When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want, like, all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your dachings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities.
Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. In 1794, an entrepreneur by the name of John Bell bought a small, wood cloth-making mail outside Bath, England.
Over the next five years, he grew the business and erected a small factory. This factory included some new machines, a gig mail, and possibly some shearing frames, which would scale production so his cloths could be sold at a lower price than those of his local competitors. Those local competitors, though, didn't exactly have the capital Bell had to build such factories for themselves. And now, through no fault of their own, really, they were losing their livelihood to Bell's machines.
In 1799, Bell received a letter, reading, quote, "'I send you this to inform you that we, the cloth workers of Trowbridge, Bradford, Chipponham, and Milksham, are almost or the greatest part of us out of work, and we are fully convinced that the greatest of the cause is your dressing work by machinery. And we are determined, if you follow this practice any longer, that we will keep some people to watch you about with loaded blunderbuss or pistols, and will certainly blow your brains out. It is no use to destroy the factories but put you damned villains to death," end quote. The letter goes on to warn that Bell would burn in hell for eternity, and suggests that they may kill his mother, too.
For over 30 years now, the first industrial revolution had slowly but surely upended life in Great Britain. In the old days, if you were willing to work hard, you would be rewarded for it. And if you weren't rewarded, if you did go hungry, it was usually because of forces outside of human control. Disease or famine would disrupt your economy and your life.
It typically wasn't because of other people. But now, that was starting to change. Many folks were working harder and longer than their parents or grandparents, with food more affordable and abundant than ever, and yet they were struggling to survive. Call me to read from E.P.
Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, quote. In the 1790s, something like an English Revolution took place, of profound importance in shaping the consciousness of the post-war working class. In the decades after 1795, there was a profound alienation between classes in Britain, and working people were thrust into a state of apartheid whose effects in the niceties of social and educational discrimination can be felt to this day. England differed from other European nations in this, that the flood tide of counter-revolutionary feeling and discipline coincided with the flood tide of the Industrial Revolution, as new techniques and forms of industrial organization advanced, so political and social rights receded.
The natural alliance between an impatient, radically-minded industrial bourgeoisie and a formative proletariat was broken as soon as it was formed, end quote. A social structure of inequality had existed since the Stone Age. There were rulers and bishops and nobles, and then everybody else. But a new, entirely economic structure of inequality was forming too, between those in that everybody else's category, and eventually the pot started boiling over, as the people at the bottom of the structure started going after the people and the machines that created it.
This is the Industrial Revolutions, Chapter 24, The Luddites. A few administrative notes before we begin today, and these are big ones. First, I finally got around to adding a store to the website, so you can purchase your Industrial Revolutions merchandise. I have both T-shirts and stickers, and these items support the podcast both financially and in how they help spread the word.
Go to www.industrialrevolutionspod.com slash store to get your T-shirt or sticker today. Second, I also finally got around to setting up a Patreon account. Now, I did so in the height of summer, which was a bad idea. Nothing ever gets done in the summer, so I'll be promoting the Patreon in about a month.
But if you'd like to become a patron and join the ranks of the Industrial Revolutionaries, now you can. Go to patreon.com slash indrevpod, and you know it, that's patreon.com slash i-n-d-r-e-v-p-o-d. For just $1 per month, you'll be a spinning genie, and you'll get footnotes for each episode. Ever since Chapter 14, I've been adding footnotes to the script of each episode, but not releasing them.
They're not on the website, not in the episode notes. They only exist in my Microsoft Word files. I'll send each transcript with footnotes to Patreon supporters each week. For $2 per month, you'll be a steam engine, and in addition to the footnotes, I'll send you a monthly book review.
I read a lot of books for this podcast, some of which I'll be recommending in these book reviews. For $3 per month, you'll be electric lighting from the 2nd Industrial Revolution, and in addition to the weekly footnotes and the monthly book reviews, I'll give you a shoutout on air and in the e-newsletter once a month. For $5 per month, you'll get all the other perks mentioned up until now, plus a free t-shirt. And for $10 per month, you'll get all other benefits mentioned, and you'll be included in the Industrial Revolution's Advisory Council.
