The Luddites: Misunderstood Working Class Heroes
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and we're about to break our computers just to get in the mood for this episode. Good job. Do you think so? Because a lot of times you say like, oh, that was great, or way to go, or something like that, and I'm like, that was not that good, and that's a good example of that. No, I don't mean that joke. I mean the...

The article you put together, just like the old days. Oh, good. Okay, good. So it's clear you're not gaslighting me about my jokes being good. No, this article is great. The joke was mid. Let's do it. All right, let's do it. So we're talking about Luddites, and I think just about everybody in the English-speaking world and probably beyond are familiar with the Luddites to some degree or not.

But just as a little background refresher, the Luddites were a group of textile workers living at the beginning of the 19th century in the Midlands in the north of England, which had recently become industrialized. And they didn't like the machines that were the new technology for using for making textiles. So they broke them all.

And that's the Luddites. There's nothing more to understand. There's no more nuance to them than that. Well, yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of people may not even know where the name came from and may just think Luddite is a word for someone who is afraid of technology or hates technology. It's kind of been co-opted as such. But as we will learn, you're being coy.

And there is a lot of nuance. And what the Luddites really were, were a people that got together, some craftsmen and artisans that got together and were sort of the first workers' rights people who very reasonably tried to make workers' rights deals in the face of the Industrial Revolution and only turned to this after that failed. Yeah. So this was the first instance of capitalism kind of steamrolling over labor. Yeah.

Really steamrolling. Steamrolling over, yeah. Steamrolling over labor and labor's rights and basically taking care of labor and being equitable and fair and profit sharing. The first instance. And so they were the first people to fight against it. And sadly, they were the first people to lose that battle. First of many. Yeah. They were the Bernie bros of the day. So let's go back, way back.

Not all the way back. Let's just go back to 2012, Chuck. Oh, sure. Because I like this anecdote. Yeah, yeah. That was the Summer Olympics that I believe Danny Boyle curated the opening ceremony and all that stuff that year, right? Yeah. The 2012 London Olympics, Summer Olympics. In the opening ceremony, there was kind of a super brief synopsis of English history.

Yeah, that's what you do. Yeah, it was really great. Just like France did. Right, exactly. So there's this moment in the opening ceremonies where the people all move from the countryside to the city. And if I remember correctly, I'm doing this from memory, they were hearkened by men in black suits wearing stove top or stovepipe hats.

OK. And what that represented was the beginning of industrialization. Like we tend to think of the Industrial Revolution here in America is happening here in America. That was the second one. The first one had taken place 100 to 50 years before in England, specifically in the north of England and like towns like Manchester and Liverpool.

And the reason that everybody was being called from the countryside to the city, figuratively and literally, was because that's where the machines are. The new machines that had been perfected using steam power that could automate all sorts of different processes that used to have to be done by hand. They were big and they were cumbersome and they were expensive. So rather than people doing stuff in their home anymore, they had to go to where the machines are to do work now. That was a radical change.

Yeah, a big change. And that same change, you know, we've talked about plenty of times in terms of our American experience here. But like you said, it happened previously in England. Same deal. People from the country moving into the city, steam power running the show. And the first industry over there to kind of get smashed in the face with that new reality was the textile industry. And there in the Midlands of England, am I even saying that right? Because we're about to say a lot of

I think it's pronounced the Midlands. It's spelled Midlands, but it's pronounced Worcestershire. Right. But all over that area, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicester, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire? Mm-hmm. Cheshire? Yeah. The Cheshire Cat. Okay. Did I get all those? Why is Leicester the only one that's not pronouncing the shirr? It is. That's Leicestershire.

Oh, did I say it wrong to begin with then? No, no. You just left off the sure. And so just a little note, because I didn't understand this until I finally just went and looked it up. Like Leicester is the main town, the county seat, if you will, of the larger county of Leicestershire. So when there's a suffix of S-H-I-R-E on the end of a town name, that refers to the county. And the town is usually the biggest town or the main town in that county. Finally cleared that up. So in those areas...

This is where the textile artisans and, you know, there were workers, they were craftspeople, tradespeople. They went through sort of that traditional route where you're an apprentice, you learn the craft. They had these robust trade unions and guilds that made sure the quality of the worker was up to snuff, the quality of the product and the materials were all up to snuff.

