# General Ludd's Rage Against the Machines

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 18 Aug 2023, 36 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/7224b225-e27e-4904-a948-b060013430cc/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

1812. A band of "Luddites" is laying siege to a textile mill in the North of England, under cover of night. They plan to destroy the machines that are replacing their jobs. But mill owner William Cartwright is prepared: he's fortified his factory with skilled marksmen, fearsome eighteen-inch metal spikes and barrels of sulphuric acid. Today "Luddite" is a term of mockery — a description for someone who's scared of technology. But in 1812, Luddism was no laughing matter for the likes of Cartwright. And he plans to teach the intruders a lesson. For a full list of sources for this episode, please visit timharford.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. William Cartwright is dropping off to sleep on an
[0:25] Speaker 1: improvised bed in the textile mill he owns near Cleckheaton, Yorkshire, England.
[0:32] Speaker 1: Outside the river Spend flows gently by on working days.
[0:38] Speaker 1: The river's current turns a wheel that powers machines that
[0:42] Speaker 1: sheer cloth. The year is eighteen twelve, a Saturday night
[0:47] Speaker 1: in April, just gone midnight, the mill owner's dog begins
[0:54] Speaker 1: to growl all at once. Cartwright is alert. He isn't
[0:59] Speaker 1: sure yet if this is the trouble he's been expecting
[1:02] Speaker 1: for weeks. He's posted two guards outside the yard, and
[1:06] Speaker 1: he had assumed there'd be the first to raise the
[1:08] Speaker 1: other arm. They haven't, and now the growling turns to barking.
[1:14] Speaker 1: Cartwright springs out of bed. He wakes the other nine
[1:18] Speaker 1: men who are sleeping in the mill, or of his workers,
[1:22] Speaker 1: and five soldiers borrowed from a local regiment. No time
[1:26] Speaker 1: to put on clothes, the men pick up their guns. Outside.
[1:31] Speaker 1: The gates of the yard are being battered off their hinges,
[1:34] Speaker 1: and Cartwright's men are on the upper floor of the mill.
[1:37] Speaker 1: They point their guns through holes that have been made
[1:40] Speaker 1: in the thick stone walls, and they listen and wait
[1:45] Speaker 1: from outside, the sound of trampling feet and murmured voices.
[1:50] Speaker 1: Then another crash, this time of glass, A volley of
[1:53] Speaker 1: rocks smashing through the ground floor windows, an almighty yell,
[1:57] Speaker 1: and the firing of pistols and muskets. The men in
[2:01] Speaker 1: the mill open fire in the turn down beneath them.
[2:06] Speaker 1: The door to the mill shudders under blow after blow
[2:10] Speaker 1: from hatchets massive hammers. A voice from outside urges on
[2:14] Speaker 1: the men attacking the door. In with your lads, damn them,
[2:18] Speaker 1: kill them everyone. Cartwright has prepared for this. He's about
[2:23] Speaker 1: to find out how well he's had the mills wooden
[2:27] Speaker 1: door reinforced with iron studs and bars. If the attackers
[2:31] Speaker 1: do manage to force it in, they'll find themselves on
[2:34] Speaker 1: the lower floor, and Cartwright's men will then be able
[2:38] Speaker 1: to shoot at them from above through gaps he's made
[2:40] Speaker 1: in the stonework separating the upper and lower floors. If
[2:44] Speaker 1: the attackers tried to get up the stairs, they'll find
[2:47] Speaker 1: that Cartwright has installed a fearsome roll of eighteen inch spikes.
[2:53] Speaker 1: If they get past that, he's got a barrel of
[2:55] Speaker 1: sulfuric acid he can tip on top of them, but anyway,
[2:59] Speaker 1: The door's holding for now, and Cartwright's men are reloading,
[3:04] Speaker 1: firing their weapons through those little holes in the wall,
[3:08] Speaker 1: at least to the mark. One of the soldier's cartrights borrowed.
[3:13] Speaker 1: Doesn't appear to be doing much, just turning his gun
[3:16] Speaker 1: over in his hand. What's wrong, asked Cartwright. Is her
[3:21] Speaker 1: gun faulty? No, says the soldier. Then why aren't you firing?
