New Harmony, Indiana Influenced American Culture

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New Harmony, Indiana influenced American culture in the 19th century because of the things that they did and the things that they believed in. New Harmony was a Utopian society and an experiment for Robert Owen. George Rapp was the original founder of New Harmony but later on Robert Owen owned it. Robert Owen was a social reformer and was born into the working class. He tried to make New Harmony a perfect community for anyone who lived there. He changed the working conditions and the social issues to improve the lives of the working class. Although New Harmony did not last very long, it had a huge impact on our lives and how we live now. New Harmony, Indiana resulted in our culture having very similar characteristics and lifestyle that they …show more content…
Owen did not want any child labor in his society, so he took no children younger than ten years old to work. He banned the use of pauper children and only accepted the use of child laborers who could be supervised by their parents. All children at the age of two were encouraged to go to school because only a nominal fee was charged. Owen offered housing at moderate rent, free medical services, and a contributory sickness and retirement fund. He also sold food, clothes, and household goods at good prices. Fines were imposed for drunkenness and illegitimate births because of the problems they had with too many people being drunk. Owen wanted to reduce the hours people spent in heavy labor and he wanted to reduce the work placed upon women. He used machines to help the workers with their jobs. He offered credit for individual production and no private property. Owen wanted to make everyone equal in his society so everything was fair. In New Harmony, Robert Owen had an idea for a social reform, which drew attention. Most of the people who lived there had no farming or mechanical skills and New Harmony split into five sections. Due to their lack of manufacturing, they could not trade with other settlements around them. Robert Owen then gave up on New Harmony, Indiana and abandoned it while returning to Great Britain and losing a great amount of profit that he had gained in the process of …show more content…
New Harmony was a small territory with many factories. A giant wall surrounds the entire civilization. In the background you can see a river leading to a larger body of water, which could be Lake Michigan, and many mountains and trees surrounding it. At the bottom of the image there is a family looking at the Utopian civilization. In the center of the territory there are many pathways connecting each of the buildings to each other. What this says about their culture is that they had a well organized society that was safe and welcoming to the people there. New Harmony influenced our culture by setting up a base for a manufacturing system and how people would like society to be like. We try to make our culture very welcoming and open to others. Our culture was also influenced by it because we have no organized religion for everyone to follow, everyone has their own individuality, and no social pressure. (archive.cnx.org)
In the newspaper article of Robert Owen and New Harmony, Indiana, it explains who Robert Owen was and what he did to New Harmony. It explains that Robert Owen created a school of Socialists, in England, that made everyone seem equal. It then got removed and transported to New Harmony, Indiana as a part of his experiment, but it then failed. This says that their culture tried to make everyone equal, especially in schools. Just like the schools now, everyone is treated the
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