And they had this good deal going with the merchant class up to that point where these wealthy merchants basically funded the operations and then split the profits. They would say, here, we're going to put a loom in your house. These hand looms aren't too huge. They can fit in your barn.

We're going to give you some good high quality materials to spin and we'll split the profits in a way that works for both of us. And they had a good life. They were like working three or four days a week at home and like, you know, making textiles and, and,

Earning a good living. Yeah. So and there is a quote from a guy named William Gardner, who was a stocking maker at the time, which was a huge industry right at the beginning or up until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And he said the year was checkered with holidays, wakes, which are festivals held in honor of patron saints and fairs. It was not one dull round of labor.

And like it was just a much more leisurely life than what was about to come. And the thing that's so gripping about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and specifically the initial disruption in the textile industry is that it happened overnight. I mean, we're talking the span of like maybe 10, 12, 15 years ago.

People went from they just worked at home three or four days a week to having to work 12 to 13 hour days, seven days a week in a factory just to make less money than they had been making before at home. Yeah. And the other thing, too, was this wasn't like the beginning of automation. There had been automation in textile manufacturing for a little while before.

at this point, but, and this is very key. Queen Elizabeth one saw the writing on the wall way back in the day and said, Hey, William Lee, you want a patent for this machine? Uh, you can't have one cause that's going to put too many people out of work. Uh, so it's very interesting that, you know, long before this happened, uh, you know, with the, with the Luddites, Queen Elizabeth, the first like saw what was coming. Yeah. That was pretty prescient for sure.

And so, yes, that's a big misconception. People are like, these machines just came up out of nowhere and all of a sudden it just disrupted everything. No, the machines have been there for hundreds of years. What changed was the way that the machines were used.

and that they were improved along the way. Like the machine that William Lee invented in 1580 compared to the machines that were being used in 1780 or 1800 or 1810 were pretty different. The ones that came later were much, much better. And that there were a bunch of different machines that were used in the weaving textile creation process that had all become improved enough that you could put them all together and

and have, and create a mill. That was part one of why this all kind of happened at the time that it did. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you have a factory, it can't just be the machine that makes the thing. You need all the other machines to automate that process as well if you want a really efficient system. Right. And so that's what happened. One of the other things that happened to kind of, you know, and again, we keep saying steamroll or steam power, but this thing was full steam ahead. Yeah.

Stop. When Adam Smith wrote a book in 1776 called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, no colon. No. And we've talked a lot about Adam Smith on the show. And he was the guy that basically said, hey, you know what?

Uh, free markets, the way to go, laissez faire economics is a way to go. Let people stay out of things. Let the market work it out. Let the manufacturers and the business owners work it out with the workers, uh,

And the merchant class, like, why are you splitting on these profits? Like, you should be keeping the lion's share of this stuff. And the merchant class was like, I love this book. Yeah. And to be fair to Adam Smith, like he wasn't advocating for workers to get completely screwed over. His arguments and his ideas and his theory of free market competition were interpreted in a way by the merchant class to mean that.

that they should be self-interested and maximize profits as much as they could. He wasn't necessarily expressly saying that. He almost seems to have been a little naive, or at the very least, he didn't predict the way that his theory would be used, I think. Oh, I mean, I think that's exactly the thing, was he thought...

But when he was saying it'll work itself out, he wasn't saying to the benefit of few and the detriment of many. He was saying they'll all just kind of like, as we will see, that England did. They were kind of like, hey, you guys will work this out and we should just stay out of it. And I'm sure you'll come to a fair agreement. Yeah. So kind of I guess kind of like the pendulum is going to swing this way and then it'll swing back that way and that way. And they'll finally just settle in the middle. Yeah.

But the pendulum ended up swinging one way toward owners, management, capital, and just got stuck there midair and has been there ever since. Yeah, that's a pendulum. What do you call a pendulum that doesn't swing anymore? A stick. Sounds like a riddle. Okay. So we got a stick now. So there was a third factor, too, and that was the economic background of England at the turn of the 19th century. It was in a really big recession at the time.

Yeah, they had been at war with Napoleon for a long time. That's going to drain your, you know, your resources as a nation. And then they also, because they were at war with France, had blockades against each other, which shut down a big trade partner. Those markets that were open to those merchants in England were suddenly closed. And it hit everyone across the board in England. Like there was like...

