ABSTRACT
Robert Owen attended both to the mechanical and to the human efficiency of the business. He rearranged and improved the machinery, and he also bettered the conditions of the workers, who, he says, were well satisfied, and over whom he soon acquired a powerful influence. 1789 was the year of the French Revolution; but event finds no record in Owen's annals. Owen had come to Manchester just at the most critical point of cotton trade development. He knew nothing at all about machinery; but his varied experience as a salesman had made him an excellent judge of textile fabrics, and especially of the new British-made cotton goods which were then coming into fashion. If Owen had been left to build up his business on his own account, from the small foundations with which he began, he might in time have become a great employer; for profits were large, and capital could be accumulated rapidly out of earnings.
