Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here tooon. We're about to break our
Speaker 2: computers just to get in the mood for this episode.
Speaker 1: Good job, my friend.
Speaker 2: Do you think so, because a lot of the times
Speaker 2: you say like, oh, that was great, or way to
Speaker 2: go or something like that, and I'm like, that was
Speaker 2: not that good. And that's a good example of that.
Speaker 1: No, I don't mean that joke. I mean the the
Speaker 1: article you put together, just like the old days.
Speaker 2: Oh good, okay, good. So it's clear you're not gaslighting
Speaker 2: me about my jokes being good.
Speaker 1: Now, this article is great, the joke was mid Let's
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: All right, let's do it. So we're talking about light heightes,
Speaker 2: and I think just about everybody in the English speaking
Speaker 2: world and probably beyond are familiar with the light eights
Speaker 2: to some degree or not. But just as a little
Speaker 2: background refresher, the Ludites were a group of textile workers
Speaker 2: living at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the
Speaker 2: Midlands in the north of England, which had recently become industrialized,
Speaker 2: and they didn't like the machines that were the new
Speaker 2: technology for using for making textiles. So they broke them all.
Speaker 2: And that's the Luddites. There's nothing more to understand. There's
Speaker 2: no more nuance to them than that.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people may not even know where the name came from
Speaker 1: and may just think luddite is a word for someone
Speaker 1: who is afraid of technology or hates technology. It's kind
Speaker 1: of been co opted as such. But as we will learn,
Speaker 1: you're being cooi and there is a lot of nuance.
Speaker 1: And what the Ludites really were were a people that
Speaker 1: got together, some craftsmen and artisans that got together and
Speaker 1: were sort of the first workers rights people who very
Speaker 1: reasonably tried to make workers' rights deals in the face
Speaker 1: of the industrial revolution and only turned to this after
Speaker 1: that failed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was the first instance of capitalism kind
Speaker 2: of steamrolling over labor, the only steamrolling steamrolling over Yeah,
Speaker 2: steam rolling over labor and labor's rights and basically taking
Speaker 2: care of labor and being equitable and fair and profit
Speaker 2: sharing the first instance. And so they were the first
Speaker 2: people to fight against it, and sadly they were the
Speaker 2: first people to lose that battle. First of many.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were the Bernie Bros. Of the day.
Speaker 2: So let's go back way back, not all the way back,
Speaker 2: let's just go back to twenty twelve, Chuck. Oh, sure,
Speaker 2: because I like this anecdote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was the Summer Olympics that I believe
Speaker 1: Danny Boyle curated the opening ceremony and all that stuff
Speaker 1: that year, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the twenty twelve London Olympics, Summer Olympics, the opening
Speaker 2: ceremony there was kind of a super brief synopsis of
Speaker 2: English history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what you do. Yeah, it was really great,
Speaker 1: just like France did, right, exactly.
Speaker 2: So there's this moment in the opening ceremonies where the
Speaker 2: people all move from the countryside to the city, and
Speaker 2: if I remember correctly, I'm doing this from memory, they
Speaker 2: were harkened by men in black suits wearing stovetops or
Speaker 2: stovepipe hats, okay, And what that represented was the beginning
Speaker 2: of industrialization, like we tend to think of the Industrial
Speaker 2: Revolution here in America's happening here in America. That was
Speaker 2: the second one. The first one had taken place one
Speaker 2: hundred to fifty years before in England, specifically in the
Speaker 2: north of England and like sounds like Manchester and Liverpool.
Speaker 2: And the reason that everybody was being called from the
Speaker 2: countryside to the city figuratively and literally was because that's
Speaker 2: where the machines are, the new machines that have been
Speaker 2: perfected using steam power that could automate all sorts of
Speaker 2: different processes that used to have to be done by hand.
Speaker 2: They were big, and they were cumbersome, and they were expensive.
Speaker 2: So rather than people doing stuff in their home anymore,
Speaker 2: they had to go to where the machines are to
Speaker 2: do work. Now. That was a radical.
Speaker 1: Change, Yeah, a big change, and that same change, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about plenty of times in terms of our
Speaker 1: American experience here, but like you said, it happened previously
Speaker 1: in England. Same deal, people from the country moving into
Speaker 1: the city, steam power running the show. And the first
Speaker 1: industry over there to kind of get smashed in the
Speaker 1: face with that new reality was the textile industry. And
Speaker 1: they're in the Midlands of England. Am I even saying
Speaker 1: that right because we were about to say a lot
Speaker 1: of Shires.
Speaker 2: I think it's pronounced the Midland. Its spelled Midlands, but
Speaker 2: it's pronounced Worcestershire.
Speaker 1: Right, but all over that area Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicester, Lancashire,
Speaker 1: Nottingham shure hmm, Cheshire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Cheshire cat.
Speaker 1: Okay, did I get all those? Why is Leicester the
Speaker 1: only one that's not pronouncing.
Speaker 2: The sure it is that's Leicestershire.
Speaker 1: Oh did I say it wrong to begin with? Then?