Families were going hungry for the first time in a long time. Yeah. People who had been able to escape, you know, previous recessions were getting hit hard. So the reason that this is important is that, first of all, now you have desperate workers who are in a situation that they need help.

which puts them at a disadvantage. And then at the same time, you also have a good reason, especially now that everyone's read The Wealth of Nations, for the owners of these looms, what were the merchant class and are about to become the first industrialists,

They have a good reason to replace workers with automated machines because profits are starting to dwindle. You want to maximize profits. So that's a really great way to do it. Replace a bunch of people who you have to pay like a fair wage to with some machines that you just pay for up front and then hire some teenager to make sure it keeps running and pay him peanuts for doing so. Boy, this was...

the beginning of the downfall of everything because this is the beginning of, hey, man, this stuff's not going to be as good, but who cares? We can make it for cheap and we can sell it for cheaper and if they wear out, people can just buy another cheap version of it that we'll make. It's like this was the beginning of the drop of... and craftsmanship and quality and everything. I think that's why I find this period so fascinating because it...

Yeah.

was not the new technology, was not the unfair treatment, was not the poor wages. It was the decline in the quality of what was being produced. What formerly, like socks essentially, stockings, what had been produced before with great craftsmanship and sold at a fair price, was now being made really cheaply and sold cheaply. And that's what really set off the people who were in the textile industry to basically riot later on.

Yeah. I mean, what it did was it put them in a position where they were, you know, if you wanted to stay out of that and remain because it's not like every single small, you know, business textile craftsperson went out of business overnight. Right. Like they were like, I could keep this open. Like I actually own my own loom.

But now I have to, you know, use cheaper goods and sell them cheaper if I want to keep up or, you know, just give up and go work for them. And neither one of those were good prospects. No, no, because there were zero regulations at the outset of this. So the mill owners just did whatever they wanted. And you could either go out on the street and starve or you could come work for me under my terms.

And so the work in the mills was really difficult. They kept it really damp in there. So tuberculosis would run rampant and kill a bunch of people. The fabric, like little particles of fabric could give you lung damage. The machines altogether were really loud so they could give you hearing damage. And the machines were really dangerous too. Like people would lose their lives, including children that again were working 13, 14 hour days, seven days a week at the mill.

Yeah. And they didn't need those artisans anymore because they could train a 17-year-old to run these automated, you know, the automated machinery. And this was like, you know, this was the birth of capitalism when the quality went down, prices went down, fewer and fewer workers getting paid less for more work, and the people that own the joint getting rich. Right. But –

And I think for those of us alive today, because capitalism was birthed this way, a lot of people are like, well, capitalism doesn't work. It's inherently exploitive. That's not true. It was just born that way. It doesn't have to be that way, but it was born that way and it was allowed to remain that way and grow up that way so that.

It's just so commonplace now that people think like that's the only way it can be. And I firmly believe that there's an equitable way to do capitalism. Yeah. Just not doing it, that that's what the issue is. And that this is where that started. Yeah. That ship has sailed, my friend. I disagree. That stick is not moving. Disagree. Oh, you think there's going to be a big change in that? I think...

Yeah, I think there can be. I'm not saying there definitely will be, but I think that there's the potential for it. Sure. I don't think it's completely, it's just going to be that way forever, not necessarily. It could be, but I don't think that it's definitely going to be. That's my take. All right. Well, I admire your optimism. So shall we take a break? Yeah. All right. All right.

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Sign up at WorkMoney. Get money-saving tips. Skip the rent. Get more rich. Sign up at WorkMoney.org slash MoreRichContest for your chance to win $50,000. This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not

See eye to eye on every issue. But America, we are not going back. Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station. All right. One thing that we mentioned in Act 1. You like that? Fancying this thing up a little bit? We forgot to introduce the gun that goes off in Act 3.

Oh, that's right. You know what? I found out who that was. That was Chekhov that said that. Yeah. You finally found that out? Sure. I thought it was you. No. Are you serious? You thought that was me? No, I knew it was kind of like a trope, but I didn't know that Chekhov had come up with it. I guess I'm not so familiar with 19th century plays as you.

Well, you probably never took drama class or dumb English classes where you read dramas. Well, what's sad is I was the tried and true drama kid in high school. Were you really? Yeah, we just didn't do any Chekhov. It was all slapstick comedy in my high school. Well, if the rubber chicken is introduced in Act 1. It comes back to life and kills everyone in Act 3.

