Owen said that industrialization could better the lot of individuals, like the young women working in his mills, and uplift the human character through social engineering, by "removing discontent" and giving "permanent, productive employment to the poor and working classes" and thus "let prosperity loose on the country" (O'Brien 2010). Unlike the politician Disraeli, who lived squarely in the middle of the horrors and squalor spawned by industrialization, Owen lived in a relatively isolated, rural area in Scotland. While overseeing his mills, Owen was solely focused upon his own project of social engineering, taking place in...

A parallel between these two men in American history might be that of Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Ford: one man believed in creating laws to empower workers, while another believed in using the tools of industrialization to better the lives of his employees, as he saw fit.
Works Cited

Everett, Glenn. "Chartism." The Victorian Web. 1997. February 15, 2010.

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist3.html

O'Brien, Joseph V. "Robert Owen's Parallelogram." John Jay College. February 15, 2010.

http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob50.html