Speaker 2: No, No, you just left off the shore. And so
Speaker 2: just a little note because I didn't understand this until
Speaker 2: I finally just went and looked it up. Like Leicester
Speaker 2: is the main town, the county seat, if you will,
Speaker 2: of the larger county of Leicestershire. So when there's a
Speaker 2: suffix of shire on the end of a town name,
Speaker 2: that refers to the county and the town is usually
Speaker 2: the biggest town or the main town in that county.
Speaker 1: Finally clear that up. So in those areas, this is
Speaker 1: where the Texas are artisans and you know there were workers.
Speaker 1: They were crafts people, trades people. They went through sort
Speaker 1: of that traditional route where you're an apprentice you learn
Speaker 1: the craft. They had these robust trade unions and guilds
Speaker 1: that made sure the quality of the worker was up
Speaker 1: to snuff, the quality of the product and the materials
Speaker 1: were all up to snuff, and they had this good
Speaker 1: deal going with the merchant class up to that point
Speaker 1: where these wealthy merchants basically funded the operations and then
Speaker 1: split the profits. They would say, here, we're going to
Speaker 1: put a loom in your house. These hand looms aren't
Speaker 1: too huge, it can fit in your barn. We're going
Speaker 1: to give you some good, high quality materials to spin,
Speaker 1: and we'll split the profits in a way that works
Speaker 1: for both of us. And they had a good life.
Speaker 1: They were like working three or four days a week
Speaker 1: at home and like, you know, making textiles and earning
Speaker 1: a good living.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, And there was a quote from a guy
Speaker 2: named William Gardner who was a stocking maker at the time,
Speaker 2: which was a huge industry right at the beginning or
Speaker 2: up until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and he
Speaker 2: said the year was checkered with holidays, wakes, which are
Speaker 2: festivals held non our patron saints, and fairs. It was
Speaker 2: not one dull round of labor, and like it was
Speaker 2: just a much more leisurely life than what was about
Speaker 2: to come. And the thing that's so gripping about the
Speaker 2: beginning of the Industrial Revolution and specifically the initial disruption
Speaker 2: in the textile industry is that it happened overnight. I
Speaker 2: mean we're talking in the span of like maybe ten twelve,
Speaker 2: fifteen years. People went from they just worked at home
Speaker 2: three or four days a week to having to work
Speaker 2: twelve to thirteen hour days, seven days a week in
Speaker 2: a factory just to make less money than they had
Speaker 2: been making before at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the other thing too, was this wasn't like
Speaker 1: the beginning of automation. There had been automation and textile
Speaker 1: manufacturing for a little while at this point. But and
Speaker 1: this is very key, Queen Elizabeth one saw the writing
Speaker 1: on the wall way back in the day and said, hey,
Speaker 1: William Lee, you want a patent for this machine. You
Speaker 1: can't have one because that's going to put too many
Speaker 1: people out of work. So it's very interesting that, you know,
Speaker 1: long before this happened, you know, with the Luddites, Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the first like saw what was coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was pretty precient for sure. And so so yes,
Speaker 2: that's a big misconception. People are like, these machines just
Speaker 2: came up out of nowhere and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: it just disrupted everything. No, the machines have been there
Speaker 2: for hundreds of years. What changed was the way that
Speaker 2: the machines were used and that they were improved along
Speaker 2: the way. Like the machine that William Lee invented in
Speaker 2: fifteen eighty compared to the machines that were being used
Speaker 2: in seventeen eighty or eighteen hundred or eighteen ten were
Speaker 2: pretty different. The ones that came later were much much better.
Speaker 2: And that there were a bunch of different machines that
Speaker 2: were used in the weaving textile creation process that had
Speaker 2: all become improved enough that you could put them all
Speaker 2: together and have and create a mill. That was a
Speaker 2: that was part one of why this all kind of
Speaker 2: happened at the time that it did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you have a factory,
Speaker 1: it can't just be the machine that makes the thing.
Speaker 1: You need all the other machines to automate that process
Speaker 1: as well if you want a really efficient system. And
Speaker 1: so that's what happened. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: happened to kind of you know, and again we keep
Speaker 1: saying steamroll or steam power, but this thing was full
Speaker 1: and full steam ahead when Adams when Adam Smith wrote
Speaker 1: a book in seventeen seventy six called an inquiry into
Speaker 1: the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations, No
Speaker 1: Colon No. And we've talked a lot about Adam Smith
Speaker 1: on the show, and he was the guy that basically said, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, free markets the way to go. Laissez
Speaker 1: faire economics is a way to go. Let people stay
Speaker 1: out of things, Let the market work it out, Let
Speaker 1: the manufacturers and the business owners work it out with
Speaker 1: the workers and the merchant class like, why are you
Speaker 1: splitting all these profits? Like you should be keeping the
Speaker 1: lion's share of this stuff. And the merchant class was like,
Speaker 1: I love this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And to be fair to Adam Smith, like he
Speaker 2: wasn't advocating for workers to get completely screwed over. His
Speaker 2: arguments and his ideas and his theory of free market
Speaker 2: competition were interpreted in a way by the merchant class
Speaker 2: to mean that they should be self interested and maximize
Speaker 2: profits as much as they could. He wasn't necessarily expressly
Speaker 2: saying that. He almost seems to have been a little naive,
Speaker 2: or at the very least, he didn't predict the way
Speaker 2: that his theory would be used.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, I mean, I think that's exactly the
Speaker 1: thing was he thought. When he was saying it'll work
Speaker 1: itself out, he wasn't saying to the benefit of few
Speaker 1: and the detriment of many. He was saying, they'll all
Speaker 1: just kind of like, as we will see that England did.
