David Dale
David Dale - A Famous Scottish Industrialist & Philanthropist
Scotland's early social reformer
David Dale (1739-1806). Born in Stewarton, Ayrshire, the son of a grocer, Dale was first apprenticed to a Paisley weaver. He then travelled the country as an itinerant weavers' agent within the 'putting-out' system; his job comprised of distributing linen yarn to weavers and then collecting the finished cloth from the cottage-sited loom-workers. Around 1743 he became a silk merchant's clerk and rose to become a partner in the business, then he became the owner of a fine-linen yarn business. In the forefront of investors in the new cotton-spinning machinery of the late 1770s, Dale joined with the English cotton-spinning inventor Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-92) in a short-lived partnership to build the New Lanark mills, near the Falls of Clyde, in 1784. Their enterprise became one of the largest water-powered spinning mills in Scotland. Dale's workforce was made up of children from workhouses and charities, and from families encouraged to live in the village he built around the mills. Dale had an eye to improving the working conditions of his employees and developed at New Lanark an unusually good working environment for the time, providing a balanced diet, free schooling and low-cost housing. During business trips to the west of Scotland, Dale became acquainted with the entrepreneur, visionary and social reformer Robert Owen (1771-1858), who was to marry Dale's daughter, Caroline. Dale sold the New Lanark mills to Owen in 1799, and the mill complex was to be the testbed of Owen's economic and social theories. A man of deeply felt religious principles and a devotee of the Secession Church (which broke away from the Church of Scotland over a dispute regarding how ministers were chosen), Dale preached and carried out his philanthropic works until his death.
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