‘Train any population rationally, and they will be rational. Furnish honest and useful employments to those so trained, and such employments they will greatly prefer to dishonest or injurious occupations. It is beyond all calculation the interest of every government to provide that training and that employment; and to provide both is easily practicable.’
A New View of Society, Robert Owen's most famous work, is a collection of essays arguing that all individuals, being wholly formed by their environments, can be improved through the right methods of education. By rightly developing and educating each individual, society can be improved and eventually perfected. The theories developed by Owen in this book were incredibly influential in the later development of utopian socialism.
Robert Owen was a Welsh manufacturer, social reformer, and advocate of utopian socialism. He was also famous for investing in experimental “utopian” communities, being a leader of the trade union movement, and advocating for social reforms such as child labour laws.