[3:27] Speaker 1: I might hit some of my brothers. And who are
[3:30] Speaker 1: these brothers? The men attacking the mill? The men the
[3:34] Speaker 1: soldier is reluctant to hurt. Are they robbers looking to
[3:38] Speaker 1: steal the mill owner's money? Not at all. They're followers,
[3:42] Speaker 1: are a mysterious individual called General ned Blood, Or more simply,
[3:50] Speaker 1: they're Luod Heites. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to
[3:55] Speaker 1: cautionary tales today. Luddite is a term of mockery, what
[4:23] Speaker 1: you'd laughingly say about a boomer who hasn't figured out
[4:26] Speaker 1: how to listen to a podcast yet a description for
[4:29] Speaker 1: someone who's scared of technology, who doesn't know how to
[4:32] Speaker 1: use it, doesn't appreciate what it can do for them.
[4:36] Speaker 1: But in eighteen twelve in Yorkshire, luddism was no laughing
[4:41] Speaker 1: matter for the likes of William Cartwright. Three years before,
[4:46] Speaker 1: Cartwright had brought new machinery into his mill. He wanted
[4:51] Speaker 1: to automate a job that was hard and slow for humans, cropping,
[4:55] Speaker 1: as it was called. When cloth is made, it's rough
[4:59] Speaker 1: and uneven. The cropper uses shears to make it smooth.
[5:04] Speaker 1: It's a delicate task. It takes real skill to lift
[5:08] Speaker 1: the rough cloth and wheeld the shears to get a
[5:11] Speaker 1: beautiful finish. It's also painful, at least to start with
[5:16] Speaker 1: the handles of the shears dig into the wrist. In time,
[5:20] Speaker 1: the skin on the wrist gets hard and calloused. You
[5:23] Speaker 1: can tell if someone's a cropper with a glance at
[5:26] Speaker 1: their wrist. Because the job is hard and skilled, it
[5:30] Speaker 1: pays well. Young men push through that initial pain for
[5:35] Speaker 1: the prospect of a gainful career. Cropping is a high
[5:39] Speaker 1: status profession in working communities. It's also recently become unnecessary
[5:46] Speaker 1: because machines called gig mills and shearing frames can do
[5:50] Speaker 1: the job just as well and far more quickly. As
[5:53] Speaker 1: William cartrch is making all too clear, Cartright's not the
[5:59] Speaker 1: only mill owner who's brought in these new machines, but
[6:02] Speaker 1: he's one of the few who's daring still to use them.
[6:06] Speaker 1: In the spring of eighteen twelve, other local mill owners
[6:10] Speaker 1: have been intimidated by letters signed by General lud dismantle
[6:15] Speaker 1: the machines or will smash them up. It's no idle
[6:20] Speaker 1: threat if the machines stay in use. Masked gangs come
[6:24] Speaker 1: in the dead of night. They use hatchets to break
[6:28] Speaker 1: in the door and great hammers to smash the machines.
[6:33] Speaker 1: Working people argued about whether or not this would all backfire.
[6:40] Speaker 1: Let's rewind to March eighteen twelve, a month before the
[6:45] Speaker 1: attack on Cartwright's mill. In a cropping shop, a group
[6:49] Speaker 1: of men are talking after work. Our account of this
[6:53] Speaker 1: conversation comes from a nineteenth century historian called Frank Peel,
[6:58] Speaker 1: who years later recorded the stories that local people handed down.
[7:03] Speaker 1: Most of those Peel describes talking are croppers and committed
[7:08] Speaker 1: followers of the shef. Do we figure they call General
[7:11] Speaker 1: Lud One is not. John Booth is nineteen years old,
[7:16] Speaker 1: an apprentice saddle maker, the son of a clergyman with
[7:19] Speaker 1: the Church of England. Would it not be better, asks
[7:23] Speaker 1: Booth to reason with them rather than infuriate them? By
[7:28] Speaker 1: destroying their machines. Reason with them, He might as well
[7:32] Speaker 1: reason with a stone. Booth's friend, the cropper, George Meller,
[7:37] Speaker 1: is the local leader of those masked marauding gangs. Meller
[7:41] Speaker 1: is still working for now, but he's well aware that
[7:45] Speaker 1: he can't compete with water powered gig mills and shearing frames.
[7:50] Speaker 1: He and his fellow croppers can see that the skill
[7:53] Speaker 1: they've spent years perfecting is soon to be rendered worthless.
[7:58] Speaker 1: It's all right for John Booth. He's not a cropper,
[8:01] Speaker 1: He's a saddle maker, and there isn't a saddle making machine,
[8:04] Speaker 1: not yet anyway. These machines aren't taking Booth's trade out
[8:08] Speaker 1: of his fingers, says Meller. Or it happens, see things
[8:11] Speaker 1: in a different light. But young Booth has thought this
[8:15] Speaker 1: through and he argues back. Being a cropper is hard work.
