Utopian Views of Industrialization

An "optimistic" response to industrialization was what is known as utopianism. Utopians believed that the growth in industry would not only produce more goods but also help reorganize society in a more perfect way. Utopians pointed out that as factories developed, especially later coal-powered factories, entire towns would be built around the factories to house the laborers. People, therefore, rented their housing in company owned developments, and bought their groceries from their employers in company owned shops.

One the one hand, these "factory towns" made workers more dependant on their employer, to whom they often went into debt for their housing, clothing, and food. So they had to work ever more. Utopians, on the other hand, saw such towns as a large-scale form of cooperation.

This optimistic view was taken by the industrialist Robert Owen who built a factory town in which he hoped to provide for his workers and their families, through good housing, medical care, and schooling for children. He wrote a book about his vision, in which he explained that a well-organized and highly productive society would be the way of the future and that industrial factories -- and well planned, well functioning factory towns -- were the way to bring that future about. They would unite all of society in a common endeavor.

Others, such as the Frenchmen Henri de St. Simon and Charles Fourrier, viewed industrialization as process by which all of humanity would be united in common endeavor. But to be a common endeavor, all would have to have a share in it. They led small movements that built rationalized societies on a small level. They sought to create such new societies by founding small communities in the 1820s and 1830s that were outside the rest of society and could, they hoped, provide a model for how society might develop.