August 22, 2024 • 41 mins
Today we think of Luddites as people who don’t know how to use technology or are maybe even afraid of it. That’s pretty far from what the original Luddites were all about. They were the first workers to fight for fair treatment. They were not successful.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here tooon. We're about to break our
computers just to get in the mood for this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Good job, my friend.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Do you think so, because a lot of the 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.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
No, I don't mean that joke. I mean the the
article you put together, just like the old days.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh good, okay, good. So it's clear you're not gaslighting
me about my jokes being good.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Now, this article is great, the joke was mid Let's
do it.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
All right, let's do it. So we're talking about light heightes,
and I think just about everybody in the English speaking
world and probably beyond are familiar with the light eights
to some degree or not. But just as a little
background refresher, the Ludites were a group of textile workers
living at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the
Midlands in the north of England, which had recently become industrialized,
(01:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
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 cooi and there is a lot of nuance.
(01:48):
And what the Ludites 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.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, so this was the first instance of capitalism kind
of steamrolling over labor, the only steamrolling steamrolling over Yeah,
steam rolling 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
(02:31):
first people to lose that battle. First of many.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, they were the Bernie Bros. Of the day.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So let's go back way back, not all the way back,
let's just go back to twenty twelve, Chuck. Oh, sure,
because I like this anecdote.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, yeah, that was the Summer Olympics that I believe
Danny Boyle curated the opening ceremony and all that stuff
that year, right.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, the twenty twelve London Olympics, Summer Olympics, the opening
ceremony there was kind of a super brief synopsis of
English history.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, that's what you do. Yeah, it was really great,
just like France did, right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
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 harkened by men in black suits wearing stovetops or
stovepipe hats, okay, And what that represented was the beginning
of industrialization, like we tend to think of the Industrial
(03:35):
Revolution here in America's happening here in America. That was
the second one. The first one had taken place one
hundred to fifty years before in England, specifically in the
north of England and like sounds 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
(03:55):
where the machines are, the new machines that have 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.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
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
(04:40):
they're in the Midlands of England. Am I even saying
that right because we were about to say a lot
of Shires.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I think it's pronounced the Midland. Its spelled Midlands, but
it's pronounced Worcestershire.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Right, but all over that area Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicester, Lancashire,
Nottingham shure hmm, Cheshire.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, the Cheshire cat.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Okay, did I get all those? Why is Leicester the
only one that's not pronouncing.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
The sure it is that's Leicestershire.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Oh did I say it wrong to begin with? Then?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
No, No, you just left off the shore. 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 shire on the end of a town name,
that refers to the county and the town is usually
(05:39):
the biggest town or the main town in that county.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Finally clear that up. So in those areas, this is
where the Texas are artisans and you know there were workers.
They were crafts people, trades people. 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
(06:05):
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, it can fit in your barn. We're going
(06:27):
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 earning
a good living.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah. So, And there was 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 non our patron saints, and fairs. It was
not one dull round of labor, and like it was
(07:07):
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 in the span of like maybe ten twelve,
fifteen years. People went from they just worked at home
(07:31):
three or four days a week to having to work
twelve to thirteen hour days, seven days a week in
a factory just to make less money than they had
been making before at home.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah. And the other thing too, was this wasn't like
the beginning of automation. There had been automation and textile
manufacturing for a little while 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. You
(08:04):
can't have one because that's going to put too many
people out of work. So it's very interesting that, you know,
long before this happened, you know, with the Luddites, Queen
Elizabeth the first like saw what was coming.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, that was pretty precient for sure. And so 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
(08:38):
fifteen eighty compared to the machines that were being used
in seventeen eighty or eighteen hundred or eighteen ten 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 have and create a mill. That was a
(09:00):
that was part one of why this all kind of
happened at the time that it did.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
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. 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
(09:24):
and full steam ahead when Adams when Adam Smith wrote
a book in seventeen seventy six 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, free markets the way to go. Laissez
(09:47):
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 and the merchant class like, why are you
splitting all these profits? Like you should be keeping the
lion's share of this stuff. And the merchant class was like,
I love this book.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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 they should be self interested and maximize
(10:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I think, oh, I mean, I think that's exactly the
thing was he thought. 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,
(10:57):
and I'm sure you'll come to a fair agreement.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah. So kind of I guess, kind of like the
pendulum's going to swing this way, and then they'll swing
back that way and that way, and they'll finally just
settle in the middle. But the pendulum ended up swinging
one way toward owners management capital and just got stuck
their mid air and has been there ever since.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, that's a pendulum. What do you call a pendulum
that doesn't swing anymore? Sounds like a riddle. Okay, So
we got to stick now.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So there was a third factor too, and that was
the economic background of England. And at the turn of
the nineteenth century it was in a really big recession
at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
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,
but shut down a big trade partner. Those markets that
were open to those merchants in England were suddenly closed
(11:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
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 in 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
(12:27):
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
(12:48):
pay for upfront and then hire some teenager to make
sure it keeps running and pay them peanuts for doing so.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Boy, this was really the beginning of the downfall of everything.