[8:20] Speaker 1: He points out, it's painful too, until you develop that hard,
[8:24] Speaker 1: callous skin on the wrist. And have you seen those
[8:27] Speaker 1: machines in action. You just have to set up the
[8:30] Speaker 1: cloth and keep an eye on them. They take away
[8:33] Speaker 1: all of that hard, painful work scene like that. The
[8:38] Speaker 1: machinery is a thing of beauty. I quite agree with you.
[8:43] Speaker 1: Says Booth, respecting the harm you suffer from machinery, but
[8:47] Speaker 1: it might be man's chief blessing instead of his curse.
[8:51] Speaker 1: If society was differently constituted. You can't say the machine
[8:56] Speaker 1: itself is evil, says Booth. That's absurd. No, the problem
[9:00] Speaker 1: is that the mill owner gets all the benefits. If
[9:04] Speaker 1: those benefits were fairly shared out. If if George Meller
[9:12] Speaker 1: is not impressed, what's the use of such sermons as
[9:15] Speaker 1: thine to starving men? Starving is not just a figure
[9:21] Speaker 1: of speech. Another man joins in the conversation. He tells
[9:25] Speaker 1: how he went to see a former workmate, a cropper
[9:28] Speaker 1: who lost his job. He can't find other work. There's
[9:31] Speaker 1: a war on with Napoleon's France. It's disrupted trade. Nobody's hiring,
[9:36] Speaker 1: and the price of food has shot up. The man's
[9:40] Speaker 1: been struggling to afford to eat, and now his wife
[9:44] Speaker 1: has died. There she lay on the bed, poor thing,
[9:48] Speaker 1: skin and bone. Now tells he told his fellows. It's
[9:53] Speaker 1: hard for John Booth to argue with that. He knows
[9:56] Speaker 1: he's right. The machines would be a blessing if society
[10:00] Speaker 1: were differently constituted, But he knows his friends are right too.
[10:05] Speaker 1: It isn't much comfort to conceive of a different world
[10:09] Speaker 1: if you're starving to death in this one. To confess
[10:13] Speaker 1: the truth, says Booth. I don't see much chance of
[10:16] Speaker 1: reorganizing society on a better and sounder basis at present.
[10:21] Speaker 1: I know not what to say. Say you'll join us,
[10:25] Speaker 1: says Meller. What to do? Booth doubts that smashing machines
[10:32] Speaker 1: will achieve anything, but it's not like he has a
[10:34] Speaker 1: better plan, and who knows. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe drastic
[10:39] Speaker 1: action will make people sit up and take notice of
[10:42] Speaker 1: how desperate the workers are. All right, says Booth, I'm
[10:48] Speaker 1: in Mella wants to decide on their next target. In
[10:53] Speaker 1: the last few weeks, they've had success after success around
[10:57] Speaker 1: the Yorkshire town of Huddersfield. They've smashed up some machines
[11:01] Speaker 1: and sent threatening letters to the owners of other machines,
[11:04] Speaker 1: and almost everyone has agreed to go back to the
[11:08] Speaker 1: old ways of cropping by hand. A local magistrate is
[11:12] Speaker 1: even recommending they do so for their own safety. But
[11:17] Speaker 1: two local mill owners have been loudly and publicly holding out.
[11:23] Speaker 1: One is William Cartwright. He's got nothing but contempt for
[11:28] Speaker 1: his peers who are taking down their shearing frames. Pew sillanimous,
[11:32] Speaker 1: he calls them. Instead, He's fortified his mill. He's brought
[11:37] Speaker 1: in soldiers from a local regiment. He's taken to sleeping
[11:40] Speaker 1: in his mill with the soldiers every night. The other
[11:44] Speaker 1: local holdout is William Horseful. He's gone even further than Cartwright.
[11:50] Speaker 1: He's installed a cannon in his mill. Just let the
[11:54] Speaker 1: Luddites try to smash up his machines, he says, to
[11:57] Speaker 1: anyone who'll listen, I'll ride up to my saddlegirths in
[12:00] Speaker 1: Luddite blood. If the Yorkshire croppers are to win their
[12:05] Speaker 1: battle against the new machines, the two Williams Artright and
[12:09] Speaker 1: Horsefall need to be taught a lesson whose mill should
[12:15] Speaker 1: they attack first. They flip a coin. It's Cartwright. None
[12:21] Speaker 1: of them know it. But this time the attack will
[12:25] Speaker 1: determine who lives and who dies. Cautionary tales will be
[12:32] Speaker 1: back after the break. In his classic book The Making
[12:46] Speaker 1: of the English Working Class, the historian E. P. Thompson
[12:50] Speaker 1: sees the roots of Luddism in a failure of politics.