Speaker 1: They were kind of like, hey, you guys will work
Speaker 1: this out and we should just stay out of it,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you'll come to a fair agreement.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So kind of I guess, kind of like the
Speaker 2: pendulum's going to swing this way, and then they'll swing
Speaker 2: back that way and that way, and they'll finally just
Speaker 2: settle in the middle. But the pendulum ended up swinging
Speaker 2: one way toward owners management capital and just got stuck
Speaker 2: their mid air and has been there ever since.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a pendulum. What do you call a pendulum
Speaker 1: that doesn't swing anymore? Sounds like a riddle. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we got to stick now.
Speaker 2: So there was a third factor too, and that was
Speaker 2: the economic background of England. And at the turn of
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century it was in a really big recession
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had been at war with Napoleon for a
Speaker 1: long time. That's going to drain your you know, your
Speaker 1: resources as a nation. And then they also because they
Speaker 1: were at war with France, had blockades against each other,
Speaker 1: but shut down a big trade partner. Those markets that
Speaker 1: were open to those merchants in England were suddenly closed
Speaker 1: and it hit everyone across the board in England like
Speaker 1: there was like families were going hungry for the first
Speaker 1: time in a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people who had been able to escape you know,
Speaker 2: previous recessions were getting hit hard. So the reason that
Speaker 2: this is important is that, first of all, now you
Speaker 2: have desperate workers who are in a situation that they
Speaker 2: need help, which puts them in a disadvantage. And then
Speaker 2: at the same time, you also have a good reason,
Speaker 2: especially now that everyone's read the Wealth of Nations, for
Speaker 2: the owners of these looms, what were the merchant class
Speaker 2: and are about to become the first industrialists, They have
Speaker 2: a good reason to replace workers with automated machines. Because
Speaker 2: profits are starting to dwindle. You want to maximize profits.
Speaker 2: So that's a really great way to do it. Replace
Speaker 2: a bunch of people who you have to pay like
Speaker 2: a fair wage to with some machines that you just
Speaker 2: pay for upfront and then hire some teenager to make
Speaker 2: sure it keeps running and pay them peanuts for doing so.
Speaker 1: Boy, this was really the beginning of the downfall of everything.
Speaker 1: Is this is the beginning of Hey man, this stuff's
Speaker 1: not going to be as good, but who cares. We
Speaker 1: can make it for cheap, and we can sell it
Speaker 1: for cheaper, and if they wear out, people can just
Speaker 1: buy another cheap version of it that will make It's
Speaker 1: like this was the beginning of the drop of in
Speaker 1: craftsmanship and quality and everything.
Speaker 2: I think that's why I find this period so fascinating,
Speaker 2: because our modern world was created like here in this
Speaker 2: like decade actually just a few years really, And it's
Speaker 2: funny that you say the quality of goods went down,
Speaker 2: because I've seen more than once it argued that the
Speaker 2: thing that really sparked the Luddite movement was not the
Speaker 2: new technology, was not the unfair treatment, was not the
Speaker 2: poor wages. It was the decline in the quality of
Speaker 2: what was being produced. What formerly like socks essentially stockings,
Speaker 2: what had been produced before with great craftsmanship and sold
Speaker 2: at a fair price, was now being made really cheaply
Speaker 2: and sold cheaply. And that that's what really set off
Speaker 2: the people who were in the text industry to basically riot.
Speaker 1: Later on, Yeah, I mean what it did was it
Speaker 1: put them in a position where they were, you know,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to stay out of that and remain
Speaker 1: because it's not like every single small you know business
Speaker 1: textile crafts person went out of business overnight, like they
Speaker 1: were like I could keep this open, like I actually
Speaker 1: own my own loom, but now I have to, you know,
Speaker 1: use cheaper goods and sell them cheaper if I want
Speaker 1: to keep up, or you know, just give up and
Speaker 1: go work for them. And neither one of those were
Speaker 1: good prospects.
Speaker 2: No, no, because there were zero regulations at the outset
Speaker 2: of this, so the mill owners just did whatever they
Speaker 2: wanted and you could either go out on the street
Speaker 2: and starve, or you could come work for me under
Speaker 2: my terms. And so the work in the mills was
Speaker 2: really difficult. They kept it really damp in there, so
Speaker 2: tuberculosis would run rampant and kill a bunch of people.
