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Robert Owen and New Harmony Description

Page history last edited by everon@... 15 years, 4 months ago
Robert Owen:
Founder of New Harmony
 

New Harmony was originally called Harmony when founded in Indiana, 1814 by Johann Georg Rapp; however, in 1824 it was sold to Robert Owen. 

Goal/Mission of community: “Community of Equality”

 

Size of Group: Although it was said that the ideal size would be around 2000 people, the population remained at right around 1000.  


Robert Owen was born in Scotland and raised during a revolutionary period.


Happiness can be reached by a lot of order in your life and also "all men by nature have equal rights."

 

     Owen had very strong beliefs on many things and sort of over looked others.  He considered marriage, ownership of private property, and irrational systems of religion to be the three greatest evils of society.  In New Harmony he tried to fix these evils and create a “perfect” society.  In May of 1825 a constitution was set and anyone willing to sign the constitution was allowed to join the utopian community. However, after shoratages of housing and food, due to a lack of people with qualified professions. 

 

     Owen decided that his community was ready for the second phase of establishing the true “Community of Equality” and a new constitution was adopted on February 5, 1826.  This constitution had worthy ideas, but was lacking in practical plans for organizing jobs and distributing food along with other products and goods.  One of his first and main principles was that, “No man has a right to require another man to do for him, what he will not do for that man; or, in other owrds all men, by nature, have equal rights.”  Also, he continued to write and believe that because of this that it can be “confidently stated, that each individual thus trained, educated, and placed, would acquire fare more valuable knowledge and power and accomplish more, and in a superior manner, than great numbers of the human race can acquire or accomplish, under the training, education, and classification of the existing system, founded on, and emanating from, the absurd notions of man’s free will in forming his own convictions, feelings, and general character.”

 

     They had a clear set of ideas and different classes were to be set up by age.  This was because Robert Owen believed that man’s character was environmentally determined and therefore emphasized infant and youth’s education. It was divided into different classes based on their age.  The first class consisted of children from birth to the end of their fifth year.  Then the second class consisted of children from five to ten years old, with the third class then being from ten to fifteen.  It is said that with the structured upbringing they will recieved starting from an infant that at ten they will be “well-trained rational beings, superior in mind, manner, dispositions, feelings, and conduct to any who have yet lived, and their deficiency in physical strength  will be amply supplied by the superior mechanical and chemical powers which will be contrived and arranged to be ready for them to direct when they enter the next class.  The fourth class will proceed to consist of those from fifteen to twenty and the fifth class twenty to twenty-five years old.  The Sixth class will consist of members of the community from that age of twenty-five to thirty.  They will be in charge of  maintaining the wealth produced by the previous classes.  The Seventh class will then consisty of all members of the family from thirty to forty years of age.  They will be put incharge of governing the home department.  Their goal will be to govern it in such a way to preserve peace, charity, and affection throughout the establishment.  Finally the eighth class will consist of those from forty to sixty and be given the jobs deemed most crucial to the society: the education of those from birth to maturity.

 

     The Society then proceeded to collapse in March of 1827 due to constant disagreement among the residents of the community and inadequate structures of labor and agriculture in the community. 

  

 

 

Robert Owen and New Harmony Analysis

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