[12:55] Speaker 1: For years, he says, organizations of workers had been sending
[12:58] Speaker 1: representatives to London with policy proposals such as attacks of
[13:03] Speaker 1: sixpence a yard on cloth made by machines. That money
[13:07] Speaker 1: to go into a fund to support displaced workers. But
[13:11] Speaker 1: these ideas went against the mood of the day, which
[13:15] Speaker 1: was a sudden passion for lais a fair economics. Politicians
[13:20] Speaker 1: were busy abolishing restrictions on what workers and factories could
[13:24] Speaker 1: and couldn't do. Those old laws, said Thompson, were often
[13:28] Speaker 1: bad for workers, but still somewhere within them was the
[13:32] Speaker 1: shadowy image of a benevolent corporate state. There'd always been
[13:38] Speaker 1: an ethos of paternalism, the idea that those higher up
[13:42] Speaker 1: in the social order had some kind of obligation to
[13:46] Speaker 1: those below. Workers might be low down the order, but
[13:50] Speaker 1: they had a place. The new ideal was to free
[13:54] Speaker 1: up markets. If machines and unskilled workers could do things
[13:59] Speaker 1: more cheaply than skilled artisans. The artisans were simply out
[14:03] Speaker 1: of luck. No redundancy pay, no unemployment benefit, no programs
[14:08] Speaker 1: to help them reskill and learn another trade. Luddism, writes Thompson,
[14:15] Speaker 1: appeared with an almost inevitable logic to the croppers. Ned
[14:21] Speaker 1: lud was the defender of an ancient right the upholder
[14:26] Speaker 1: of a lost constitution, and who exactly was this mysterious
[14:33] Speaker 1: Ned Lud. He was from Nottingham, a town in the
[14:36] Speaker 1: English Midlands that was famous for its stocking industry and
[14:41] Speaker 1: for its centuries old stories about another popular outlaw who
[14:46] Speaker 1: was feared by the bad and loved by the good
[14:50] Speaker 1: chant no moyal rhymes about bold robin Hood his feed
[14:58] Speaker 1: ci but little man our singly achievements of General Lord
[15:06] Speaker 1: now in a hero Nottingham sh robin Hood was mythical,
[15:15] Speaker 1: so was General Lud. He was based on a well
[15:18] Speaker 1: known local story about a man called ned Lud, supposedly
[15:22] Speaker 1: a young stocking maker who once smashed up his stocking
[15:26] Speaker 1: frame in a fit of rage. In eighteen eleven, when
[15:31] Speaker 1: masked gangs started to smash up stocking frames in Nottingham
[15:35] Speaker 1: at night, people joked that ned Lud must have done it.
[15:39] Speaker 1: The gangs picked up the joke and ran with it.
[15:42] Speaker 1: They called themselves an army and imagined ned Ludd as
[15:46] Speaker 1: their general. When their leaders sent threatening letters, they signed
[15:51] Speaker 1: them General Lud. Newspapers reported breathlessly about the exploits of
[15:57] Speaker 1: the Nottingham Luddites. They inspired workers in other industries in
[16:01] Speaker 1: other parts of England, such as the croppers in Yorkshire.
[16:06] Speaker 1: The government responded with a legal clamp down. It was
[16:11] Speaker 1: hard to get anyone to testify against the masked machine smashers,
[16:15] Speaker 1: As one magistrate complained, almost every creature of the lower
[16:20] Speaker 1: order is on their side. So they sent out spies
[16:25] Speaker 1: and offered money to tempt informers, and they rushed through
[16:29] Speaker 1: new legislation smashing machines could now be punished with the
[16:35] Speaker 1: death penalty. On the night of the eleventh of April
[16:41] Speaker 1: eighteen twelve, around one hundred and fifty men leave their
[16:46] Speaker 1: homes and make their way to a quiet country lane
[16:50] Speaker 1: three miles from William Cartwright's mill. They wear masks or
[16:55] Speaker 1: blackened faces. They sought themselves by weapon. Some have got
[17:00] Speaker 1: hold of muskets or pistols. Others have hatchets or hammers
[17:04] Speaker 1: or bludgeons. George Meller gives them a pep talk. Cart writes, boasted.