Speaker 2: The fabric, like little parties of fabric could give you
Speaker 2: long damage. The machines all together were really loud, so
Speaker 2: they could give you hearing damage. And the machines were
Speaker 2: really dangerous too, like people would lose their lives, including children.
Speaker 2: That again, we're working thirteen fourteen hour days, seven days
Speaker 2: a week at the mill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they didn't need those artisans anymore because they
Speaker 1: could train a seventeen year old to run these automated
Speaker 1: you know, the automated machinery. And this was like, you know,
Speaker 1: this was the birth of capitalism. When quality went down,
Speaker 1: prices went down, Fewer and fewer workers getting paid less
Speaker 1: for more work, and the people that own the joint
Speaker 1: getting rich.
Speaker 2: Right. But I think for those of us alive today,
Speaker 2: because capitalism was birth this way, a lot of people
Speaker 2: are like, well, capitalism doesn't work, it's inherently exploitive. That's
Speaker 2: not true. It was just born that way. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be that way, but it was born that way,
Speaker 2: and it was allowed to remain that way and grow
Speaker 2: up that way, so that it's just so commonplace now
Speaker 2: that people think like that's the only way it can be.
Speaker 2: And I firmly believe that there's an equitable way to
Speaker 2: do capitalism. Ye're just not doing it. That that's what
Speaker 2: the issue is, and that that's this is where that started.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that chip has sailed, my friend that I is
Speaker 1: not moving disagree. Oh, you think there's going to be
Speaker 1: a big change in that.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, I think there can be. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying there definitely will be, but I think that there's
Speaker 2: there's the potential for it. Sure, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: completely it's just going to be that way forever. Not necessarily.
Speaker 2: It could be, but I don't think that is definitely
Speaker 2: going to be. That's my take.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, I admire you're optimism. So shall we
Speaker 1: take a break. Yeah, all right, all right. One thing
Speaker 1: that we mentioned in act one, uh, you like that?
Speaker 1: Fancying this thing up a little bit?
Speaker 2: I forgot to introduced the gun that goes off in
Speaker 2: Act three, That's right. You know what I found out
Speaker 2: who that was? I was Chekhov that said that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you finally found that out.
Speaker 2: Sure, I thought it was you.
Speaker 1: No, Are you serious? You thought that was me?
Speaker 2: No. I knew it was kind of like a trope,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know that Chekhov had come up with it.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm not so familiar with nineteenth century plays
Speaker 2: as you.
Speaker 1: Well, you probably never took drama class or dumb English
Speaker 1: classes where you read dramas. Well.
Speaker 2: What's said is, I was they tried and true drama
Speaker 2: kid in high school. So are you really Yeah, we
Speaker 2: just didn't do any Chekhov. It was all slapstick comedy
Speaker 2: in my high school.
Speaker 1: Well, if the rubber chicken is introduced in act one.
Speaker 2: It comes back to life and kills everyone in act three.
Speaker 1: All right, where was I? Okay? Act one when we
Speaker 1: spoke of the misconception that Luddites are afraid of technology,
Speaker 1: and I hinted a little further about what I'm going
Speaker 1: to say now, which is they tried to They tried
Speaker 1: to work it out. They weren't like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: industrialization's happening. We need to fight it tooth and nail.
Speaker 1: They were more like, hey, it looks like this is happening,
Speaker 1: so let's uh, you know, there's gonna be a man
Speaker 1: one day named Josh Clark who will believe that this
Speaker 1: can still happen. We want to make it fair for everyone,
Speaker 1: so like, we'll do this, We'll do this work, give
Speaker 1: us a minimum wage, make these working conditions safe, maybe
Speaker 1: tax these goods to create these pensions for people that
Speaker 1: you're definitely putting out of work, and let's like just
Speaker 1: roll this out slowly. Let's not just go full steam
Speaker 1: ahead here and give people time to like learn how
Speaker 1: to do something else, and they went nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's just so contrary to what people think
Speaker 2: of as the Ludites today. I mean, if you even
Speaker 2: know about the lud Heights beyond you know, the modern
Speaker 2: use of the word, that there was an actual group,
Speaker 2: you probably still don't think that they were a reasonable group.
Speaker 2: That's not exactly what they're known for because they broke
Speaker 2: a bunch of machines, but that was exactly their initial response.
Speaker 2: They wanted in, but they wanted in fairly, and so,
Speaker 2: like you said, the responses to the request were no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no no. And it wasn't just the factory and mill
Speaker 2: owners that were saying no. The government was also saying no.
Speaker 2: And essentially, when the workers went to Parliament, when some
Speaker 2: labor friendly parliamentarians MPs tried to get legislation passed that
Speaker 2: kind of helped workers be treated more fairly, it just
Speaker 2: did not pass. And the idea was, the reasoning was
Speaker 2: among parliament that anything we would do would just screw
Speaker 2: things up, like any regulations we create are just going
Speaker 2: to hamper business, maybe put business people out of business.
