ABSTRACT
George Jacob Holyoake grew up in a respectable working-class family in Birmingham; his mother was a button maker and his father was a printer. Holyoake became a skilled whitesmith in a foundry but quit and became a “Social Missionary” for the Owenite movement in 1840. Robert Owen, like Thomas Paine, was endowed with great natural capacity for understanding public affairs. He was accustomed to give practical and notable opinions upon public questions, quite apart from his own doctrines; and his society was sought as that of a man who had the key of many State difficulties. Mr. Owen’s speeches had vivacity and humour. His writings have little of either. His best book, and the one that made his reputation, his ‘Essays on the Formation of Character,’ Francis Place revised for him. Mr. Owen ought always to have put his manuscripts into the hands of others.
