The typical perspective of the British manager was perhaps best summed up by an anecdote of Robert Owen's visit to a Leeds factory.

John Marshall, the factory manager, complained to Owen, If my people were to be careful and avoid waste, they might save me £4,000 a year.

Owen replied, Well, why don't you give them £2,000 to do it? And then you yourself would be the richer by £2,000 a year!


Many of the ideas set out in A New View of Society were too progressive for their time, and were only beginning to be implemented in the early twentieth century. Some are still part of ongoing debates about education, citizenship, welfare, cooperation and the environment, which suggests that Owen may indeed have been something of a visionary.

Meanwhile, the place Owen had made internationally famous continued for another 130 years as a working factory village, still attracting visitors from as far afield as Japan (where there remains considerable interest in Owen's management psychology), until the mills ultimately closed in 1968.

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/oucontent/view.php?printable=1&id=1658