Before the Luddites: Machinery, Regulation, and the State
Before the Luddites: Machinery, Regulation, and the State
This chapter looks at the ways in which machinery began to transform economic relations in the textile industries in England during the 18th century, generating major problems of disorder and posing serious questions for the old regulatory model of governance. The responses to the early mechanization of textile production demonstrated the limitations of resisting labour-saving machinery. The vigorous pre-emptive actions employed by workers reflected an entirely sensible assessment that customary work practices might only be sustained by preventing the innovation in question becoming established. Workers resorted to propaganda, in which the interests of the innovators were presented as selfish and narrow while those of the workers were shown as being those of the wider community.
Keywords: machinery, England, textile industry, mechanization, propaganda, labour law, industrial protests, political economy
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