Primary+Sources+-+Robert+Owen

How much longer shall we continue to allow generation after generation to be taught crime from their infancy, and when so taught, hunt them like beasts of the the forest, until they are entangled beyond escape in the toils and nets of law? when, if the circumstances of those poor unpitied sufferers had been reversed with those who are even surrounded with the pomp and dignity of justice, these latter would have been at the bar of the culprit, and the former would have been at the judgment seat. ( http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/newview.html  )
 * Our Society Manufactures Criminals **

** Pauper Apprentices  ** It is not to be supposed that children so young could remain, with the intervals of meals, from six and the morning until seven in evening, in constant employment, on their feet within cotton mills, and afterwards acquire such proficiency in education. And so it proved; for many of then became dwarfs in body in mind, and some were deformed. Their labor throughout the day and their education at night became so irksome, that numbers of them continually ran away, and almost all looked forward with impatience and anxiety to the expiration of their apprenticeship of seven, eight, and nine years, which generally expired when they were from thirteen to fifteen years old. At this period of life, unaccustomed to provide for themselves, and  unacquainted with the world, they usually went to Edinburgh or Glasgow, where boys in girls were soon assailed by the innumerable temptations which all large towns present, into which many of them fell sacrifices. ( http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/newview.html  ) __* What is this passage saying about the ways the children are treated? Is he saying it's good or bad?__  Some of the most important benefits to be derived from the introduction of those principles into practice are, that they will create the most cogent reasons to induce each man 'to have charity for all men'. No feeling short of this can indeed find place in any mind which has been taught clearly to understand that children in all parts of the earth have been, are, and everlastingly will be, impressed with habits and sentiments similar to those of their parents and instructors; modified, however, by the circumstances in which they have been, are, or may be placed, and by the peculiar organizations of each individual. Yet not one of these causes of character is at the command, or in any manner under the control of infants, who (whatever absurdity we may have been taught to the contrary), cannot possibly be accountable for the sentiments and manners which may be given to them. And here lies the fundamental error of society; and from hence have proceeded, and do proceed, most of the miseries of mankind. Children are, without exception, passive and wonderfully contrived compounds; which, by an accurate previous and subsequent attention, founded on a correct knowledge of the subject, may be formed collectively to have any human character. And although these compounds, like all the other works of nature, possess endless varieties, yet they partake of that plastic quality, which, by perseverance under judicious management, may be ultimately moulded into the very image of rational wishes and desires ( http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ow02.asp  ) __* What is he saying about the environment and mankind? How is he relating them?__ "What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal". ( http://www.robert-owen.com/  )        __* What is he saying? What blocks the society from becoming universal?__