“On the Causes of the Distress Prevalent in Great Britain”, In Report of the Committee Appointed at a Meeting of Journeymen, Chiefly Printers, to Take into Consideration Certain Propositions, Submitted to them by Mr. George Mudie, having for their Object a System of Social Arrangement, Calculated to Effect Essential Improvements in the Condition of the Working Classes (London: The Medallic Cabinet, 1821), 4–5

doi:10.4324/9780429452376-8

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“On the Causes of the Distress Prevalent in Great Britain”, In Report of the Committee Appointed at a Meeting of Journeymen, Chiefly Printers, to Take into Consideration Certain Propositions, Submitted to them by Mr. George Mudie, having for their Object a System of Social Arrangement, Calculated to Effect Essential Improvements in the Condition of the Working Classes (London: The Medallic Cabinet, 1821), 4–5

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ABSTRACT

George Mudie was a printer, newspaper editor and author from Edinburgh. He and Robert Owen met in Leeds in 1816, and Mudie soon embraced the Welshman’s “science of society” and communitarian ideals. Having moved to London in 1820 as the editor of the Sun, he set out to form an Owenite group in the capital. This led him to address a committee of fellow radical printers in August 1820, when he suggested establishing a community based on Owen’s plan to resolve the country’s state of economic distress. Mudie’s analysis of Britain’s economic situation drew upon Owen’s arguments. The chief cause of poverty remained the “depreciation in the value of manual labour” due to the irrational use of machinery. But Mudie’s proposals were highly original, as he was probably the first of Owen’s followers to advocate co-operation as a solution to the pauperisation of the working classes.