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11 speechat robert Owen’s birthday Celebration May 13, 1853 New York, New York This event, on Robert Owen’s eighty-third birthday, was the second freethought community celebration where Rose presided that year, the first being the annual Thomas Paine celebration in January. In her speech Rose sketches, with respect and admiration, the life of Robert Owen. She honors the qualities of character that led Owen, the successful industrialist, to devote much of his life and fortune to shaping a better world. As a marketer of colognes and the wife of a skilled craftsman and shopkeeper , Rose understood and respected the qualities that made for Owen’s success in business. Her speech was printed by the Boston Investigator on June 1, 1853, as part of its report called “Anniversary of Robert Owen’s Birth-Day Celebrated in New York.” Lucy Stone’s attendance at the event was mentioned in the report, perhaps signaling growing recognition of Women’s Rights advocates by the freethought press. n My Friends:—With unspeakable pleasure do I rise to welcome the natal day of the world’s greatest and purest philanthropist, Robert Owen. It is ever a pleasing duty to honor the day that gave birth to a great and noble being, for every good man is a blessing to society. But the gratification this evening must be greatly enhanced to us all by the pleasing consciousness that our venerable and beloved friend, whose eighty-third birth-day we meet to celebrate, is yet among us; and though the wide ocean separates him from our midst, yet his benign influence, his gentle and benevolent spirit, will, I am sure, be felt among us on this interesting occasion. On the 13th of May, 1770, a bright and glorious star appeared in our social and moral horizon, whose effulgent rays penetrated into the deep and dark recesses of our social existence, and disclosed to our mental vision the cliffs and shoals, and quicksands of ignorance, selfishness and vice, against which the dearest hopes and the best interests of mankind have been wrecked; and unless they were uprooted from their very foundation , and the streams of life cleansed and purified, would ever impede the progress of man to knowledge, virtue and happiness. . . . . . . His life was the most useful and interesting that ever fell to the lot of 1 ernestIne l.rose man. At a very early age he struck out for himself a course of life, which he pursued with an energy, consistency and perseverance, unequalled in the history of man. At the age of ten he left his native place in Wales for the great commercial emporium, London, with less than ten dollars in his pocket to commence the world with. While yet a mere boy he entered the arena of commerce, and contended most successfully for the prize of genius, persevering industry and application. One or two points of his early life will give you some idea of his youthful character. At eighteen he commence[d], with a partner, a machine-making establishment , employing forty men. Soon after, he added the commencement of cotton spinning by the newly invented machinery. At twenty, hearing a Mr. Drinkwater, proprietor of the first fine cotton factory, in Manchester, employing five hundred hands, advertise for a manager, Mr. Owen presented himself. “You are a boy,” said Mr. Drinkwater. “That would have been an objection to me four or five years ago,” was his reply; “I am a man now, and have some experience in this business.” “What experience?” “I work three mules, and am making three hundred pounds a year.” “How many times a week do you get drunk?” This was too much for the young philosopher, he colored up to his very temples, and replied very indignantly , “I never was drunk in my life!” “What salary do you ask?” “Three hundred pounds.” “Three hundred?” said Mr. D., with astonishment; “why, there have been dozen here this morning, some of them double your age and they don’t ask half that sum.” “Very well,” said Mr. Owen, “I am making three hundred a year in my own business, and I cannot come for less.” “Let me see your establishment.” They went, Mr. Drinkwater examined it in silence. “Well,” said he, “come to me tomorrow, you shall have what you ask.” Six months after, Mr. D. sent one morning for his manager. “Stay with me three years,” said he, “I will give you four hundred next year, five hundred...

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