On this day in engineering history, Britain's House
of Lords ignored a plea to spare the lives of the Luddites, textile artisans
who destroyed mechanized looms to protest a loss of work and preserve their
livelihoods. The Luddites' defender, Lord George Gordon Byron, was a poet and purveyor
of Romanticism, an artistic and intellectual movement that railed against the
scientific rationalization of nature. Romanticism bloomed during Great Britain's
Industrial Revolution, a time of technological change when machine-based
manufacturing replaced manual labor.
The Luddites
The Luddites were a group of craft workers who feared that
industrialization would doom their manual trades. The movement took its name from Ned
Ludd, a folkloric figure who had smashed several knitting machines during the
1770s. In 1811, Ludd's disciples sent letters to factory owners near Nottingham and called upon the industrialists to forsake
textile machinery. The owners installed the new equipment, however. Salaries
were cut and jobs were lost. The Luddite movement then spread across Britain,
becoming violent at times. Moving under dark of night, the angry artisans broke
into locked factories to smash the new machines.
Wheat Prices and Frame
Breaking
During the winter of 1812, wheat prices soared. Unemployed
weavers and croppers grew desperate – and increasingly violent. In one
three-week period, the Luddites destroyed more than 200 stocking frames across
northern England.
In response, the government of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval asked Parliament
to make "machine-breaking" a capital offense. Lord Byron opposed Perceval's
efforts in the House of Lords, explaining that the Luddites' recent acts of
violence were the product of "circumstances of the most unparalleled distress." This
"once honest and industrious body of the people," Byron claimed, had become
"miserable men" driven by "nothing but absolute want".
Ultimately, Prime Minister Perceval prevailed. The Frame
Breaking Act of 1812 made it a capital offense for anyone convicted of "machine
breaking", the willful destruction of mechanized looms or cloth-finishing
machinery. The British government also ordered 12,000 troops into regions where
the Luddites had been the most destructive. Nevertheless, the displaced workers continued
their nighttime campaigns, even burning down the home of a factory owner.
The Death of a
Movement
In the summer of 1812, eight Luddites in Lancashire were sentenced to death
and 13 sent to the penal colony of Australia for attacks on cotton
mills. Another fifteen were executed at York.
Casualties of the Luddite movement's demise included Abraham Charlston, a
12-year old boy.
As Lord Byron once wrote (though not in reference to the
Luddites), "Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?"
Resources:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/dayintech_0227
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gordon_Byron,_6th_Baron_Byron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
http://everything2.com/node/600390
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lord_byron.html
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Re: February 27, 1812 – Rage Against the Machines