All right, where was I? Okay, Act I, when we spoke of the misconception that Luddites are afraid of technology. And I hinted a little further about what I'm going to say now, which is...

And they tried to they tried to work it out. They weren't like, oh, my gosh, industrialization is happening. We need to fight it tooth and nail. They were more like, hey, it looks like this is happening. So let's you know, there's going to be a man one day named Josh Clark.

who will believe that this can still happen, we want to make it fair for everyone. So like, we'll do this. We'll do this work. Give us a minimum wage, make these working conditions safe, maybe tax these goods some to create these pensions for people that you're definitely putting out of work.

And let's like just roll this out slowly. Let's not just go full steam ahead here and give people time to like learn how to do something else. And they went, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Yeah. And that's just so contrary to what people think of as the Luddites today. I mean, if you even know about the Luddites beyond...

you know, the modern use of the word, that there was an actual group, you probably still don't think that they were a reasonable group. That's not exactly what they're known for because they broke a bunch of machines. But that was exactly their initial response. They wanted in, but they wanted in fairly. And so, like you said, the responses to the request were no, no, no, no, no. And it wasn't just the factory and mill owners that were saying no. The government was also saying no.

And essentially, when the workers went to parliament, when some labor-friendly parliamentarians, MPs, tried to get legislation passed that kind of helped workers be treated more fairly, it just did not pass. And the idea was, the reasoning was among parliament, that anything we would do would just screw things up.

Like any regulations we create are just going to hamper business, maybe put business people out of business. Their employees are going to be out on the street. And so a job where you're exploited is preferable to no job at all. And since any meddling we might do will possibly cause you to lose your job, we're just not going to get involved.

Yeah, but they did get involved. They got involved for the other side. Yeah, big time. In 1799, they passed the Combination Acts, which outlawed the trade gills that had kept them protected up until that point. It stopped them from collective bargaining. It outlawed strikes. So they took away basically any tool they would have to get fair treatment and better wages. And

And this is another key point, too, was they had had machines before. We talked about that. Queen Elizabeth, you know, not granting the patent, but the machines were still around since the mid 1700s. And some of those machines had been broken in the past in protest. But they augmented this law basically on the books that said, hey, if you start up with that stuff again, you're going to go to the gallows and be hanged in front of the town. Yeah.

So just to kind of put that into perspective today, imagine if hacking carried the death penalty. That's kind of akin to what it was like, but even more simplified than that. It'd be more like breaking the computer that your employer gave you when you were hired.

Like, on purpose. We're going into an Apple store with a crowbar. But imagine that that carried the death penalty. Yeah. So when you put all of that together, the government, parliament, was essentially saying, get to work, and whatever the mill owners tell you to do, you're going to do it. And if you try to resist, you got us to deal with. That's the way things are. That's essentially what parliament said. As the Luddites and the textile workers who have become Luddites—

We're trying to approach this from a reasonable manner.

Yeah, absolutely. And that started, you know, a couple of years of what the Luddites are known for, for busting these machines up and more, which we'll get to. But, you know, they pointed to the previous, you know, a couple of hundred years earlier when they had already been breaking machines. And that stuff happened, but it just kind of came and went. The Luddites were organized. There were a lot more of them. They were super coordinated.

One historian that you found said that, you know, talked about how well branded they were because they were they were known as something they were known as Luddites. Ironically, leaderless, even though supposedly this what by all accounts is an urban legend named Ned Ludd was their leader. Yeah. So just a little on Ned Ludd. It's it's pretty clear that Ned Ludd, especially as leader of the Luddites, never existed. He was fictitious. Right.

It's possible that there was somebody named Edward Ludlam who was the real life person that Ned Ludd became based on. But the story of the whole thing, the story of Ned Ludd is that in 1779, a young, I think he was a weaver named Ned Ludd was either told by his father or boss, whoever he was working for at the time to tighten his needles or square his needles, which means tighten his weave.

Or he was told to create cheaper products.

cheaper product faster. Either way, in a fit of rage, he broke his loom. He broke the machine that he was working on in protest. So this was 1779. And by the time that 1811 rolls around, which is when the Luddites really started to rise up, Ned Ludd was kind of like this catch-all in the textile community. Anytime something happened to a loom, it broke, it was purposely broken. It

You're going to hate this analogy, so I'm sorry in advance. But it was kind of like the family circus kids, Ida No. Yeah, I love it. Oh, wow. That was surprising. My teeth were clenched waiting for your response.