Is 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 will make It's
(13:15):
like this was the beginning of the drop of in
craftsmanship and quality and everything.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I think that's why I find this period so fascinating,
because our modern world was created like here in this
like decade actually just a few years really, And it's
funny that you say the quality of goods went down,
because I've seen more than once it argued that the
thing that really sparked the Luddite movement was not the
new technology, was not the unfair treatment, was not the
(13:41):
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 that's what really set off
the people who were in the text industry to basically riot.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
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 crafts person went out of business overnight, like they
were like I could keep this open, like I actually
own my own loom, but now I have to, you know,
(14:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
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 parties of fabric could give you
(14:53):
long damage. The machines all together 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, we're working thirteen fourteen hour days, seven days
a week at the mill.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, and they didn't need those artisans anymore because they
could train a seventeen year old to run these automated
you know, the automated machinery. And this was like, you know,
this was the birth of capitalism. When quality went down,
prices went down, Fewer and fewer workers getting paid less
for more work, and the people that own the joint
(15:30):
getting rich.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Right. But I think for those of us alive today,
because capitalism was birth 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
(15:52):
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. Ye're just not doing it. That that's what
the issue is, and that that's this is where that started.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, that chip has sailed, my friend that I is
not moving disagree. Oh, you think there's going to be
a big change in that.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I think, Yeah, I think there can be. I'm not
saying there definitely will be, but I think that there's
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 is definitely
going to be. That's my take.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
All Right, Well, I admire you're optimism. So shall we
take a break. Yeah, all right, all right. One thing
(16:54):
that we mentioned in act one, uh, you like that?
Fancying this thing up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I forgot to introduced the gun that goes off in
Act three, That's right. You know what I found out
who that was? I was Chekhov that said that.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, you finally found that out.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sure, I thought it was you.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
No, Are you serious? You thought that was me?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
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 nineteenth century plays
as you.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, you probably never took drama class or dumb English
classes where you read dramas. Well.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
What's said is, I was they tried and true drama
kid in high school. So are you really Yeah, we
just didn't do any Chekhov. It was all slapstick comedy
in my high school.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, if the rubber chicken is introduced in act one.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It comes back to life and kills everyone in act three.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
All right, where was I? Okay? Act one 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 they tried to They tried
to work it out. They weren't like, oh my gosh,
(18:10):
industrialization's happening. We need to fight it tooth and nail.
They were more like, hey, it looks like this is happening,
so let's uh, you know, there's gonna 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
(18:31):
tax these goods 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.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, and that's just so contrary to what people think
of as the Ludites today. I mean, if you even
know about the lud Heights 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,
(19:11):
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
(19:33):
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.
(19:56):
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 will possibly cause you to lose your job,
we're just not going to get involved.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, but they did get involved, but they got involved
for the other side, Yeah, big time. In seventeen ninety nine,
they passed the Combination Acts, which outlawed the trade gills
that had kept them, you know, protected up into that point.