Speaker 2: Their employees are going to be out on the street.
Speaker 2: And so a job where you're exploited is preferable to
Speaker 2: no job at all. And since any meddling we might
Speaker 2: do will will possibly cause you to lose your job,
Speaker 2: we're just not going to get involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they did get involved, but they got involved
Speaker 1: for the other side, Yeah, big time. In seventeen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: they passed the Combination Acts, which outlawed the trade gills
Speaker 1: that had kept them, you know, protected up into that point.
Speaker 1: It stopped them from collective bargaining. It outlawed strikes, so
Speaker 1: they took away basically any tool they would have to
Speaker 1: you know, get fair treatment in better wages. And this
Speaker 1: is another key point too, was they had had machines
Speaker 1: before we talked about that Queen Elizabeth, you know, not
Speaker 1: granting the patent, but the machines were still around since
Speaker 1: the mid seventeen hundreds, and some of those machines had
Speaker 1: been broken in the past in protest. But they augmented
Speaker 1: this law basically on the books that said, hey, if
Speaker 1: you start up with that stuff again, you're going to
Speaker 1: to go to the gallows and be hanged in front
Speaker 1: of the town.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So just to kind of put that into perspective today.
Speaker 2: Imagine if hacking carried the death penalty, that's kind of
Speaker 2: akin to what it was like, but even more simplified
Speaker 2: than that. It'd be more like breaking the computer that
Speaker 2: your employer gave you when you were hired, like I'm perfecting.
Speaker 1: Or going into an apple store with a crowbar.
Speaker 2: But imagine that that carried the death penalty. So when
Speaker 2: you put all of that together, the government Parliament was
Speaker 2: essentially saying, get to work, and whatever the mill owners
Speaker 2: tell you to do, you're going to do it, and
Speaker 2: if you try to resist, you got us to deal with.
Speaker 2: That's the way things are. That's essentially what Parliament said.
Speaker 2: As the blood heites and the textile workers who would
Speaker 2: become ludites, we're trying to approach us from a reasonable manner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And that started, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: years of what thees are known for for busting these
Speaker 1: machines up and and more, which we'll get to, but
Speaker 1: you know, they pointed to the previous you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years earlier, when they had already been
Speaker 1: breaking machines, and that stuff happened, But it just kind
Speaker 1: of came and went. The Ludites were organized. There were
Speaker 1: a lot more of them. They were super coordinated. One
Speaker 1: historian that you found said that you know, talked about
Speaker 1: how well branded they were because they were they were
Speaker 1: known as something. They were known as Luddites, ironically leaderless,
Speaker 1: even though supposedly this what by all accounts is an
Speaker 1: urban legend named ned Lud was their leader.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just a little on ned Lud. It's it's
Speaker 2: pretty clear that ned Lud, especially as leader of the Luddites,
Speaker 2: never existed. He was fictitious. It's possible that there was
Speaker 2: somebody named Edward Ludlam who was the real life person
Speaker 2: that ned Lud became based on. But the story of
Speaker 2: the whole thing, the story of ned Luod, is that
Speaker 2: in seventeen seventy nine, a young I think he was
Speaker 2: a weaver named ned Lud was either told by his
Speaker 2: father or boss whoever he was working for at the
Speaker 2: time to tighten his needles or square his needles which
Speaker 2: means titan his weave, or he was told to create cheaper,
Speaker 2: cheaper product faster. Either way, in a fit of rage,
Speaker 2: he broke his loom, he broke the machine that he
Speaker 2: was working on, and protest so This was seventeen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: and by the time that eighteen eleven rolls around, which
Speaker 2: is when the Ludites really started to rise up, ned
Speaker 2: Lud was kind of like this catch all in the
Speaker 2: textile community. Anytime something happened to a loom, it broke.
Speaker 2: It was purposely broken. It was just kind of like
Speaker 2: Ned Luod did it. You're gonna hate this analogy, so
Speaker 2: I'm sorry in advance, but it was kind of like
Speaker 2: the family Circus kids. I ton't know. Yeah, oh wow,
Speaker 2: that was surprising. I like my teeth were clenched waiting
Speaker 2: for your response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't remember, because there are other examples of that,
Speaker 1: of like a made up person of like so and
Speaker 1: so did it that weren't even real people. I just
Speaker 1: can't think of them. So family Circus is the perfect analogy.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, well, thank you. Wow, I was not expecting this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to take up break here for
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hate the Family Circus. Still, you didn't
Speaker 1: win me over, okay, but I love the ref Everything's
Speaker 1: back to normal good. But regardless, ned Lud was kind
Speaker 1: of this urban legend went by, you know, King Lud
Speaker 1: Captain lud General lud But all of this was the
Speaker 1: idea that he was the leader of the Ludites when
Speaker 1: there was no clear leader. I mean, you know, in
Speaker 1: different places, depending where it was taking place. There were
Speaker 1: of course people who might have led the charge that
Speaker 1: night or for that operation, but there was no like
Speaker 1: central leader. Yet they remained like highly organized.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like the Ludites weren't act actual group
Speaker 2: that spread across the Midlands and into Yorkshire from eighteen
Speaker 2: eleven to eighteen thirteen. Some people say eighteen sixteen because
Speaker 2: there was another uprising that year, but really the Blood
Speaker 2: Height Revolution took place from eighteen eleven to eighteen thirteen,
Speaker 2: and there it was a group of people of textile
Speaker 2: workers who had sworn a secret oath to this organization.