[17:11] Speaker 1: He reminds them that he'll defend his mill, but we're
[17:14] Speaker 1: well armed and we shall handle him. You know what
[17:17] Speaker 1: to do. They march the three miles to Cartwright's mill
[17:22] Speaker 1: and stop just short of the gates. There'll be two
[17:26] Speaker 1: guards outside. They know. A few of the men sneak
[17:30] Speaker 1: up on them, grab them and muffle their cries. The
[17:35] Speaker 1: hatchet men advance on the gates and batter them inwards.
[17:39] Speaker 1: The men swarm into the yard. They hurl rocks through
[17:43] Speaker 1: the mill's windows, and with a yell, the men with
[17:46] Speaker 1: guns opened fire through the shattered glass. But then there's
[17:51] Speaker 1: gun fire back from inside the mill. Hatchetmen to the
[17:55] Speaker 1: front cries mellow. The hatchets rain down on the mill's
[18:01] Speaker 1: wooden door, but it's so well reinforced they're mostly hitting
[18:05] Speaker 1: iron Sparks are flying all around. George Meller His men
[18:10] Speaker 1: are crying out in pain as bullets find them. And
[18:14] Speaker 1: now someone sounded an alarm calling for reinforcements from a
[18:18] Speaker 1: regiment nearby. How long will it take them to arrive?
[18:22] Speaker 1: Shoot at the bell? Damn that bell, Mello yells, get it, lads.
[18:28] Speaker 1: The bell stops ringing, but not for long. They've shot
[18:32] Speaker 1: through the rope that Cartwright's man was pulling. That Cartwright
[18:36] Speaker 1: has simply sent the man up onto the roof to
[18:38] Speaker 1: ring the bell by hand. They can't have long before
[18:42] Speaker 1: the soldiers get there, and the door's still holding. Is
[18:45] Speaker 1: there another way in to the back, lads, Mello commands.
[18:49] Speaker 1: Some of the attackers try to find their way round
[18:52] Speaker 1: the back of the mill that the river runs right
[18:54] Speaker 1: next to it. One slips and falls in, the others
[18:58] Speaker 1: stop and scramble to help him out. So now there's
[19:01] Speaker 1: no alternative. It all depends on getting that door down fast.
[19:07] Speaker 1: And suddenly there's a break through, a hole in the
[19:10] Speaker 1: wood of the door about the size of a man's head.
[19:13] Speaker 1: In with your lads, damn them, kill them everyone. The
[19:17] Speaker 1: men surge at the door, but still it holds, and
[19:21] Speaker 1: the soldiers in the mill start to shoot through the hole.
[19:25] Speaker 1: Someone cries out and fall to the ground holding his leg.
[19:29] Speaker 1: It's nineteen year old apprentice saddle maker John Booth. He
[19:35] Speaker 1: never did think this attack on the mill was a
[19:37] Speaker 1: good idea. And now the attackers with muskets and pistols
[19:41] Speaker 1: have run out of ammunition. If they do get him,
[19:44] Speaker 1: what then the bell's still ringing. You can't have long
[19:48] Speaker 1: before more soldiers get there. Attackers start to fall back.
[19:53] Speaker 1: It's clear that they've failed. Split up, lads, get home
[19:57] Speaker 1: as quick as you can. Two men can't get home.
[20:02] Speaker 1: John Booth's leg is shattered. Another man's been shot in
[20:06] Speaker 1: the chest. He's lying on the ground struggling for breath.
[20:11] Speaker 1: Mella has no choice but to leave them inside the mill.
[20:19] Speaker 1: Silence falls except for the moans of the injured men
[20:23] Speaker 1: in the yard. Outside. Cartwright checks on his workers and
[20:28] Speaker 1: borrowed soldiers. Not one has been hurt. The defense he
[20:33] Speaker 1: had planned so carefully has worked exactly as intended, except,
[20:39] Speaker 1: of course, for that soldier who refused to shoot. They'll
[20:43] Speaker 1: deal with him later. What to do about the injured attackers,
[20:49] Speaker 1: It might be a trap. I'm not opening that door,
[20:52] Speaker 1: says Cartwright until the reinforcements arrive. Soon they do, and
[21:00] Speaker 1: so do other local people. They gather around the two
[21:04] Speaker 1: injured men. John Booth is writhing in agony, blood rushing
[21:09] Speaker 1: from his leg. The other man is choking on the
[21:12] Speaker 1: blood from his chest wound. Help me breathe, he says,
[21:17] Speaker 1: Lift up my head. Cartwright opens the mill's door and
[21:23] Speaker 1: strides over. He recognizes the man who's been shot in
[21:26] Speaker 1: the chest. The man used to work for him as
[21:29] Speaker 1: a cropper before the machines came in. If you want
[21:32] Speaker 1: us to help you, says Cartwright, tell me who's your leader.