It stopped them from collective bargaining. It outlawed strikes, so
they took away basically any tool they would have to
(20:32):
you know, get fair treatment in better wages. 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 seventeen hundreds, and some of those machines had
been broken in the past in protest. But they augmented
(20:54):
this law basically on the books that said, hey, if
you start up with that stuff again, you're going to
to go to the gallows and be hanged in front
of the town.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
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 I'm perfecting.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Or going into an apple store with a crowbar.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
But imagine that that carried the death penalty. 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 blood heites and the textile workers who would
(21:49):
become ludites, we're trying to approach us from a reasonable manner.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, absolutely, And that started, you know, a couple of
years of what thees are known for for busting these
machines up and 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
(22:14):
of came and went. The Ludites 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
(22:37):
urban legend named ned Lud was their leader.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, so just a little on ned Lud. It's it's
pretty clear that ned Lud, especially as leader of the Luddites,
never existed. He was fictitious. It's possible that there was
somebody named Edward Ludlam who was the real life person
that ned Lud became based on. But the story of
(23:00):
the whole thing, the story of ned Luod, is that
in seventeen seventy nine, a young I think he was
a weaver named ned Lud 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 titan his weave, or he was told to create cheaper,
(23:24):
cheaper product faster. Either way, in a fit of rage,
he broke his loom, he broke the machine that he
was working on, and protest so This was seventeen seventy nine,
and by the time that eighteen eleven rolls around, which
is when the Ludites really started to rise up, ned
Lud was kind of like this catch all in the
textile community. Anytime something happened to a loom, it broke.
(23:47):
It was purposely broken. It was just kind of like
Ned Luod did it. You're gonna hate this analogy, so
I'm sorry in advance, but it was kind of like
the family Circus kids. I ton't know. Yeah, oh wow,
that was surprising. I like my teeth were clenched waiting
for your response.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Okay, great, well, thank you. Wow, I was not expecting this.
I'm going to have to take up break here for
a second.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I mean, I hate the Family Circus. Still, you didn't
win me over, okay, but I love the ref Everything's
back to normal good. But regardless, ned Lud was kind
of this urban legend went by, you know, King Lud
Captain lud General lud But all of this was the
idea that he was the leader of the Ludites when
there was no clear leader. I mean, you know, in
(24:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, I mean, like the Ludites weren't act actual group
that spread across the Midlands and into Yorkshire from eighteen
eleven to eighteen thirteen. Some people say eighteen sixteen because
there was another uprising that year, but really the Blood
Height Revolution took place from eighteen eleven to eighteen thirteen,
and there it was a group of people of textile
(25:19):
workers who had sworn a secret oath to this organization.
But like you said, it was decentralized. There was no Nedlood.
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 Nedlood. There had to be a Nedlood because who
else was leading these people and stirring up unrest that
(25:42):
was spreading across the northern part of the country.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So I don't even think we mentioned like the very
first thing that happened, that was in March of eighteen eleven,
when a group of you know, these these what would
be known as Luddites a little bit later on, took
to the streets in protests of of their pay, their
working conditions. The British troops came in, broke it up,
(26:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, that was March. The next big thing that happened
was in November there was a group of Luodites 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
(26:43):
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 was like, well, at least they didn't
burn my house down. And then a week later the
(27:04):
blood Heites came back and burned his house down.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah that was Yeah, it seemed like a little much,
but yeah, it was an avengeful act that happened because
they were mad.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, and so we should say there's like a lot
of attacks like this between eighteen eleven and eighteen thirteen.
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,
(27:39):
and it was I think in a December issue of
the Nottingham Review that the story of ned Blood was told.
And that's when they became known as the Luodites. 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,
(27:59):
Kinglood General Blood, and of course the textall 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.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes, very cheeky thing to do, for sure. One of
the other misconceptions is that the Luddites were so angry
that they just trashed everything with reckless abandoned 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
(28:42):
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 gonna
(29:03):
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 get
(29:24):
them out there instead of in the factory.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I just see the mill owners trying to remove their
looms in the middle of the night, like Otho trying
to escape and Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Have you seen the new trailer yet for the new one?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
No? And I don't want to see it. I just
want to go into that movie completely unaware of everything.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well you should, I mean, it looks like Beetlejuice. I
hope it didn't spoil it.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yes you did, you didn't, That's fine, but I yeah,
I'm very excited about seeing that. No.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
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 and stopped or what.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I'll bet it's playing in New Mexico somewhere.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, I think there is a traveling version, so maybe
it'll come through or New Mexico. So they were breaking
looms at a rate of about one hundred and seventy
five a month. It's got very costly for you know,
the machinery replacement costs of productivity not happening not, you know,
putting out these stockings and socks and things. And in
(30:27):
eighteen twelve things really really changed for the scarier and
maybe that's a good time for another break.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Sure I was not expecting that, but yes.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
All right, we'll keep everyone on the edge of their
stockings and we'll be right.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Back, okay, Chuck. So you said eighteen twelve was kind
(31:04):
of like a watershed year, and definitely was. Things got
much more violent. Essentially, the Luddites and the Ludite movement
as it was spreading across the Midlands and into Yorkshire,
became engaged in all at 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,
(31:27):
someone's house and break all their looms. It could be
two thousand 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 Rofold's Mill in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, and
there were between one hundred and two hundred, depending on
who you ask, former workers of that mill who stormed
(31:51):
it one night and it just got super violent.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
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 too.