Yeah, I couldn't remember because there are other examples of that, of like a made up person of like so-and-so did it that weren't even real people. I just can't think of them. So family circus is the perfect analogy. OK, great. Well, thank you. Wow. I was not expecting this. I'm going to have to take a break here for a second. I mean, I hate the family circus still. You didn't win me over. OK. But I love the ref.

everything's back to normal good but regardless ned lud was kind of this urban legend um went by you know king lud captain lud uh general lud but all of this was the idea that he was the leader of the luddites uh when there was no clear leader uh i mean you know in different places depending where it was taking place there were of course people who might have led the charge

that night or for that operation but there was no like central leader yet they remained like highly organized yeah i mean like the luddites were an actual group that spread across the midlands and into yorkshire from 1811 to 1813 some people say 1816 because there was another uprising that year but really the the luddite revolution took place from 1811 to 1813 and um

There was a group of people, of textile workers, who had sworn a secret oath to this organization. But like you said, it was decentralized. There was no Ned Ludd. But they were so organized that the British government and the officials and the mill owners who were trying to break up this organization –

believed that there very much was a Ned Ludd. There had to be a Ned Ludd because who else was leading these people and stirring up unrest that was spreading across the northern part of the country? So I don't even think we mentioned like the very first thing that happened. That was in March of 1811 when a group of, you know, these what would be

known as Luddites a little bit later on, took to the streets in protest, of course, of their pay, their working conditions. The British troops came in, broke it up, and they dispersed, but they came back later that night, and that was the first night of this new, like, hey, let's break everything. They went to a mill, they trashed everything inside, and that was sort of the first rubber chicken fired in this new round of busting stuff up. Yeah.

That was March. The next big thing that happened was in November. There was a group of Luddites who attacked the home of Edward Hollingsworth, who was an owner of several automatic looms. He was, I guess, kind of like a craftsman merchant all rolled into one. The reason that he was targeted is because he was using those looms to make these new cheap stockings that had just completely undermined the entire stocking trade.

And so they broke all of the looms in the guy's house and left. And Edward Hollingsworth is like, well, at least they didn't burn my house down. And then a week later, the Luddites came back and burned his house down. Yeah, that was, yeah, it seemed like a little much. But it was a vengeful act that happened because they were mad.

Yeah. And so we should say there's a lot of attacks like this between 1811 and 1813. And it all started in Nottingham, sure, in Nottingham specifically. And it just kind of spread. It was a great idea among these pent up, angry textile workers whose entire worlds had just been upended.

So it spread very, very easily. And it was, I think, in a December issue of the Nottingham Review that the story of Ned Ludd was told. And that's when they became known as the Luddites. And so these textile workers, like I said, they swore a secret oath to protect this organization with their lives. And in doing so, they swore an allegiance to, like you said, King Ludd or General Ludd.

And, of course, the textile workers knew that Ned Blood didn't exist. And to kind of underscore that, they placed his base of operations in Sherwood Forest in Nottingham, which probably sounds familiar to anybody who's seen any version of Robin Hood. Yes. Very cheeky thing to do. For sure. Yeah.

One of the other misconceptions is that the Luddites were so angry that they just trashed everything with reckless abandon and went after everyone and tried to wreck all these factories. That wasn't the case. They were very targeted.

Anyone that was known to be like a good boss and a good factory owner who treated their employees more fairly, they did not go and trash their factory. The people who were known to be especially bad and egregious violators of workers' rights, they were targeted. But they even got letters beforehand a lot of times that were like, hey,

You got a chance here to change things. Otherwise, next week, we're going to trash your factory or move those things out of there, make some changes or it's happening. And they would not do that. Sometimes they would try and move their machinery out of there. But because these were kind of working class heroes, they would get tipped off on when these caravans were doing that. And so in the middle of the night, they would intercept these caravans.

And, you know, get them out there instead of in the factory. I just see the mill owners trying to remove their looms in the middle of the night, like Otho trying to escape in Beetlejuice. Have you seen the new trailer yet for the new one? No, and I don't want to see it. I just want to go into that movie completely unaware of everything. Well, you should. I mean, it looks like Beetlejuice. I hope I didn't spoil it. Yes, you did.

