Social reformer; born in
Newtown,
North Wales, May 14, 1771.
At the age of eighteen he was part proprietor of a cotton-mill, and became a proprietor of cotton-mills at
Lanark, Scotland, where he introduced reforms.
In 1812 he published his
New views of Society, etc., and afterwards his
Book of the New moral world, in which he maintained a theory of modified communism.
Immensely wealthy, he distributed tracts inculcating his views very widely, and soon had a host of followers.
In 1823 he came to the
United States and bought 20,000 acres of land—the settlement at New Harmony,
Ind.—with dwellings for 1,000 persons, where he resolved to found a communist society.
This was all done at his own expense.
It was an utter failure.
He returned in 1827, and tried the same experiment in
Great Britain, and afterwards in
Mexico, with the same result.
Yet he continued during his life to advocate his peculiar social notions as the founder of a system of religion and society according to reason.
During his latter years he was a believer in spiritualism, and became convinced of the immortality of the soul.
He was the originator of the “labor leagues,” from which sprang the Chartist movement.
He died in
Newtown,
North Wales, Nov. 19, 1858.
See
New harmony. 