I believe two of the Luddites were shot. They later died.
They retaliated. They assassinated William Horsefall, which was a really
(32:18):
sort of ardent anti Ludite. He had talked about riding
up to his saddle Gerson Ludite 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.
(32:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
One other thing to know about the Luodites 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 almost universally they were beloved
(33:21):
and kept secret by the local communities. And this 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 Luod. They got so their their efforts
were just that frustrated.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
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
a sort of quiet things down. They had fourteen thousand
troops station in the Midlands, in Yorkshire. They had more
(34:06):
people stationed there than they had fighting the War of
Napoleon at the time.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
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. We're going to start enforcing that. And
they started hanging dozens of Luddites in public after hasty trials,
(34:36):
sometimes even teenagers, and that was what really got everyone's
attention that they could be put to death for this.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, there was one particularly grim day in Lancashire where
I think they hanged fourteen Bloodites, including, like you said,
a teenager, a sixteen 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
(35:04):
so they could hang multiple people at the same time,
like they were The British government was saying like, we're
just gonna 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 Australia. Now good for them, right,
(35:25):
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 Light eight
movement around eighteen thirteen.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
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
eighteen twenty four Parliament said, you know what, maybe unions
are a decent idea after all, they repeal that ban
on unions. But you know, like I said, that ship
(36:05):
at sail, there was no putting the genie back into
the bottle at this point. And the you know, 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
(36:28):
of sort of the rewriting of that came from a
novelist and scientist named CP 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
seventies in New Scientists and other publications.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah so, at least by the seventies, if not earlier,
Ludites 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 to some people use
it right, And that lasted that way for a while
until Thomas Pinchon, the famous author of Gravity's Rainbow, among others,
(37:09):
in nineteen eighty four he wrote an essay essentially saying
like I'm not so sure we should scoff at ludites.
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 nineteen eighty four
(37:29):
he made a warning about like you really want to
keep your eye on artificial intelligence in eighty four, And
what's really interesting is around twenty twenty three, I think
there was an author named Brian Merchant who wrote a
book called Blood in the Machine, and he essentially said
he didn't cite Pinchon. I don't think I haven't read
the books. Possibly did, But essentially what he was saying
(37:51):
is that what Pinchon predicted has now come to roost.
That 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 ludites at the beginning of
the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, and he said, and then there shall be a
Justine Bateman who is the new Thomas pinch On. 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
(38:30):
destroying Hollywood, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah. So yeah, that's one thing that people are questioning.
I mean, just that when chat GPT came out, it
was like, we know companies that actually fired people. They're like, oh, good,
but can fire you now? First chance? They got right,
So it is worth questioning. And that's what Merchant and
some of these neo Ludites are saying. They're like, we
(38:52):
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 pret tech people who
are about to lose their jobs all the same questions
the loatites asked at the beginning of the nineteenth century
and then face 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
(39:14):
where artificial intelligence are going are being branded as lotites.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, and that's our show. We're going to do a
Q and A.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I know that is that we end live shows, but
not episodes. But it was just too perfect.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Many No, that was a very live showy ending. We
just don't have our traditional handshake afterward.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
We even held for applause for a second we did.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I heard none, So.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I'm taking it you got nothing else, right?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (39:42):
All right? Well, if you want to know more about lutites,
go read about them, read about neo Luddites, read about
everything you can. And since I said that, it's time
for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
This is from Cash and this is about doctor Browner,
and this is going to include we'll business plug for
Cash took. Hey, guys, just listen to the Doctor 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
(40:17):
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 Doctor Bronner's diluted with one
six water with a spray bottle, works wonders and has
(40:40):
no negative ecological impacts. Love the show. You guys are
a great company on my long days working alone. And hey,
if you are in Portland, Maine or nearby, check out
Cash at founder Opus Fine Gardens.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Well thanks a lot, Cash, and we are happy to
plug your business. And if you want to be like
Cash instead, end us an interesting email and plug your
business at the same time. We are happy to do that.