As an official advisor, you'll have a direct line to me to discuss the direction of the podcast. We'll gather ahead of time to map out the next three Industrial Revolutions and the years between them. Plus, I'll be sending you surprise gifts from time to time, and who doesn't like a surprise gift. Again, go to www.patreon.com slash inderevpod to become a sustaining supporter today.
I'll also put that link in the episode notes. Thank you. Now, it wasn't the 1790s when workers started revolting against the machines. That had been going on for centuries.
Ever since the stocking frame, a humble machine by our standards for weaving textiles, was invented in the 16th century. Protests are riots against it that would break out from time to time. The 17th century is full of such risings, especially after the Lovelers and the Diggers of the English Civil War popped onto the scene. Things started coming down for a while in the 18th century, but when John K invented his fly shuttle, which you'll recall from Chapter 5 kickstarted this whole culture of mass production in the 1730s and 40s, he apparently had to be carried out of his village in a burlap sack to escape the angry local weavers.
The machines, like the stocking frame and fly shuttle, made production of cloths more efficient and the cloths themselves more affordable, which would have been great if all the weavers using the machines could actually afford these machines. Instead, they usually needed to rent their stocking frames from merchants who contracted them and who pocketed most of the profits. To build a fly shuttle for their cottage required cash they didn't usually have. Those who could afford to buy their own machines got rich, and those who couldn't got squeezed out of the market.
For the traditional grain millers of London, who we discussed last week, lower bread prices were a bad thing, and for traditional weavers across England, lower textile prices were a bad thing. They had been the first profession given guild status back in the year 1100 as a means of stabilizing their incomes. Now they were getting so poor that many just gave up and went into the factories of the burgeoning capitalists. And as they entered the factories, they were producing goods with machines owned by their employers, a striking departure from the rest of history.
Additionally, there was little opportunity for advancement, little upward mobility in the new factory system. For every one worker who moved up the ladder into the ranks of a foreman, dozens, or even hundreds of other workers stayed behind. Many were literally abused by their bosses, who whipped them or forced them to wear lead weights around their neck, for infractions as trivial as whistling on the job. And many of these workers were children under the age of 10.
If the child workers tried to escape, bounty hunters would catch them, bring them back, and then they'd face even harsher punishments. Outside the factories, in the old days, workers had the guilds to look out for them. But in 1799 and 1800, Parliament passed the Combination Acts, making it illegal for factory workers to combine themselves into bargaining units. Labor unions wouldn't become legal in Britain for more than 20 years.
So there was little that the workers could do, but many took to small forms of resistance. Some embraced this concept of the lump-o-labor, where they would work only as long and hard during the day as they were getting paid to, no more. And if they saw an opportunity to increase productivity, they did not tell the boss. Others took to outright industrial sabotage.
They stole tools or materials, dirty the equipment, took days off without telling anybody. And one legendary worker started a movement when he destroyed his boss's machine. In 1779, there was a boy apprenticed to a cottage industry weaver in the village of Anstee near Leicester, England. His job was to operate the stocking frame.
Now this was a boring monotonous job, and he started slacking off. As a punishment, his master whipped him and demanded he pick up the pace. So incorrigible was the situation that the boy in a bit of rage found a hammer and smashed the stocking frame to pieces. His name was Edward Ludd, Ned for short.
Ned Ludd took off. He may not have been the smartest boy, but he was determined to end the tyranny of the stocking frame and other machines. Hiding in the nearby Sherwood Forest, like the infamous Robin Hood had so many centuries earlier, he would go from town to town and destroy the increasingly industrial machines of the age. At least, that's the legend.
Truth be told, there probably was no Ned Ludd, or if there was, there's no reliable historical evidence of him. That didn't stop the story from spreading, though, and in the three-plus decades following his legendary exploits, workers from across England would occasionally take to destroying the machines they worked with, and when it happened, they would, perhaps jokingly, blame it on Ned Ludd. Adding to the legend were supposed sightings by those who feared Ludd, mill owners and militiamen. One described him as a towering, strapping figure with a ghostly white complexion, brandishing a pike in his hand, like a sergeant's halberd, and a sinister look in his beady eyes.
