O W I changed much during Owen s lifetime it was as follows. He considered an association of from 500 to 3000 as the fit number for a good working community. While mainly agricultural, it should possess all the best machinery, should offer every variety of employment, and should, as far as possible, be self-contained. " As these townships, as he also called them, "should increase in number, unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circles of tens, hundreds, and thousands," till they should embrace the whole world in a common interest. His plans for the cure of pauperism were received with great favour. The Times and The Morning Post and many of the leading men of the country countenanced them ; one of his most steadfast friends was the duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria. He had indeed gained the ear of the country, and had the prospect before him of a great career as a social reformer, when he went out of his way at a large meeting in London to declare his hostility to all the received forms of religion. After this defiance to the religious sentiment of the country, Owen s theories were in the popular mind associated with infi delity, and were henceforward suspected and discredited. Owen s own confidence, however, remained unshaken ; and he was anxious that his scheme for establishing a community should be tested. At last, in 1825, such an experiment was attempted under the direction of his disciple, Abram Combe, at Orbiston near Glasgow; and in the same year Owen himself commenced another at New Harmony in Indiana, America. After a trial of about two years both failed completely. Neither of them was a pauper experiment ; but it must be said that the members were of the most motley description, many worthy people of the highest aims being mixed with vagrants, adventurers, and crotchety, wrong-headed enthusiasts. After a long period of friction with William Allen and some of his other partners, Owen resigned all connexion with New Lanark in 1828. On his return from America he made London the centre of his activity. Most of his means having been sunk in the New Harmony experiment, he was no longer a- flourishing capitalist, but the, head of a vigorous pro paganda, in which socialism and secularism were combined. One of the most interesting features of the movement at this period was the establishment in 1832 of an equitable labour exchange system, in which exchange was effected by means of labour notes, the usual means of exchange and the usual middlemen being alike superseded. The word " socialism " first became current in the discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, formed by Owen in 1835. During these years also his secularistic teaching gained such influence among the working classes us to give occasion for the statement in the Westminster Review (1839) that his principles were the actual creed of a great portion of them. His views on marriage, which were certainly lax, gave just ground for offence. At this period some more communistic experiments were made, of which the most important were that at Ralahine, in the county of Clare, Ireland, and that at Tytherly in Hampshire. It is admitted that the former (1831) was a remarkable success for three and a half years, till the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, was obliged to sell out. Tytherly, begun in 1839, was an absolute failure. By 1846 the only permanent result of Owen s agitation, so zealously carried on by public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, was the co-operative movement, and for the time even that seemed to have utterly collapsed. In his later years Owen became a firm believer in spiritualism. He died at his native town at the age of eighty-seven. The exposition and criticism of Owen s socialism and of his socialistic experiments belong to the general subject (see SOCIAL ISM). Robert Owen was essentially a pioneer, whose work and influence it would be unjust to measure by their tangible results. Apart from his socialistic theories, it should, nevertheless, be remembered that he was one of the foremost and most energetic promoters of many movements of acknowledged and enduring usefulness, lie was the founder of infant schools in England; he was the first to introduce reasonably short hours into factory labour, and zealously promoted factory legislation one of the most needed and most beneficial reforms of the century ; and he was the real founder of the co-operative movement. In general education, in sanitary reform, and in his sound and humanitarian views of common life, he was far in advance of his time. Still he had many serious faults; all that was quixotic, crude, and superficial in his views became more prominent in his later years ; and by the extravagance of his advocacy of them he did vital injury to the cause he had at heart. In his personal character he was without reproach frank, benevolent, and straightforward to a fault ; and he pursued the altruistic schemes in which In- spent all his means with more earnestness than most men devote to the accumulation of a fortune. Of R. Owen s numerous works in exposition of liis system, the most importmit are the New View of Society, already mentioned; the Report communicated to the Committee on the Poor Law; the Boot of the Xew iforal World , and Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. See Life of Robert Oicen written by himself, London, 1857, and Threading my Way, Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography by hobeit Dale Owen, his son, London, 1874. There are nlso Lieu of Owen by A. J. Booth (London, 18C9) and by W. L. Sargant (London, 1860). For woiks of a more general character see G. J. Holyoake, History of Co-operation in England, London, 1875; Keybaud, Etudes sur les reformatetirs modernes, Paris, 1856; Adolf Held, Zicei Bucher zur socialen Geschichte England*, Leipsic, 1881. (T. K.) OWENSBOROUGH, a city of the United States, capital of Daviess county, Kentucky, on the Ohio, 1GO miles below Louisville. It engages extensively in the manufacture of whisky and the curing of tobacco, and has waggon factories, flour mills, and foundries. The popula tion, 6231 in 1880, exceeded 11,000 in 1883. OWL, the Anglo Saxon Vie, Swedish Uggla, and German Eule all allied to the Latin Ulula y and evidently of imita tive origin the general English name for every nocturnal Bird-of-prey, 1 of which group nearly two hundred species have been recognized. The Owls form a very natural assem blage, and one about the limits of which no doubt has for a long while existed. Placed by nearly all systematists for many years as a Family of the Order Acdpitres (or what ever may have been the equivalent term used by the particular taxonomers), there has been of late a disposition to regard them as forming a group of higher rank. On many accounts it is plain that they differ from the ordinary diurnal Birds-of-prey, more than the latter do among themselves ; and, though in some respects Owls have a superficial likeness to the GOATSUCKERS (vol. x. p. 711), and a resemblance more deeply seated to the GUACHARO (vol. xi. p. 227), even the last has not been made out to have any strong affinity to them. A good deal is therefore to be said for the opinion which would regard the Owls as forming an independent Order, or at any rate Sub-order, Striyes. Whatever be the position assigned to the group, its subdivision has always been a fruitful matter of discus sion, owing to the great resemblance obtaining among all its members, and the existence of safe characters for its division has only lately been at all generally recognized. By the older naturalists, it is true, Owls were divided, as was first done by Willughby, into two sections one in which all the species exhibit tufts of feathers on the head, the so-called " ears " or "horns," and the second in which the head is not tufted. The artificial and therefore untrustworthy nature of this distinction was shewn by Isidore Geoffroy St-Hilaire (Ann. Sc. Naturdles, xxi. pp. 194-203) in 1830; but he did not do much good in the 1 The poverty of the English language generally so rich in .synonyms is here very remarkable. Though four well-known if not common species of Owls are native to Britain, to say nothing of half a dozen others which occur with greater or less frequency, none of them has ever acquired an absolutely individual name, and various prefixes have to be used to distinguish them. In Greece and Italy, Germany and France, almost each indigenous species has had its own particular designation in the vulgar tongue. The English Owlet or Howlet is of course a simple diminutive only.