Email us at Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here tooon. We're about to break our
computers just to get in the mood for this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Good job, my friend.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Do you think so, because a lot of the 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.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
No, I don't mean that joke. I mean the the
article you put together, just like the old days.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh good, okay, good. So it's clear you're not gaslighting
me about my jokes being good.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Now, this article is great, the joke was mid Let's
do it.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
All right, let's do it. So we're talking about light heightes,
and I think just about everybody in the English speaking
world and probably beyond are familiar with the light eights
to some degree or not. But just as a little
background refresher, the Ludites were a group of textile workers
living at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the
Midlands in the north of England, which had recently become industrialized,
(01:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
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 cooi and there is a lot of nuance.
(01:48):
And what the Ludites 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.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, so this was the first instance of capitalism kind
of steamrolling over labor, the only steamrolling steamrolling over Yeah,
steam rolling 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
(02:31):
first people to lose that battle. First of many.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, they were the Bernie Bros. Of the day.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So let's go back way back, not all the way back,
let's just go back to twenty twelve, Chuck. Oh, sure,
because I like this anecdote.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, yeah, that was the Summer Olympics that I believe
Danny Boyle curated the opening ceremony and all that stuff
that year, right.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, the twenty twelve London Olympics, Summer Olympics, the opening
ceremony there was kind of a super brief synopsis of
English history.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, that's what you do. Yeah, it was really great,
just like France did, right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
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 harkened by men in black suits wearing stovetops or
stovepipe hats, okay, And what that represented was the beginning
of industrialization, like we tend to think of the Industrial
(03:35):
Revolution here in America's happening here in America. That was
the second one. The first one had taken place one
hundred to fifty years before in England, specifically in the
north of England and like sounds 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
(03:55):
where the machines are, the new machines that have 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.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
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
(04:40):
they're in the Midlands of England. Am I even saying
that right because we were about to say a lot
of Shires.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I think it's pronounced the Midland. Its spelled Midlands, but
it's pronounced Worcestershire.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Right, but all over that area Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicester, Lancashire,
Nottingham shure hmm, Cheshire.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, the Cheshire cat.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Okay, did I get all those? Why is Leicester the
only one that's not pronouncing.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
The sure it is that's Leicestershire.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Oh did I say it wrong to begin with? Then?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
No, No, you just left off the shore. 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 shire on the end of a town name,
that refers to the county and the town is usually
(05:39):
the biggest town or the main town in that county.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Finally clear that up. So in those areas, this is
where the Texas are artisans and you know there were workers.
They were crafts people, trades people. 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
(06:05):
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, it can fit in your barn. We're going
(06:27):
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 earning
a good living.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah. So, And there was 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 non our patron saints, and fairs. It was
not one dull round of labor, and like it was
(07:07):
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 in the span of like maybe ten twelve,
fifteen years. People went from they just worked at home
(07:31):
three or four days a week to having to work
twelve to thirteen hour days, seven days a week in
a factory just to make less money than they had
been making before at home.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah. And the other thing too, was this wasn't like
the beginning of automation. There had been automation and textile
manufacturing for a little while 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. You
(08:04):
can't have one because that's going to put too many
people out of work. So it's very interesting that, you know,
long before this happened, you know, with the Luddites, Queen
Elizabeth the first like saw what was coming.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, that was pretty precient for sure. And so 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
(08:38):
fifteen eighty compared to the machines that were being used
in seventeen eighty or eighteen hundred or eighteen ten 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 have and create a mill. That was a
(09:00):
that was part one of why this all kind of
happened at the time that it did.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
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. 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
(09:24):
and full steam ahead when Adams when Adam Smith wrote
a book in seventeen seventy six 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, free markets the way to go. Laissez
(09:47):
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 and the merchant class like, why are you
splitting all these profits? Like you should be keeping the
lion's share of this stuff. And the merchant class was like,
I love this book.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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 they should be self interested and maximize
(10:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I think, oh, I mean, I think that's exactly the
thing was he thought. 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,
(10:57):
and I'm sure you'll come to a fair agreement.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah. So kind of I guess, kind of like the
pendulum's going to swing this way, and then they'll swing
back that way and that way, and they'll finally just
settle in the middle. But the pendulum ended up swinging
one way toward owners management capital and just got stuck
their mid air and has been there ever since.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, that's a pendulum. What do you call a pendulum
that doesn't swing anymore? Sounds like a riddle. Okay, So
we got to stick now.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So there was a third factor too, and that was
the economic background of England. And at the turn of
the nineteenth century it was in a really big recession
at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
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,
but shut down a big trade partner. Those markets that
were open to those merchants in England were suddenly closed
(11:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
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 in 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
(12:27):
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
(12:48):
pay for upfront and then hire some teenager to make
sure it keeps running and pay them peanuts for doing so.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Boy, this was really the beginning of the downfall of everything.
