While thus using his own power Owen not only advocated legislation to limit the hours of factory labour, but appealed to the public authorities to establish industrial communities, where the poor might be set to work, and be managed paternally on the principles of New Lanark. So great was his repute, and so influential the royal and other personages who gave him their support, that this appeal might probably have been successful had not Owen, in reply to complaints as to his religious views--which were deistic--and that his system was not founded on religion, made a public attack upon all accepted religions.
Failing to get the required support from the Government and magistrates, he still sought it from wealthy believers in his teaching, and a number of "communities" (see COMMUNISM) were founded in England and Scotland, and in the United States. These were intended to be self-supporting, the land and other means of producing wealth being owned in common, and work and education being regulated on Owen's principles. Owen well knew that most of them lacked the large amount of capital necessary, but his hand was forced by enthusiastic followers, and even the most hopeful of the experiments, that of Queenwood in Hampshire (1839-1844), was made prematurely and failed.
His connexion with New Lanark also came to an end, not from any want of success, but through differences with some of his partners who objected to such matters as dancing, military drill for the children, and the wearing of kilts, but above all feared lest Owen's "infidelity" should undermine the people's faith.
Thus it might have seemed that Owen's life and fortune had been spent in vain, and resulted only in unsuccessful experiments; but this was far from being so. His teaching, and in particular his doctrines of circumstance, and of the conscious seeking after the social good, his belief in self-supporting communities, and his vision of a new moral and industrial world, had powerfully affected the working classes, indeed, all classes. Workmen in many parts of the country had formed groups with the ultimate object of founding self-supporting communities. If the government and the rich would not provide capital enough to start communities, the workers would start them themselves. Thus was the democratic basis given to co-operation. As a means they had been founding co-operative societies, which are sometimes called "union shops" to distinguish them from the later growth of societies of the Rochdale type. The members began by buying provisions wholesale and retailing them to themselves at current prices; the difference became capital, and as soon as possible one member was set to work to make boots and another clothes, and so forth, until ultimately the society should have capital enough to take land and form a community. Education also was prominent among their objects. These co-operative societies reached some 400 or 500 between 1828 and 1834, but the movement then collapsed. As the original enthusiasm died out, or members left the neighbourhood, or capital accumulated in the hands of the original shareholders, they almost all either failed or became private property. In those early days, moreover, the law gave no protection to the property of co-operative societies. This remained so until 1852, when the Christian Socialists (see SOCIALISM) among their many great services to the working classes secured such protection. In 1862 they secured also limited liability for the members.