We group the three last Communities together, because they were evidently closely related by members passing from one to another, as the earlier ones successively failed. This habit of migrating from one Community to another is an interesting characteristic of the veterans of Socialism, which we shall meet with frequently hereafter. CHAPTER IX. OWEN'S GENERAL CAREER. Confining ourselves strictly to memoirs of Associations, we might leave Owen now and go on to the experiments of the Fourier school. But this would hardly be doing justice to the father of American Socialisms. We have exhibited his great failure; and we must stop long enough to acknowledge his great success, and say briefly what we think of his whole life and influence. Indeed such a review is necessary to a just estimate of the Owen movement in this country. We accept what he himself said about his early achievements, that he was under the guidance of the Spirit of God, and was carried along by a wonderful series of special providences in his first labors for the good of the working classes. The originality, wisdom and success of his doings at New Lanark were manifestly supernatural. His factory village was indeed a light to the world, that gave the nations a great lesson in practical beneficence; and shines still amid the darkness of money-making selfishness and industrial misery. The single fact that he continued the wages of his operatives when the embargo stopped his business, actually paying out $35,000 in four months, to men who had nothing to do but to oil his machinery and keep it clean, stamps him as a genius of an order higher than Napoleon. By this bold maneuver of benevolence he won the confidence of his men, so that he could manage them afterwards as he pleased; and then he went on to reform and educate them, till they became a wonder to the world and a crown of glory to himself. So far we have no doubt that he walked with inspiration and special providence. On the other hand, it is also manifest, that his inspiration and success, so far at least as practical attempts were concerned, deserted him afterwards, and that much of the latter part of his life was spent in disastrous attempts to establish Communism, without the necessary spiritual conditions. His whole career may be likened to that of the first Napoleon, whose "star" insured victory till he reached a certain crisis; after which he lost every battle, and sunk into final and overwhelming defeat.