Speaker 2: But like you said, it was decentralized. There was no Nedlood.
Speaker 2: But they were so organized that the British government and
Speaker 2: the officials and the mill owners who were trying to
Speaker 2: break up this organization believed that there very much was
Speaker 2: a Nedlood. There had to be a Nedlood because who
Speaker 2: else was leading these people and stirring up unrest that
Speaker 2: was spreading across the northern part of the country.
Speaker 1: So I don't even think we mentioned like the very
Speaker 1: first thing that happened, that was in March of eighteen eleven,
Speaker 1: when a group of you know, these these what would
Speaker 1: be known as Luddites a little bit later on, took
Speaker 1: to the streets in protests of of their pay, their
Speaker 1: working conditions. The British troops came in, broke it up,
Speaker 1: and they dispersed, but they came back later that night,
Speaker 1: and that was the first night of this new like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's break everything. They went to a mill, they trashed
Speaker 1: everything inside and that was sort of the first rubber
Speaker 1: chicken fired in this new round of busting stuff up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was March. The next big thing that happened
Speaker 2: was in November there was a group of Luodites who
Speaker 2: attacked the home of Edward Hollingsworth, who was an owner
Speaker 2: of several automatic looms. He was, I guess kind of
Speaker 2: like a craftsman merchant, all rolled into one. The reason
Speaker 2: that he was targeted is because he was using those
Speaker 2: looms to make these new cheap stockings that had just
Speaker 2: completely undermined the entire stocking trade. And so they broke
Speaker 2: all of the looms in the guy's house and left,
Speaker 2: and Edward Hollingsworth was like, well, at least they didn't
Speaker 2: burn my house down. And then a week later the
Speaker 2: blood Heites came back and burned his house down.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was Yeah, it seemed like a little much,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was an avengeful act that happened because
Speaker 1: they were mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we should say there's like a lot
Speaker 2: of attacks like this between eighteen eleven and eighteen thirteen.
Speaker 2: And it all started in Nottingham, sure, in Nottingham specifically,
Speaker 2: and it just kind of spread. It was a great
Speaker 2: idea among these pent up, angry textile workers whose entire
Speaker 2: worlds had just been upended. So it spread very, very easily,
Speaker 2: and it was I think in a December issue of
Speaker 2: the Nottingham Review that the story of ned Blood was told.
Speaker 2: And that's when they became known as the Luodites. And
Speaker 2: so these textile workers, like I said, they swore a
Speaker 2: secret oath to protect this organization with their lives, and
Speaker 2: in doing so, they swore an allegiance to, like you said,
Speaker 2: Kinglood General Blood, and of course the textall workers knew
Speaker 2: that ned Blood didn't exist, and to kind of underscore that,
Speaker 2: they placed his base of operations in Sherwood Forest in Nottingham,
Speaker 2: which probably sounds familiar to anybody who's seen any version
Speaker 2: of Robin Hood.
Speaker 1: Yes, very cheeky thing to do, for sure. One of
Speaker 1: the other misconceptions is that the Luddites were so angry
Speaker 1: that they just trashed everything with reckless abandoned and went
Speaker 1: after everyone and tried to wreck all these factories. That
Speaker 1: wasn't the case. They were very targeted. Anyone that was
Speaker 1: known to be like a good boss and a good
Speaker 1: factory owner who treated their employees more fairly. They did
Speaker 1: not go and trash their factory. The people who were
Speaker 1: known to be especially bad and egregious violators of workers' rights,
Speaker 1: they were targeted. But they even got letters beforehand a
Speaker 1: lot of times that were like, hey, you got a
Speaker 1: chance here to change things. Otherwise next week we're gonna
Speaker 1: trash your factory or move those things out of there,
Speaker 1: make some changes, or it's happening, and they would not
Speaker 1: do that. Sometimes they would try and move their machinery
Speaker 1: out of there. But because these were kind of working
Speaker 1: class heroes, they would get tipped off on when these
Speaker 1: caravans were doing that, and so in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. They would intercept these caravans and you get
Speaker 1: them out there instead of in the factory.
Speaker 2: I just see the mill owners trying to remove their
Speaker 2: looms in the middle of the night, like Otho trying
Speaker 2: to escape and Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the new trailer yet for the new one?
Speaker 2: No? And I don't want to see it. I just
Speaker 2: want to go into that movie completely unaware of everything.
Speaker 1: Well you should, I mean, it looks like Beetlejuice. I
Speaker 1: hope it didn't spoil it.
Speaker 2: Yes you did, you didn't, That's fine, but I yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm very excited about seeing that. No.
