This made a change in city government necessary. The constable and the watchman with his rattle had to give place to the modern policeman. The old dingy oil lamps, lighted only when the moon did not shine, gave place to gas. The cities were now so full of clerks, workingmen, mechanics, and other people who had to live far away from the places where they were employed, that a cheap means of transportation about the streets became necessary. Accordingly, in 1830, an omnibus line was started in New York.[1] It succeeded so well that in 1832 the first street horse-car line in America was operated in New York city. [Footnote 1: Many did not know what the word "Omnibus" painted along the top of the stages meant. Some thought it was the name of the man who owned them. It is, of course, a Latin word, and means "for all"; that is, the stages were public conveyances for the use of all.] %323. The Owenite Communities.%--The efforts thus made everywhere and in every way to increase the comforts and conveniences of mankind turned the years 1820-1840 into a period of reform. Anything new was eagerly taken up. When, therefore, a Welshman named Robert Owen came over to this country, and introduced what he considered a social reform, numbers of people in the West became his followers. Owen believed that most of the hardships of life came from the fact that some men secured more property and made more money than others. He believed that people should live together in communities in which the farms, the houses, the cattle, the products of the soil, should be owned not by individual men, but by the whole community. He held that there should be absolute social equality, and that no matter what sort of work a man did, whether skilled or unskilled, it should be considered just as valuable as the work of any other man. All this was very alluring, and in a little while Owenite communities were started in Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and New York, only to end in failure.[2] [Footnote 2: Noyes's _History of American Socialism._] %324. The Mormons.%--But there was a social movement started at this time which still exists. In 1827, at Palmyra, in New York, a young man named Joseph Smith announced that he had received a new bible from an angel of the Lord. It was written, he said, on golden plates, which he claimed to have read by the aid of two wonderful stones; and in 1830 he gave to the world _The Book of Mormon_.