You didn't. That's fine. But, yeah, I'm very excited about seeing that. No, same here. I wanted to see that Broadway play, but it went away. Did it? Yeah, it was supposed to be really good, so I don't know if it just had its run and stopped or what. I'll bet it's playing in New Mexico somewhere. Well, I think there is a traveling version, so maybe it'll come through. I'll bet it's in New Mexico. Or New Mexico.

So they were breaking looms at a rate of about $175 a month. This got very costly for, you know, the machinery replacement costs, productivity not happening, not, you know, putting out these stockings and socks and things. And in 1812, things really, really changed for the scarier. And maybe that's a good time for another break.

Sure. I was not expecting that, but yes. All right. We'll keep everyone on the edge of their stockings and we'll be right back.

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Okay, Chuck, so you said 1812 was kind of like a watershed year and definitely was. Things got much more violent. Essentially, the Luddites and the Luddite movement as it was spreading across the Midlands and into Yorkshire became like engaged in all-out war with mill owners.

And it could be, you know, a handful of them wearing masks and carrying swords and muskets that would attack, you know, someone's house and break all their looms. It could be 2000 of them. Like what happened in one attack in March, I believe. Or it could be a couple of hundreds. One of the most famous was called the Battle of Rothfolds Mill in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. And there were between 100 and 200, depending on who you ask.

Former workers of that mill who stormed it one night. And it just got super violent. Yeah, because these owners had had enough. They start hiring armed guards like mercenaries basically to stand by and watch with their rifles.

And there was a gun battle to I believe two of the Luddites were shot. They later died. They retaliated. They assassinated William Horseball, which was a really sort of ardent anti Luddite. He had talked about riding up to his saddle, Gerson Luddite blood. And so they went after him, assassinated him.

In a bar. I think he ended up dying a couple of days later, but they shot him in the thighs, the hip, and the testicles.

And not that that's funny. I don't know why I laughed, but it just seemed like a particularly egregious thing to do. And they took him back to the bar where he was had been spouting off and drinking and he died there a couple of days later. Something ironic about that is that Horsefall, when he left that bar initially before he got shot, he had just bought a round of drinks for some of his workers. Yeah. Talk about irony.

One other thing to know about the Luddites is that their secret was not only kept by them, but by the communities that they came from. You might think like, okay, these guys are burning down mills and breaking machines. They're putting people out of work. And that's absolutely true. They also would go into people's homes and requisition weapons to use for raids. And yet, all of a sudden,

almost universally, they were beloved and kept secret by the local communities. And that's evidenced by the army of spies that the British government sent in to try to break up this movement who could get nowhere. They got nothing. And as a matter of fact, the spies started reporting back that there was such a person as Ned Ludd. They got so their efforts were just that frustrated. Right.

Yeah. So they've sent in spies. They're getting nowhere. There's actual bloodshed happening now at a quicker rate. And so they're like, we got to do something. We have to get involved militarily. And they sent in troops initially just to sort of quiet things down. They had 14,000 troops stationed there.

in the Midlands in Yorkshire, they had more people stationed there than they had fighting the war with Napoleon at the time. That's crazy. They, you know, they had some sort of effect, but they didn't completely like break the movement up. And so they finally said, all right, remember that death penalty stipulation we put in there about going into the Apple store with a crowbar and

We're going to start enforcing that. And they started hanging dozens of Luddites in public after hasty trials, sometimes even teenagers.

And that was what really got everyone's attention, that they could be put to death for this. Yeah, there was one particularly grim day in Lancashire where I think they hanged 14 Luddites, including, like you said, a teenager, a 16-year-old who'd only acted as a lookout for one of the raids. And they were clearly making an example out of these people. These were very public trials, very public hangings.

They built special gallows so they could hang multiple people at the same time. Like they were the British government was saying, like, we're just going to keep doing this. We're going to kill you if we catch you. So you better stop.

