of success should have been known to this man in Seventeen Hundred Ninety, we might call miraculous, were it not for the fact that the miraculous is always the natural.

Those were troublous times when Robert Owen entered trade. The French Revolution was on, and its fires lit up the intellectual sky of the whole world. The Colonies had been lost to England; it was a time of tumult in Threadneedle Street; the armies of the world were lying on their arms awaiting orders. And out of this great unrest emerged Robert Owen, handsome, intelligent, honest, filled with a holy zeal to help himself by helping humanity.

Robert Owen was born in the village of Newtown, Wales, in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-one. After being away from his native village for many years, he returned, as did Shakespeare and as have so many successful men, and again made the place of his boyhood the home of his old age. Owen died in the house in which he was born. His body was buried in the same grave where sleeps the dust of his father and his mother. During the eighty-seven years of his life he accomplished many things and taught the world lessons which it has not yet memorized.

In point of time, Robert Owen seems to have been the world's first Businessman. Private business was to him a public trust. He was a creator, a builder, an economist, an educator, a humanitarian. He got his education from his work, at his work, and strove throughout his long life to make it possible for others to do the same.

He believed in the Divinity of Business. He anticipated Emerson by saying, "Commerce consists in making things for people who need them, and carrying them from where they are plentiful to where they are wanted."

Every economist should be a humanitarian; and every humanitarian should be an economist. Charles Dickens, writing in Eighteen Hundred Sixty, puts forth Scrooge, Carker and Bumball as economists. When Dickens wanted to picture ideal businessmen, he gave us the Cheeryble brothers—men with soft hearts, giving pennies to all beggars, shillings to poor widows, and coal and loaves of bread to families living in rickety tenements. The Dickens idea of betterment was the priestly plan of dole. Dickens did not know that indiscriminate almsgiving pauperizes humanity, and never did he supply the world a glimpse of a man like Robert Owen, whose charity was something more than palliation.

Robert Owen was born in decent poverty, of parents who knew the simple, beautiful and necessary virtues of industry, sobriety and economy. Where this son got his hunger for books and his restless desire for achievement we do not know. He was a business genius, and from genius of any kind no hovel is immune.

He was sent to London at the age of ten, to learn the saddler's trade; at twelve he graduated from making wax-ends, blacking leather and greasing harness and took a position as salesman in the same business.

From this he was induced to become a salesman for a haberdasher. He had charm of manner—fluidity, sympathy and health. At seventeen he asked to be paid a commission on sales instead of a salary, and on this basis he saved a hundred pounds in a year.

At eighteen a customer told him of a wonderful invention—a machine that was run by steam—for spinning cotton into yarn. Robert was familiar with the old process of making woolen yarn on a spinning-wheel by hand—his mother did it and had taught him and his brothers and sisters how.

Cotton was just coming in, since the close of "George Washington's Rebellion." Watt had watched his mother's teakettle to a good purpose. Here were two big things destined to revolutionize trade: the use of cotton in place of flax or wool, and steam-power instead of human muscle. Robert Owen resigned his clerkship and invested all of his earnings in three mule spinning-machines. Then he bought cotton on credit.

He learned the business, and the first year made three hundred pounds.

Seeing an advertisement in the paper for an experienced superintendent of a cotton mill, he followed his intuitions, hunted out the advertiser, a Mr. Drinkwater, and asked for the place.

Mr. Drinkwater looked at the beardless stripling, smiled and explained that he wanted a man, not a boy—a man who could take charge of a mill at Manchester, employing five hundred hands.

Robert Owen stood his ground.

What would he work for?

Three hundred pounds a year.

Bosh! Boys of nineteen could be had for fifty pounds a year.

"But not boys like me," said Robert Owen, earnestly. Then he explained to Mr. Drinkwater his position—that he had a little mill of his own and had made three hundred pounds the first year. But he wanted to get into a larger field with men of capital.

Mr. Drinkwater was interested. Looking up the facts he found them to be exactly as stated. He hired the youth at his own price and also bought all of young Mr. Owen's machinery and stock, raw and made up.

Robert Owen, aged nineteen, went at once to Manchester and took charge of the mill. His business was to buy and install new machinery, hire all help, fix wages, buy the raw material, and manufacture and sell the product.

For six weeks he did not give a single order, hire a new man, nor discharge an old one. He silently studied the situation. He worked with the men—made friends with them, and recorded memoranda of his ideas. He was the first one at the factory in the morning—the last to leave it at night.

After six weeks he began to act.

The first year's profit was twenty per cent on the investment, against five for the year before.

Drinkwater paid him four hundred pounds instead of three, and proposed it should be five hundred for the next year. A contract was drawn up, running for five years, giving Owen a salary, and also a percentage after sales mounted above a certain sum.

Robert Owen was now twenty years of age. He was sole superintendent of the mill. The owner lived at London and had been up just once—this after Owen had been in his new position for three months. Drinkwater saw various improvements made in the plant—the place was orderly, tidy, cleanly, and the workers were not complaining, although Owen was crowding out the work.

Owen was on friendly terms with his people, visiting them in their homes. He had organized a day-school for the smaller children and a night-school for the older ones who worked in the mills. His friendliness, good-cheer and enthusiasm were contagious. The place was prosperous.

Just here let us make a digression and inspect the peculiar conditions of the time.

It was a period of transition—the old was dying, the new was being born. Both experiences were painful.

There was a rapid displacement of hand labor. One machine did the work of ten or more persons. What were these people who were thrown out, to do? Adjust themselves to the new conditions, you say. True, but many could not. They starved, grew sick, ate their hearts out in useless complaining.

Only a few years before, and the spinning of flax and wool was exclusively a home industry. Every cottage had its spinning-wheel and loom. There was a garden, a cow, a pig, poultry and fruits and flowers. The whole household worked, and the wheel and loom were never idle while it was light. The family worked in relays.

It was a very happy and prosperous time. Life was simple and natural. There was constant labor, but it was diversified. The large flocks of sheep, raised chiefly for wool, made mutton cheap. Everything was home-made. People made things for themselves, and if they acquired a superior skill they supplied their neighbors,