Is 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 will make It's
(13:15):
like this was the beginning of the drop of in
craftsmanship and quality and everything.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I think that's why I find this period so fascinating,
because our modern world was created like here in this
like decade actually just a few years really, And it's
funny that you say the quality of goods went down,
because I've seen more than once it argued that the
thing that really sparked the Luddite movement was not the
new technology, was not the unfair treatment, was not the
(13:41):
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 that's what really set off
the people who were in the text industry to basically riot.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
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 crafts person went out of business overnight, like they
were like I could keep this open, like I actually
own my own loom, but now I have to, you know,
(14:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
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 parties of fabric could give you
(14:53):
long damage. The machines all together 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, we're working thirteen fourteen hour days, seven days
a week at the mill.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, and they didn't need those artisans anymore because they
could train a seventeen year old to run these automated
you know, the automated machinery. And this was like, you know,
this was the birth of capitalism. When quality went down,
prices went down, Fewer and fewer workers getting paid less
for more work, and the people that own the joint
(15:30):
getting rich.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Right. But I think for those of us alive today,
because capitalism was birth 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
(15:52):
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. Ye're just not doing it. That that's what
the issue is, and that that's this is where that started.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, that chip has sailed, my friend that I is
not moving disagree. Oh, you think there's going to be
a big change in that.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I think, Yeah, I think there can be. I'm not
saying there definitely will be, but I think that there's
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 is definitely
going to be. That's my take.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
All Right, Well, I admire you're optimism. So shall we
take a break. Yeah, all right, all right. One thing
(16:54):
that we mentioned in act one, uh, you like that?
Fancying this thing up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I forgot to introduced the gun that goes off in
Act three, That's right. You know what I found out
who that was? I was Chekhov that said that.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, you finally found that out.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sure, I thought it was you.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
No, Are you serious? You thought that was me?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
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 nineteenth century plays
as you.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, you probably never took drama class or dumb English
classes where you read dramas. Well.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
What's said is, I was they tried and true drama
kid in high school. So are you really Yeah, we
just didn't do any Chekhov. It was all slapstick comedy
in my high school.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, if the rubber chicken is introduced in act one.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It comes back to life and kills everyone in act three.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
All right, where was I? Okay? Act one 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 they tried to They tried
to work it out. They weren't like, oh my gosh,
(18:10):
industrialization's happening. We need to fight it tooth and nail.
They were more like, hey, it looks like this is happening,
so let's uh, you know, there's gonna 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
(18:31):
tax these goods 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.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, and that's just so contrary to what people think
of as the Ludites today. I mean, if you even
know about the lud Heights 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,
(19:11):
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
(19:33):
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.
(19:56):
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 will possibly cause you to lose your job,
we're just not going to get involved.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, but they did get involved, but they got involved
for the other side, Yeah, big time. In seventeen ninety nine,
they passed the Combination Acts, which outlawed the trade gills
that had kept them, you know, protected up into that point.