[21:36] Speaker 1: One of the locals decides to ignore Cartwright he lifts
[21:40] Speaker 1: the head of the wounded man, another puts a glass
[21:44] Speaker 1: of water to his lips. The growing crowd murmur their approval,
[21:49] Speaker 1: and Cartwright understands that he isn't out of danger yet.
[21:55] Speaker 1: Take the two men to the inn, he says, we'll
[21:57] Speaker 1: care for them there, but both men die. It's later
[22:02] Speaker 1: rumored they were tortured to try to get them to
[22:05] Speaker 1: give up the names of the local Luodite leaders. John
[22:09] Speaker 1: Booth's supposed last words become legend. He calls over the priest,
[22:16] Speaker 1: a well known friend of Cartwright. Can you keep a secret,
[22:21] Speaker 1: he asks? I can, says the priest. So can I marry?
[22:27] Speaker 1: Says John Booth. Thousands of people gather for John Booth's funeral.
[22:35] Speaker 1: On the doors of local houses, a message is chalked
[22:39] Speaker 1: vengeance for the blood of the innocent. Cautionary tales will
[22:49] Speaker 1: be back after the break. Economists have coined the phrase
[23:08] Speaker 1: Luodite fallacy to describe the mistaken belief that technological progress
[23:13] Speaker 1: is bad for working people. It's bad for particular workers.
[23:17] Speaker 1: To be sure, machines do displace certain jobs, but the
[23:21] Speaker 1: story of economic progress is that new jobs have always
[23:25] Speaker 1: come along to replace them, and those new jobs have
[23:28] Speaker 1: tended to be more productive and better paid. The problem
[23:33] Speaker 1: is that those better jobs don't necessarily appear straight away.
[23:38] Speaker 1: In their book Power and Progress, the economists dare An
[23:43] Speaker 1: Assamoglu and Simon Johnson describe how it took a century
[23:47] Speaker 1: for the inventions of the Industrial Revolution to translate into
[23:51] Speaker 1: higher wages and improve working conditions for ordinary people. The
[23:56] Speaker 1: new machines created wealth quickly, but that wealth accrued to
[24:01] Speaker 1: their owners, people like William Cartwright. This had happened before,
[24:07] Speaker 1: say Assmoglu and Johnson. In medieval Europe. Advances in agriculture
[24:13] Speaker 1: created new wealth that funded magnificent cathedrals but didn't improve
[24:19] Speaker 1: the lives of peasants at all. And it's happening again now,
[24:23] Speaker 1: they say. Digital technologies are giving us new billionaires, but
[24:29] Speaker 1: shared prosperity not so much. In many rich countries, wages
[24:35] Speaker 1: for typical workers have been growing much more slowly than
[24:38] Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. If they've been
[24:42] Speaker 1: growing at all, perhaps then we can sympathize with the
[24:47] Speaker 1: luddite croppers. They were facing all the immediate costs of
[24:52] Speaker 1: new technology, while the uncertain benefits lay decades in the future.
[24:57] Speaker 1: No wonder some risked and early death to try to
[25:01] Speaker 1: prolong the status quo. Even some wealthy aristocrats sympathized at
[25:07] Speaker 1: the time, such as the poet Lord Byron, who spoke
[25:11] Speaker 1: out against the government's bill to bring in the death
[25:14] Speaker 1: penalty for machine breaking. The excesses of the Luddites, said Byron, however,
[25:21] Speaker 1: to be deplored and condemned can hardly be a matter
[25:25] Speaker 1: of surprise. A week after the attack on his mill,
[25:32] Speaker 1: William Cartwright rides to the town of Huddersfield. He has
[25:36] Speaker 1: to give evidence at the court martial of the soldier
[25:39] Speaker 1: who had refused to shoot at the Luddite attackers. The
[25:43] Speaker 1: regiment's commanders greeked him warmly. It's not easy for the
[25:47] Speaker 1: army to deal with the Luddites, they say, when the
[25:50] Speaker 1: mill owners keep giving in to them. What a pleasure
[25:53] Speaker 1: it is to find a man who will fight to
[25:55] Speaker 1: defend his property and the law. Another local mill owner
[26:01] Speaker 1: congratulates Cartwright too, William Horsefall, the man who'd installed a
[26:06] Speaker 1: cannon at his mill and said he'd ride up up
[26:09] Speaker 1: to his saddlegirths in Luddite blood. The court martial is
[26:14] Speaker 1: over quickly. Cartwright gives his evidence. The soldier makes no defense.
