During a visit to Scotland, Owen fell in love with Caroline Dale, the daughter of the New Lanark mill's proprietor David Dale. Owen convinced his partners to buy New Lanark, and after his marriage to Caroline[3] in September 1799, he made his home there. He was a manager and part-owner of the mills (January 1810). Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, he hoped to conduct New Lanark on higher principles than purely commercial ones.
The mill of New Lanark had been started in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. The water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde made it a great attraction. About 2,000 people had associations with the mills, 500 of whom were children brought at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The children were well treated by Dale, but the general condition of the people was unsatisfactory. Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills.
Many employers operated the truck system, and paid workers in part or totally by tokens. These tokens had no value outside the mill owner's "truck shop". The owners could supply shoddy goods to the truck shop and charge top prices. This abuse was stopped by a series of "Truck Acts" (1831–1887), making it an offence not to pay employees in common currency. Owen opened a store where the people could buy goods of sound quality at little more than wholesale cost, and he placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. He sold quality goods and passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to the workers. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today.
Owen's greatest success was in support of the young. He can be considered as the founder of infant child care in Britain, especially Scotland. Although his reform ideas resembled those of European innovators of the time, he was probably not influenced by such overseas approaches; his ideas on ideal education were his own.