One of stocking frames, engines, mills, manufacturing equipment, and other tools and machines became such a problem that in 1788 parliament passed the Protection of Stocking Frames, etc. act. If you were a worker who deliberately damaged your boss's machine, you were subject to fines, or even imprisonment. Total destruction of the machine was a felony, and guilty parties would be exiled to Australia for seven to fourteen years.
And yet, no one was prosecuted under the law. The problem continued. In May 1807, 6,000 angry weavers marched in Manchester to protest the unlivable eight shellings per week they were earning for an 80-hour work week. The crowd was broken up, but it grew to 15,000 the next day, and cavalrymen there to keep the peace fired into the crowd, killing one and injuring dozens.
Illegal worker strikes followed, and meetings were held. Dragoons would come in to break up the meetings and arrest those who participated in this labor action. So, workers retaliated by attacking the local factories and mills. They smashed windows and dumped corrosive sulfuric acid over power looms, rendering them useless.
While some were horrified by the violence and destruction of property, most of the public sympathized with and even supported the weavers. It was snowballing into a full-fledged movement. And as it did, the myth of Ned Ludd gathered steam and was romanticized. Not only was he a great outlaw in popular imagination, but a great leader.
He'd be referred to as King Ludd, or General Ludd. Ballads were written about him, including General Ludd's triumph. Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robinhood, his feats I but little admire. I will sing the achievements of General Ludd, now the hero of Nottinghamshire.
These engines of mischief were sentenced to die by unanimous vote of the trade, and Ludd, who can all opposition defy, was the grand executioner made. What the haughty no longer the humble oppress, then shall Ludd's sheath his conquering sword, his grievances instantly meet with redress, then peace will be quickly restored. Then, beginning in March 1811, mill owners and local newspapers began receiving letters from General Ned Ludd and his army of redressers. And suddenly hundreds of young men in secretive, roaming terror squads began breaking into textile mills and destroying the machines.
The British press dubbed them Luddites. In 1789, the inventor Edmund Cartwright patented a power loom, an automated weaving machine that could be powered by a watermelon or a steam engine, and it could weave twice as fast as a hand loom weaver. To the weavers, the stocking frame and the fly shuttle had been bad enough. The power loom was devastating.
It was first adapted in 1790 by a Manchester firm that installed 30 of the machines before the factory was burned to the ground, possibly by underemployed local weavers. Nevertheless, the power loom got better and better, as engineers tinkered with it, and by 1803 there were about 2400 in Great Britain, putting already weary weavers out of work and reducing incomes for those weavers still working. Those weavers still working were, more and more, working de-scaled jobs. On top of that, the prices of everyday resources, like food, soap, and coal, were increasing, as those resources were being redirected to the war effort against Napoleon, and in short supply for the domestic market.
At the same time, exports to the continent came to a standstill, hindering economic growth. The first Luddite attack came on March 11th of 1811, when a band of newly unemployed weavers broke into the most prominent textile mills in the village of Arnold, near Nottingham. In just hours, they destroyed 63 machines. Over the next three weeks, they attacked more mills and dismantled 200 more stocking frames.
Who were these Luddites? Nobody really knows. They were incredibly secretive, but they were an enormous movement, organized, disciplined, and militant. It seems that most of them were men in their early to mid-20s, hailing from the lower classes of Northern England.
To join up, they needed a fiery passion and an unbreaking loyalty to the movement. Recruits went through an initiation ceremony, in which they were blindfolded and escorted to a secret location on the edge of town, somewhere they weren't familiar with, and led by 10 elders wearing burlap sacks to conceal their faces. Even the blindfold was removed, and they would recite an oath of secrecy. I never will reveal to any person, under the canopy of heaven, the names of the persons who composed the secret committee, their proceedings, meeting, places of abode, dress, features, connections, or anything else that might lead to the discovery of the Brotherhood.
Swear that I will use my best endeavors to punish by death any traitor. To seal the oath, they would kiss a leather-bound Bible, a right they called the Kissing of the Book. In the textile region between Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Nottinghamshire, which the authorities dubbed the Luddite Triangle, the Vandals built their movement, conducting drills in the woods with hundreds of men, preparing for nighttime raids. They would be stealthy, quick, and methodical.