[26:19] Speaker 1: The sentence is pasted three hundred lashes, three hundred. Cartwright
[26:27] Speaker 1: mounts his horse again to ride the eight miles home.
[26:32] Speaker 1: As he passes a woodland, a pistol fires from behind
[26:35] Speaker 1: a tree. The bullet flies past him. His horse rears
[26:40] Speaker 1: and bolts. Another shot brings out another miss. Cartwright gallops home.
[26:46] Speaker 1: There he finds, to his horror that the soldier's punishment
[26:51] Speaker 1: is going to happen right outside his mill. A crowd
[26:55] Speaker 1: of hundreds gather to watch as the soldier's hands are tied,
[27:00] Speaker 1: his back is bared. After just a few lashes, the
[27:05] Speaker 1: skin is broken. Soon the width is cutting flesh, and
[27:10] Speaker 1: the crowd is getting restive. Cartwright pushes through them and
[27:15] Speaker 1: speaks to the officer in command. Enough now, he says,
[27:19] Speaker 1: can't we leave it at that? The officer ignores him.
[27:23] Speaker 1: Carry on, he says to the man with a whip.
[27:26] Speaker 1: Another lash, another, and another, for only twenty lashes in
[27:33] Speaker 1: it's clear the soldier will die long before three hundred.
[27:38] Speaker 1: In fact, he seems to have passed out already. A
[27:42] Speaker 1: doctor checks his pulse and nods to the officer in command.
[27:47] Speaker 1: The lashing resumes. People cry out and jostle forward. The
[27:53] Speaker 1: crowd seems on the verge of a riot. Cartwright tries again,
[27:58] Speaker 1: stop there, you have to stop. Cartwright must sense he's
[28:03] Speaker 1: pleading for his own life as much as for that
[28:06] Speaker 1: of the soldier, and perhaps the officer understands, because this
[28:11] Speaker 1: time he nods. The soldier's hands are untied and he's
[28:16] Speaker 1: led away. The crowd calms down. William Cartwright breathes again.
[28:25] Speaker 1: He's narrowly escaped being shot and then being lynched. You
[28:31] Speaker 1: might expect his fellow mill owner, William Horseful, to decide
[28:36] Speaker 1: to keep a low profile for a while. Not a
[28:40] Speaker 1: bit of it. Horseful keeps loudly denouncing the Luddites. Every week,
[28:46] Speaker 1: Horsefull rides into Huddersfield on business. His routine is well known.
[28:52] Speaker 1: At six o'clock he sets off for home. He never
[28:56] Speaker 1: rides quickly, and then as he passes a woodland, an
[29:01] Speaker 1: unseen marksman takes aim a bullet rips into Horsefull's flesh.
[29:09] Speaker 1: He slumps forward and grabs onto his horse's neck. Blood
[29:13] Speaker 1: starts spurting from his leg. Forceful falls off his horse.
[29:19] Speaker 1: Passers by help him back to the inn and call
[29:22] Speaker 1: a doctor. Horseful has been shot in the stomach and thigh.
[29:27] Speaker 1: One bullet has cut an artery. He's bleeding profusely. What's
[29:33] Speaker 1: your opinion, doctor asked the injured man. Indeed, mister Horsefall,
[29:39] Speaker 1: I consider you in a very dangerous state. These are
[29:43] Speaker 1: awful times. Doctor Horseful dies soon after news of his
[29:51] Speaker 1: death gets back to the cropping shop where George Meller works.