Speaker 1: Same here. I wanted to see that Broadway play but
Speaker 1: it went away, did it? Yeah? It was supposed to
Speaker 1: be really good. So I don't know if it just
Speaker 1: had its and stopped or what.
Speaker 2: I'll bet it's playing in New Mexico somewhere.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there is a traveling version, so maybe
Speaker 1: it'll come through or New Mexico. So they were breaking
Speaker 1: looms at a rate of about one hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: five a month. It's got very costly for you know,
Speaker 1: the machinery replacement costs of productivity not happening not, you know,
Speaker 1: putting out these stockings and socks and things. And in
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve things really really changed for the scarier and
Speaker 1: maybe that's a good time for another break.
Speaker 2: Sure I was not expecting that, but yes.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll keep everyone on the edge of their
Speaker 1: stockings and we'll be right.
Speaker 2: Back, okay, Chuck. So you said eighteen twelve was kind
Speaker 2: of like a watershed year, and definitely was. Things got
Speaker 2: much more violent. Essentially, the Luddites and the Ludite movement
Speaker 2: as it was spreading across the Midlands and into Yorkshire,
Speaker 2: became engaged in all at war with mill owners. And
Speaker 2: it could be you know, a handful of them wearing
Speaker 2: masks and carrying swords and muskets that would attack, you know,
Speaker 2: someone's house and break all their looms. It could be
Speaker 2: two thousand of them, like what happened in one attack
Speaker 2: in March, I believe, or it could be a couple
Speaker 2: of hundreds. One of the most famous was called the
Speaker 2: Battle of Rofold's Mill in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, and
Speaker 2: there were between one hundred and two hundred, depending on
Speaker 2: who you ask, former workers of that mill who stormed
Speaker 2: it one night and it just got super violent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because these owners had had enough, they start hiring
Speaker 1: armed guards like mercenaries basically to stand by and watch
Speaker 1: with their rifles. And there was a gun battle too.
Speaker 1: I believe two of the Luddites were shot. They later died.
Speaker 1: They retaliated. They assassinated William Horsefall, which was a really
Speaker 1: sort of ardent anti Ludite. He had talked about riding
Speaker 1: up to his saddle Gerson Ludite blood, and so they
Speaker 1: went after him assassinated him in a bar. I think
Speaker 1: he ended up dying a couple of days later. But
Speaker 1: they shot him in the thighs, the hip, and the testicles,
Speaker 1: and not that that's funny. I don't know why I laughed,
Speaker 1: but it just seemed like a particularly egregious thing to do.
Speaker 1: And they took him back to the bar where he
Speaker 1: was had been spouting off and drinking, and he died
Speaker 1: there a couple of days later.
Speaker 2: Something ironic about that is that Horsefall when he left
Speaker 2: that bar initially before he got shot, he had just
Speaker 2: bought a round of drinks for some of his workers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: talk about irony.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One other thing to know about the Luodites is that
Speaker 2: their secret was not only kept by them, but by
Speaker 2: the communities that they came from. You might think like, Okay,
Speaker 2: these guys are burning down mills and breaking machines, they're
Speaker 2: putting people out of work, and that's absolutely true. They
Speaker 2: also would go into people's homes and requisition weapons to
Speaker 2: use for raids, and yet almost universally they were beloved
Speaker 2: and kept secret by the local communities. And this evidenced
Speaker 2: by the army of spies that the British government sent
Speaker 2: in to try to break up this movement. Who could
Speaker 2: get nowhere? They got nothing, and as a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: the spies started reporting back that there was such a
Speaker 2: person as ned Luod. They got so their their efforts
Speaker 2: were just that frustrated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they've sent in spies, they're getting nowhere. There's
Speaker 1: actual bloodshed happening now at a quicker rate, and so
Speaker 1: they're like, we got to do something. We have to
Speaker 1: get involved militarily, and they sent in troops, initially just
Speaker 1: a sort of quiet things down. They had fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: troops station in the Midlands, in Yorkshire. They had more
Speaker 1: people stationed there than they had fighting the War of
Speaker 1: Napoleon at the time.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: They you know, they had some sort of effect, but
Speaker 1: they didn't completely like break the movement up. And so
Speaker 1: they finally said, all right, remember that death penalty stipulation
Speaker 1: we put in there about going into the apple store
Speaker 1: with a crowbar. We're going to start enforcing that. And
Speaker 1: they started hanging dozens of Luddites in public after hasty trials,
Speaker 1: sometimes even teenagers, and that was what really got everyone's
Speaker 1: attention that they could be put to death for this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one particularly grim day in Lancashire where
Speaker 2: I think they hanged fourteen Bloodites, including, like you said,
Speaker 2: a teenager, a sixteen year old who'd only acted as
Speaker 2: a lookout for one of the raids. And they were
Speaker 2: clearly making an example out of these people. These were
Speaker 2: very public trials, very public hangings. They built special gallows
Speaker 2: so they could hang multiple people at the same time,