The Luddites smeared their faces in cold dust, or wore their scarves up to their eyes, so as not to be recognized. They carried every imaginable weapon, pistols, hammers, axes, swords, clubs. They stayed physically fit, and practiced ways to rapidly dismantle a stocking frame or a power loom, created a form of sign language, and memorized cues. For example, a lookout would watch for the authorities, and when they'd approach, he'd fire a pistol shouting, Ned Ludd, and the men would sneak out into the shadows undetected.
The Luddites would plaster strongly-burded posters on the doors of the textile factories, protesting the crimes of the owners. Before they attacked, they would notify the victim, or the local press, ahead of time, giving the machine owner the opportunity to reform his business first. The letters would always be signed by Ned Ludd, sometimes as King Ludd of Nottingham, or as General Ludd in his Army of Redressers, or from the office of Ned Ludd in Sherwood Forest. The public, who sympathized with the plight of the weavers, loved what was happening.
The government? Not so much. After the first attack, hundreds of special constables were sent to Northern England to protect mills that were potential targets. Huge cash rewards were offered, one of which by the Prince Regent, to anyone who could inform on any of the Luddites.
In November that year, about a dozen Luddites attacked the home and mill of Edward Hollingsworth, who woke up to the sounds of them prying the iron bars off the mill building before smashing in the door of his house. But when they returned a week later to finish the job, they found Hollingsworth had hired armed security. The main next was a gun battle. A young Luddite named John Wesley was shot and cried, proceed my brave fellows, I die with a willing heart.
Instead, his comrade scooped him up and fled into the woods. Hollingsworths men sheared, but about an hour later, the Luddites returned, blinded by rage. They subdued the guards, destroyed all the equipment in the mill, then destroyed the Hollingsworth family's furniture, and set their house on fire. They took off into the woods yet again, and were never found.
Luddite attacks continued across the region in the weeks that followed, and even included a march on London, when hundreds of Luddites set out from an ale house in Nottinghamshire to destroy some 70 stocking frames all those miles away. As they marched, they sang songs about their mythical general, Ned Ludd. As news of the attacks spread across the country, so did the movement. As one local official described, quote, almost every creature of the lower order, both in town and country, are on their side.
By the end of 1811, another 150 stocking frames were destroyed in various village mills and cottages. Some of the Luddite demands were more realistic than others. Sometimes they wanted business owners to abandon their power looms and bring back hand looms. Others advocated for the advance of power looms to simply slow down.
Still others suggested a system of profit sharing or redistribution in the mega factories. In the face of Luddite popularity, several business owners actually conceded or willingly negotiated. Others would laugh in their faces and stock up on security. Among the latter was William Radcliffe in Stockport outside Manchester.
On the afternoon of March 20th, 1812, a pistol rang outside his factory, giving the signal for 2,000 Luddites to attack. They threw stones, smashing the factory windows. An armed guard fired, hoping to scare off the Luddites. But then the other guards started firing too, and soon three people died and ten were wounded.
A week later, Luddites attacked a mill in Middleton, and four were shot dead by snipers on the roof. Then hundreds of men marched through the streets of Middleton to join the riders. They carried muskets, mining picks, and a straw man, representing General Ludd, waving a red flag. The government vastly increased the presence of the army, militias, and special constables throughout the country.
At least 12,000 troops were sent to the Luddite Triangle. Never before had so many British soldiers gone to quell a domestic uprising. Hundreds of spies were sent to infiltrate the Luddites, but they could never break the shell of the tight-lit society. In March, Parliament passed the destruction of stocking frames, etc.
of 1812, significantly upping the penalties for the crimes laid out in the 1788 bill. Now the destruction of stocking frames was a crime punishable by death. Four months later, the government decreed that anyone who took illegal oaths would be immediately sentenced to hanging. In response, the office of Ned Ludd issued a declaration, which they sent to the Nottingham Review in December.
Quote, The framework knitters do hereby declare the aforesaid act to be null and void to all intents and purposes, by order of King Ludd, Nottingham. Sorry, I mixed up the dates here. That letter was actually sent to the December before, so it is referring to the original destruction of stocking frames, etc. But by this point, the movement had already peaked.
