Robert Owen and the Stanley Mills, 1802-1811

What is it about?

This article is based on a discovery I made in the Charter Room at Blair Castle, Blair Atholl, Perthshire, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Atholl. In a locked metal deed box, of the kind favoured by Edinburgh lawyers, I discovered copies of 106 letters from Robert Owen of New Lanark, to James Craig, owner of Stanley Cotton Mills in Perthshire, concerning the management and profitability of Stanley mills. They formed part of a legal case, Royal Bank of Scotland versus the Stanley Company, dated 1816, concerning debts of over £40,000 owed by the Stanley Company, or rather James Craig, to the Royal Bank. The reason for Owen’s involvement at Stanley Mills was that he was the leading trustee of the Dale Trustees, after the death of his father in law, David Dale, founder of New Lanark mills. Dale had advanced a good deal of money to James Craig at Stanley Mills before his (Dale’s) death in 1806. James Craig was a Paisley muslin manufacturer, who was Dale’s next door neighbour in Charlotte Square, Glasgow. After Dale’s death, Robert Owen kept an eye on Craig’s business activities at Stanley and tried to get him to improve productivity and profitability, but without success. Royal Bank of Scotland was involved in Stanley’s extensive debts, amounting eventually to over £40,000, because David Dale had been the Glasgow agent for the Edinburgh -based Royal Bank of Scotland. James Craig appears to have been an unsuccessful cotton manufacturer, who was impervious to advice from Robert Owen, and was more interested in acquiring land in the Stanley area, and improving it, according to the latest and most advanced farming techniques.

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Photo by Trisha Downing on Unsplash

Photo by Trisha Downing on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The letters give a picture of Robert Owen as a hard headed businessman, rather than the idealistic author of ‘A New View of Society’, published in 1821. Robert Owen urges James Craig to keep detailed records of production for Stanley Mills, particularly production costs and productivity. He tells Craig that at New Lanark, he (Owen) keeps detailed records of production costs on a weekly basis, and also measures the individual productivity of each worker. The letters give a rare glimpse into the problems and challenges faced by industrialists in the early days of industrialisation in Scotland, including raw material supplies, cash flow, quality control, workforce recruitment and control, and the continual challenge of developing new products, and of finding new markets, particularly export markets.

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