And that's what finally worked. Other people, by the way, were transported to Australia, sometimes for life. They would just take them there and be like, you're Australian now. Good for them. Right. All of that put together, the fact that now the one remaining tool they had in their toolbox to try to fight for equal treatment or at least better treatment at work,

was now, like, they would get the death penalty for that. That finally broke up the Luddite movement around 1813. Yeah, and they had about another dozen years of, you know, pretty bad treatment until finally there was a bit of a wake-up call for the British government. And in 1824, Parliament said, you know what, maybe unions are a decent idea after all. They repealed that ban on unions. But

Like I said, that ship had sailed. There was no putting the genie back into the bottle at this point. And like we mentioned a few times, the popular sort of view of Luddites these days is not entirely right. They didn't hate the technology. They tried to work things out in a fair way. They tried to stand up for workers' rights very early on.

And it seems like a lot of sort of the rewriting of that came from a novelist and scientist named C.P. Snow, who looks like it was the first person to kind of cast them as, you know, anti-technology, which was reinforced again in the 70s.

in New Scientist and other publications. Yeah. So at least by the 70s, if not earlier, Luddites were now synonymous with being afraid, usually irrationally afraid of technology or the future, or in some cases you were anti-capitalist is another way that some people use it, right? And that lasted that way for a while until Thomas Pynchon, the famous author of Gravity's Rainbow, among others,

In 1984, he wrote an essay essentially saying, like, I'm not so sure we should scoff at Luddites. He wrote an essay called Is It Okay to Be a Luddite? And basically said if you stop and look around at the way that technology is going, maybe we should be a little bit afraid. Maybe we should start questioning some of this stuff. And in 1984, he made a warning about, like, you really want to keep your eye on artificial intelligence in 84.

And what's really interesting is around 2023, I think there was an author named Brian Merchant who wrote a book called Blood in the Machine.

And he essentially said he did. He didn't cite Pinchon. I don't think I haven't read the books. Possibly did. But essentially what he was saying is that what Pinchon predicted has now come to roost. The AI is starting to creep closer and closer to this, creating a world that's even more upended, even more quickly, putting even more people out of work than what happened to the textile workers, the Luddites at the beginning of the 19th century.

Yeah. And he said, and then there shall be a Justine Bateman, who is the new Thomas Pinchon. What?

You know, we've talked about it before. She's the actor Justine Bateman from Family Ties. Of course. She's sort of the leading voice in Hollywood fighting against, you know, AI destroying Hollywood. Gotcha. Yeah. So, yeah, that's one thing that people are questioning. I mean, just that when ChatGPT came out, it was like, we know companies that actually fired people.

They're like, oh, good, we can fire you now. First chance they got, right? So it is worth questioning, and that's what Merchant and some of these neo-Luddites are saying. They're like, we should stop and say, like, okay, where's this technology going? Who exactly is making this technology that's going to totally change our world? How can we protect people who are about to lose their jobs? All the same questions the Luddites asked at the beginning of the 19th century and then faced the death penalty for trying to do something about. And the most ironic thing, Chuck,

The most ironic thing of all is the people who are questioning where artificial intelligence are going are being branded as Luddites. Yeah. And that's our show. We're going to do a Q&A. I know. That is how we end live shows, but not episodes. But it was just too perfect, man. Yeah, no. That was a very live showy ending. We just...

don't have our traditional handshake afterwards. We even held for applause for a second. We did. I heard none. So I'm taking it you got nothing else, right? I got nothing else. All right. Well, if you want to know more about Luddites, go read about them. Read about Neo-Luddites. Read about everything you can. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. This is from Cash, and this is about Dr. Bronner.

And this is going to include, we'll do a little business plug for cash too. Okay. Hey guys, just listened to the Dr. Bronner's episode and thought of a use that you guys didn't mention and maybe we'd get a kick out of. It is a fantastic insecticidal soap. I run a small gardening business in Portland, Maine.

one of our favorite towns, that focuses on designing and creating gardens that don't require much human input and no chemical input. Generally, I don't treat pests, and that's even in quotes, and let nature run its course. But for the particularly tough ones like scale and viburnum leaf beetle, I treat with Dr. Bronner's diluted with 1-6 water with a spray bottle.

Works wonders and has no negative ecological impacts. Love the show. You guys are great company on my long days working alone. And hey, if you are in Portland, Maine or nearby, check out Cash at Founder Opus Vine Gardens. Well, thanks a lot, Cash. And we are happy to plug your business. And if you want to be like Cash and send us an interesting email and plug your business at the same time, we are happy to do that. Email us at stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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