It stopped them from collective bargaining. It outlawed strikes, so
they took away basically any tool they would have to
(20:32):
you know, get fair treatment in better wages. 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 seventeen hundreds, and some of those machines had
been broken in the past in protest. But they augmented
(20:54):
this law basically on the books that said, hey, if
you start up with that stuff again, you're going to
to go to the gallows and be hanged in front
of the town.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
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 I'm perfecting.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Or going into an apple store with a crowbar.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
But imagine that that carried the death penalty. 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 blood heites and the textile workers who would
(21:49):
become ludites, we're trying to approach us from a reasonable manner.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, absolutely, And that started, you know, a couple of
years of what thees are known for for busting these
machines up and 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
(22:14):
of came and went. The Ludites 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
(22:37):
urban legend named ned Lud was their leader.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, so just a little on ned Lud. It's it's
pretty clear that ned Lud, especially as leader of the Luddites,
never existed. He was fictitious. It's possible that there was
somebody named Edward Ludlam who was the real life person
that ned Lud became based on. But the story of
(23:00):
the whole thing, the story of ned Luod, is that
in seventeen seventy nine, a young I think he was
a weaver named ned Lud 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 titan his weave, or he was told to create cheaper,
(23:24):
cheaper product faster. Either way, in a fit of rage,
he broke his loom, he broke the machine that he
was working on, and protest so This was seventeen seventy nine,
and by the time that eighteen eleven rolls around, which
is when the Ludites really started to rise up, ned
Lud was kind of like this catch all in the
textile community. Anytime something happened to a loom, it broke.
(23:47):
It was purposely broken. It was just kind of like
Ned Luod did it. You're gonna hate this analogy, so
I'm sorry in advance, but it was kind of like
the family Circus kids. I ton't know. Yeah, oh wow,
that was surprising. I like my teeth were clenched waiting
for your response.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Okay, great, well, thank you. Wow, I was not expecting this.
I'm going to have to take up break here for
a second.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I mean, I hate the Family Circus. Still, you didn't
win me over, okay, but I love the ref Everything's
back to normal good. But regardless, ned Lud was kind
of this urban legend went by, you know, King Lud
Captain lud General lud But all of this was the
idea that he was the leader of the Ludites when
there was no clear leader. I mean, you know, in
(24:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, I mean, like the Ludites weren't act actual group
that spread across the Midlands and into Yorkshire from eighteen
eleven to eighteen thirteen. Some people say eighteen sixteen because
there was another uprising that year, but really the Blood
Height Revolution took place from eighteen eleven to eighteen thirteen,
and there it was a group of people of textile
(25:19):
workers who had sworn a secret oath to this organization.
But like you said, it was decentralized. There was no Nedlood.
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 Nedlood. There had to be a Nedlood because who
else was leading these people and stirring up unrest that
(25:42):
was spreading across the northern part of the country.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So I don't even think we mentioned like the very
first thing that happened, that was in March of eighteen eleven,
when a group of you know, these these what would
be known as Luddites a little bit later on, took
to the streets in protests of of their pay, their
working conditions. The British troops came in, broke it up,
(26:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, that was March. The next big thing that happened
was in November there was a group of Luodites 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
(26:43):
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 was like, well, at least they didn't
burn my house down. And then a week later the
(27:04):
blood Heites came back and burned his house down.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah that was Yeah, it seemed like a little much,
but yeah, it was an avengeful act that happened because
they were mad.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, and so we should say there's like a lot
of attacks like this between eighteen eleven and eighteen thirteen.
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,
(27:39):
and it was I think in a December issue of
the Nottingham Review that the story of ned Blood was told.
And that's when they became known as the Luodites. 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,
(27:59):
Kinglood General Blood, and of course the textall 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.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes, very cheeky thing to do, for sure. One of
the other misconceptions is that the Luddites were so angry
that they just trashed everything with reckless abandoned 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
(28:42):
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 gonna
(29:03):
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 get
(29:24):
them out there instead of in the factory.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I just see the mill owners trying to remove their
looms in the middle of the night, like Otho trying
to escape and Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Have you seen the new trailer yet for the new one?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
No? And I don't want to see it. I just
want to go into that movie completely unaware of everything.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well you should, I mean, it looks like Beetlejuice. I
hope it didn't spoil it.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yes you did, you didn't, That's fine, but I yeah,
I'm very excited about seeing that. No.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
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 and stopped or what.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I'll bet it's playing in New Mexico somewhere.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, I think there is a traveling version, so maybe
it'll come through or New Mexico. So they were breaking
looms at a rate of about one hundred and seventy
five a month. It's got very costly for you know,
the machinery replacement costs of productivity not happening not, you know,
putting out these stockings and socks and things. And in
(30:27):
eighteen twelve things really really changed for the scarier and
maybe that's a good time for another break.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Sure I was not expecting that, but yes.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
All right, we'll keep everyone on the edge of their
stockings and we'll be right.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Back, okay, Chuck. So you said eighteen twelve was kind
(31:04):
of like a watershed year, and definitely was. Things got
much more violent. Essentially, the Luddites and the Ludite movement
as it was spreading across the Midlands and into Yorkshire,
became engaged in all at 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,
(31:27):
someone's house and break all their looms. It could be
two thousand 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 Rofold's Mill in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, and
there were between one hundred and two hundred, depending on
who you ask, former workers of that mill who stormed
(31:51):
it one night and it just got super violent.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
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 too.