Speaker 2: like they were The British government was saying like, we're
Speaker 2: just gonna keep doing this. We're going to kill you
Speaker 2: if we catch you, so you better stop, and that's
Speaker 2: what finally worked. Other people, by the way, were transported
Speaker 2: to Australia, sometimes for life. They would just take them
Speaker 2: there and be like you're Australia. Now good for them, right,
Speaker 2: all of that put together, the fact that now the
Speaker 2: one remaining tool they had in their toolbox to try
Speaker 2: to fight for equal treatment or at least better treatment
Speaker 2: at work was now like they would get the death
Speaker 2: penalty for that. That finally broke up the Light eight
Speaker 2: movement around eighteen thirteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they had about another dozen years of you know,
Speaker 1: pretty bad treatment until finally there was a bit of
Speaker 1: a wake up call for the British government and in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty four Parliament said, you know what, maybe unions
Speaker 1: are a decent idea after all, they repeal that ban
Speaker 1: on unions. But you know, like I said, that ship
Speaker 1: at sail, there was no putting the genie back into
Speaker 1: the bottle at this point. And the you know, like
Speaker 1: we mentioned a few times, the popular sort of view
Speaker 1: of Luddites these days is not entirely right. They didn't
Speaker 1: hate the technology. They tried to work things out in
Speaker 1: a fair way. They tried to stand up for workers'
Speaker 1: rights very early on. And it seems like a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of the rewriting of that came from a
Speaker 1: novelist and scientist named CP Snow who looks like it
Speaker 1: was the first person to kind of cast them as,
Speaker 1: you know, anti technology, which was reinforced again in the
Speaker 1: seventies in New Scientists and other publications.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, at least by the seventies, if not earlier,
Speaker 2: Ludites were now synonymous with being afraid, usually irrationally afraid
Speaker 2: of technology or the future, or in some cases you
Speaker 2: were anti capitalist is another way to some people use
Speaker 2: it right, And that lasted that way for a while
Speaker 2: until Thomas Pinchon, the famous author of Gravity's Rainbow, among others,
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four he wrote an essay essentially saying
Speaker 2: like I'm not so sure we should scoff at ludites.
Speaker 2: He wrote an essay called is it Okay to be
Speaker 2: a Luddite and basically said, if you stop and look
Speaker 2: around at the way that technology is going, maybe we
Speaker 2: should be a little bit afraid. Maybe we should start
Speaker 2: questioning some of this stuff. And in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: he made a warning about like you really want to
Speaker 2: keep your eye on artificial intelligence in eighty four, And
Speaker 2: what's really interesting is around twenty twenty three, I think
Speaker 2: there was an author named Brian Merchant who wrote a
Speaker 2: book called Blood in the Machine, and he essentially said
Speaker 2: he didn't cite Pinchon. I don't think I haven't read
Speaker 2: the books. Possibly did, But essentially what he was saying
Speaker 2: is that what Pinchon predicted has now come to roost.
Speaker 2: That AI is starting to creep closer and closer to this,
Speaker 2: creating a world that's even more upended, even more quickly,
Speaker 2: putting even more people out of work than what happened
Speaker 2: to the textile workers the ludites at the beginning of
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he said, and then there shall be a
Speaker 1: Justine Bateman who is the new Thomas pinch On. What
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about it before. She's the actor
Speaker 1: Justine Bateman from Family Ties. Of course, she's sort of
Speaker 1: the leading voice in Hollywood fighting against you know, AI
Speaker 1: destroying Hollywood, gotcha.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, that's one thing that people are questioning.
Speaker 2: I mean, just that when chat GPT came out, it
Speaker 2: was like, we know companies that actually fired people. They're like, oh, good,
Speaker 2: but can fire you now? First chance? They got right,
Speaker 2: So it is worth questioning. And that's what Merchant and
Speaker 2: some of these neo Ludites are saying. They're like, we
Speaker 2: should stop and say like Okay, where's this technology going?
Speaker 2: Who exactly is making this technology that's going to totally
Speaker 2: change our world? How can we pret tech people who
Speaker 2: are about to lose their jobs all the same questions
Speaker 2: the loatites asked at the beginning of the nineteenth century
Speaker 2: and then face the death penalty for trying to do
Speaker 2: something about And the most ironic thing, Chuck, the most
Speaker 2: ironic thing of all is the people who are questioning
Speaker 2: where artificial intelligence are going are being branded as lotites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's our show. We're going to do a
Speaker 1: Q and A.
Speaker 2: I know that is that we end live shows, but
Speaker 2: not episodes. But it was just too perfect.
Speaker 1: Many No, that was a very live showy ending. We
Speaker 1: just don't have our traditional handshake afterward.
Speaker 2: We even held for applause for a second we did.
Speaker 1: I heard none, So.
Speaker 2: I'm taking it you got nothing else, right?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, if you want to know more about lutites,
Speaker 2: go read about them, read about neo Luddites, read about
Speaker 2: everything you can. And since I said that, it's time
Speaker 2: for listener mail.
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