In April, 1812, 150 Luddites marched on the raw field's mill in Yorkshire, planning to destroy 50 water-powered wool shearing frames. They beat down the front door with sledgehammers and broke the windows with rocks. The mill owner and ten of his workers grabbed their guns, set up a barricade of furniture, and sounded an alarm bell to alert a nearby cavalry unit. An alarm bell installed just a few days earlier for this exact scenario.
For the next 20 minutes, the two sides exchanged gunfire, as the mill workers kept the luddites at bay. As the cavalry approached, the luddites fled into the thick fog of the woods. Two wounded luddites, Samuel Hartley and John Booth, remained behind, dying. The cavalrymen demanded they surrender the names of their comrades, but they kept silent.
A clergyman was sent for, to offer an opportunity to the men to confess their sins before they died. A tactic the cavalry hoped would lead to some information. When the clergyman offered this opportunity to Booth, the shivering, wounded man asked them, can you keep a secret? The clergyman nodded enthusiastically and linged in.
"'So can I,' Booth said, grinning,' he died moments later. But while that commitment to secrecy was impressive, the attack had failed. The furious Yorkshire luddites then decided to wreak violence not just on machines, but machine owners as well. In particular, they targeted one William Horsefall, a successful industrialist with a terrible reputation, who would tell anyone willing to lessen how he wished to, quote, write up to his stirrups in luddite blood.
They stalked him for weeks, diligently recording his every move to learn his habits and routines. Then on April 28, 1812, as Horsefall was riding his horse, four luddites appeared from the bushes with rifles and assassinated him. As he liked dying in the street, several local residents passed them by, unwilling to help the man they believed was an oppressor of the poor. Over the next eight months, the government rounded up workers suspected of luddite sympathies and tortured them, extracting the names of about a hundred men, most of whom probably weren't luddites, who they arrested and tried in a mass 10-day trial.
Seventeen men were sentenced to death, three for the murder of Horsefall, and fourteen for the raid on Raphael's mill. After the Horsefall assassination, the luddite raids started dying down. The last few attacks came as late as 1813 and then petered out, although several luddites would go on to participate in other militant worker uprisings over the next decade. But the heavy-handed government response must have been an effective deterrent, and chances are the public sympathies for the luddites, and perhaps even the luddites' commitment to their own cause began to wane when they started planning assassinations.
And English workers became generally less hostile, or at least less violent, to the changing economic order as it happened, because the second generation of industrial workers practically raised from childhood in the factories just didn't have the memories of pre-industrial life their parents did. Nowadays, the word luddite generally carries negative connotations. It's used to describe someone who's intellectually weak or grouchy about technological change when they can't keep up with it. It's a description in keeping with the propaganda used against the luddites in the early 19th century.
It's a slight that ignores the real sense of indignity and haplessness they were experiencing, as well as the sophisticated terrorist tactics they used. The sense that technological advancement could put everybody out of a job never went away, and just take the legend of John Henry or the stories of I-Robot. Many economists who argue such a state of technological unemployment is unlikely refer to this feeling as the luddite fallacy. And today there are anarcho-primitivists who describe themselves as neo-luddites.
Like the Millers and Millmen, who may have burned down the Albion Mills, the luddites gradually faded into labor history, the extent of their war largely forgotten. The luddites didn't write memoirs. They mostly kept silent about their roles in the fight, still committed to that culture of secrecy. Only sometimes they passed the luddite songs down to their children and grandchildren.
Instead, they got involved in later phases of the labor movement, like the 10-hour campaign in Chardism, which we'll get into in future episodes. They fought for economic security, political representation, and more. But the opposition to technological advancement died down as a practical economic or political objective. And that was probably for the best, because Britain and the world just kept innovating.
By the end of the 18th century, human beings had created industrial factories for mass production, built sprawling yet dense cities, cured smallpox, and assembled coal-powered engines for their mills and modes of transportation. They had even done something so unnatural, so seemingly impossible that it could have only been found before in fiction. They learned how to fly next week on the Industrial Revolutions. There are many ways to support the Industrial Revolutions.
Just go to www.industrialrevolutionspod.com to shop with fanatics or ink file, to make a donation via Patreon or PayPal, to buy a t-shirt or sticker from the website store, or to sign up for the e-newslayer. Thanks again.