I believe two of the Luddites were shot. They later died.
They retaliated. They assassinated William Horsefall, which was a really
(32:18):
sort of ardent anti Ludite. He had talked about riding
up to his saddle Gerson Ludite 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.
(32:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
One other thing to know about the Luodites 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 almost universally they were beloved
(33:21):
and kept secret by the local communities. And this 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 Luod. They got so their their efforts
were just that frustrated.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
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
a sort of quiet things down. They had fourteen thousand
troops station in the Midlands, in Yorkshire. They had more
(34:06):
people stationed there than they had fighting the War of
Napoleon at the time.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
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. We're going to start enforcing that. And
they started hanging dozens of Luddites in public after hasty trials,
(34:36):
sometimes even teenagers, and that was what really got everyone's
attention that they could be put to death for this.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, there was one particularly grim day in Lancashire where
I think they hanged fourteen Bloodites, including, like you said,
a teenager, a sixteen 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
(35:04):
so they could hang multiple people at the same time,
like they were The British government was saying like, we're
just gonna 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 Australia. Now good for them, right,
(35:25):
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 Light eight
movement around eighteen thirteen.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
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
eighteen twenty four Parliament said, you know what, maybe unions
are a decent idea after all, they repeal that ban
on unions. But you know, like I said, that ship
(36:05):
at sail, there was no putting the genie back into
the bottle at this point. And the you know, 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
(36:28):
of sort of the rewriting of that came from a
novelist and scientist named CP 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
seventies in New Scientists and other publications.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah so, at least by the seventies, if not earlier,
Ludites 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 to some people use
it right, And that lasted that way for a while
until Thomas Pinchon, the famous author of Gravity's Rainbow, among others,
(37:09):
in nineteen eighty four he wrote an essay essentially saying
like I'm not so sure we should scoff at ludites.
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 nineteen eighty four
(37:29):
he made a warning about like you really want to
keep your eye on artificial intelligence in eighty four, And
what's really interesting is around twenty twenty three, I think
there was an author named Brian Merchant who wrote a
book called Blood in the Machine, and he essentially said
he didn't cite Pinchon. I don't think I haven't read
the books. Possibly did, But essentially what he was saying
(37:51):
is that what Pinchon predicted has now come to roost.
That 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 ludites at the beginning of
the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, and he said, and then there shall be a
Justine Bateman who is the new Thomas pinch On. 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
(38:30):
destroying Hollywood, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah. So yeah, that's one thing that people are questioning.
I mean, just that when chat GPT came out, it
was like, we know companies that actually fired people. They're like, oh, good,
but can fire you now? First chance? They got right,
So it is worth questioning. And that's what Merchant and
some of these neo Ludites are saying. They're like, we
(38:52):
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 pret tech people who
are about to lose their jobs all the same questions
the loatites asked at the beginning of the nineteenth century
and then face 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
(39:14):
where artificial intelligence are going are being branded as lotites.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, and that's our show. We're going to do a
Q and A.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I know that is that we end live shows, but
not episodes. But it was just too perfect.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Many No, that was a very live showy ending. We
just don't have our traditional handshake afterward.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
We even held for applause for a second we did.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I heard none, So.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I'm taking it you got nothing else, right?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (39:42):
All right? Well, if you want to know more about lutites,
go read about them, read about neo Luddites, read about
everything you can. And since I said that, it's time
for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
This is from Cash and this is about doctor Browner,
and this is going to include we'll business plug for
Cash took. Hey, guys, just listen to the Doctor 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
(40:17):
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 Doctor Bronner's diluted with one
six water with a spray bottle, works wonders and has
(40:40):
no negative ecological impacts. Love the show. You guys are
a great company on my long days working alone. And hey,
if you are in Portland, Maine or nearby, check out
Cash at founder Opus Fine Gardens.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Well thanks a lot, Cash, and we are happy to
plug your business. And if you want to be like
Cash instead, end us an interesting email and plug your
business at the same time. We are happy to do that.
Email us at Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!