[29:55] Speaker 1: It comes with other news too, a reward of two
[29:59] Speaker 1: thousand pounds for information about the assassin, a fortune. George
[30:07] Speaker 1: Meller knows very well who shot William Horsefall, and he
[30:13] Speaker 1: knows that all his friends know it too. If I thought,
[30:17] Speaker 1: says Meller, there was one man who would whisper a
[30:22] Speaker 1: single word, this day would be his last. It's hard,
[30:30] Speaker 1: as I said, not to feel some sympathy with the
[30:33] Speaker 1: luddite croppers. But then I find it hard not to
[30:38] Speaker 1: sympathize with the mill owners too. William Cartwright and William
[30:43] Speaker 1: Horsefall were stubborn, but they weren't bad men. They were
[30:47] Speaker 1: seen as fair employers. Their workers liked them. Yet Cartwright
[30:52] Speaker 1: and Horsefull could hardly ignore the fact that new machines
[30:56] Speaker 1: could finish cloth more cheaply than human workers. If they
[31:00] Speaker 1: didn't use those new machines, someone somewhere would, and they'd
[31:05] Speaker 1: soon be out competed. Both the croppers and the mill
[31:09] Speaker 1: owners were trapped by the same economic system. The parallels
[31:15] Speaker 1: with today's economic system are all too obvious. Skilled workers
[31:20] Speaker 1: in high status jobs find that robots or algorithms can
[31:24] Speaker 1: do their work as well as they can, or well enough,
[31:28] Speaker 1: and much more quickly. Technologists may have some qualms about
[31:33] Speaker 1: the impacts of the tech they're developing, but they tell themselves,
[31:37] Speaker 1: if I don't do it, someone else will. The author
[31:43] Speaker 1: Brian Merchant explores these parallels in his new book Blood
[31:48] Speaker 1: in the Machine, think about policy proposals to respond to
[31:53] Speaker 1: the rise of big tech. He says, such as a
[31:55] Speaker 1: robot tax or a universal basic income. Such ideas seem new,
[32:01] Speaker 1: but they're in the same tradition as those old proposals
[32:05] Speaker 1: for a tax on cloth made by machine to keep
[32:08] Speaker 1: the unemployoid croppers from starvation. Those old proposals failed. In
[32:16] Speaker 1: their book Power and Progress, the economists Darren Asimoglu and
[32:21] Speaker 1: Simon Johnson ask why it took so long for the
[32:24] Speaker 1: wealth creating machines of the industrial evolution to benefit people
[32:29] Speaker 1: more widely through higher wages, better working conditions or social
[32:33] Speaker 1: safety nets. Their answer, it happened only when workers and
[32:39] Speaker 1: citizens found new ways to organize through trade unions and
[32:44] Speaker 1: political parties, to force the gains from technological progress to
[32:49] Speaker 1: be more equitably shared. Today, they argue, we need to
[32:54] Speaker 1: do the same again. The thought of a two thousand
[33:01] Speaker 1: pounds reward proved too much for one of George Meller's
[33:06] Speaker 1: fellow croppers was arrested, tried, and convicted of the murder
[33:13] Speaker 1: of William Horsefall. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
[33:20] Speaker 1: Five other men were condemned to be hanged too, not
[33:24] Speaker 1: for killing anyone, but for their part in the attack
[33:27] Speaker 1: on William Cartwright's mill. The crackdown worked. As the historian E. P.
[33:35] Speaker 1: Thompson puts it, Luddism ended on the scaffold. In January
[33:42] Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen, Mella stood on a wooden platform, a rope
[33:48] Speaker 1: around his neck. Some of my enemies may be here,
[33:52] Speaker 1: said Mella. If there be, I freely forgive them and
[33:56] Speaker 1: all the world, and I hope the world will forgive me.
[34:01] Speaker 1: Luddism ended on the scaffold. But the words of the
[34:06] Speaker 1: young apprentice saddlemaker on booth live on new Machines might
[34:13] Speaker 1: be man's chief blessing instead of his curse. If society
[34:19] Speaker 1: was differently constituted, quite so, but George Meller's response also
[34:27] Speaker 1: echoes down the years if if IF. For a list
[35:01] Speaker 1: of the sources used in this episode, please see the
[35:04] Speaker 1: show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written
[35:12] Speaker 1: by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by
[35:15] Speaker 1: Alice Fines with support from Edith Uslow. The sound design
[35:20] Speaker 1: and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah
[35:25] Speaker 1: Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of
[35:28] Speaker 1: Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The
[35:34] Speaker 1: show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
[35:38] Speaker 1: Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohene, let, Al Millard, John Schnaz, Carlie
[35:43] Speaker 1: mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is a production of
[35:48] Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardall Studios in London
[35:52] Speaker 1: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
[35:55] Speaker 1: to share, rate and review go on you know it
[35:58] Speaker 1: helps us And if you want to hear the show
[36:00] Speaker 1: ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show
[36:04] Speaker 1: page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot Fm, slash
[36:09] Speaker 1: us int

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