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Speaker 1: Pushkin. William Cartwright is dropping off to sleep on an

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Speaker 1: improvised bed in the textile mill he owns near Cleckheaton, Yorkshire, England.

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Speaker 1: Outside the river Spend flows gently by on working days.

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Speaker 1: The river's current turns a wheel that powers machines that

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Speaker 1: sheer cloth. The year is eighteen twelve, a Saturday night

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Speaker 1: in April, just gone midnight, the mill owner's dog begins

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Speaker 1: to growl all at once. Cartwright is alert. He isn't

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Speaker 1: sure yet if this is the trouble he's been expecting

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Speaker 1: for weeks. He's posted two guards outside the yard, and

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Speaker 1: he had assumed there'd be the first to raise the

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Speaker 1: other arm. They haven't, and now the growling turns to barking.

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Speaker 1: Cartwright springs out of bed. He wakes the other nine

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Speaker 1: men who are sleeping in the mill, or of his workers,

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Speaker 1: and five soldiers borrowed from a local regiment. No time

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Speaker 1: to put on clothes, the men pick up their guns. Outside.

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Speaker 1: The gates of the yard are being battered off their hinges,

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Speaker 1: and Cartwright's men are on the upper floor of the mill.

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Speaker 1: They point their guns through holes that have been made

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Speaker 1: in the thick stone walls, and they listen and wait

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Speaker 1: from outside, the sound of trampling feet and murmured voices.

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Speaker 1: Then another crash, this time of glass, A volley of

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Speaker 1: rocks smashing through the ground floor windows, an almighty yell,

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Speaker 1: and the firing of pistols and muskets. The men in

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Speaker 1: the mill open fire in the turn down beneath them.

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Speaker 1: The door to the mill shudders under blow after blow

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Speaker 1: from hatchets massive hammers. A voice from outside urges on

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Speaker 1: the men attacking the door. In with your lads, damn them,

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Speaker 1: kill them everyone. Cartwright has prepared for this. He's about

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Speaker 1: to find out how well he's had the mills wooden

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Speaker 1: door reinforced with iron studs and bars. If the attackers

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Speaker 1: do manage to force it in, they'll find themselves on

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Speaker 1: the lower floor, and Cartwright's men will then be able

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Speaker 1: to shoot at them from above through gaps he's made

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Speaker 1: in the stonework separating the upper and lower floors. If

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Speaker 1: the attackers tried to get up the stairs, they'll find

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Speaker 1: that Cartwright has installed a fearsome roll of eighteen inch spikes.

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Speaker 1: If they get past that, he's got a barrel of

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Speaker 1: sulfuric acid he can tip on top of them, but anyway,

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Speaker 1: The door's holding for now, and Cartwright's men are reloading,

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Speaker 1: firing their weapons through those little holes in the wall,

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Speaker 1: at least to the mark. One of the soldier's cartrights borrowed.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't appear to be doing much, just turning his gun

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Speaker 1: over in his hand. What's wrong, asked Cartwright. Is her

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Speaker 1: gun faulty? No, says the soldier. Then why aren't you firing?

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Speaker 1: I might hit some of my brothers. And who are

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Speaker 1: these brothers? The men attacking the mill? The men the

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Speaker 1: soldier is reluctant to hurt. Are they robbers looking to

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Speaker 1: steal the mill owner's money? Not at all. They're followers,

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Speaker 1: are a mysterious individual called General ned Blood, Or more simply,

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Speaker 1: they're Luod Heites. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to

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Speaker 1: cautionary tales today. Luddite is a term of mockery, what

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Speaker 1: you'd laughingly say about a boomer who hasn't figured out

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Speaker 1: how to listen to a podcast yet a description for

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Speaker 1: someone who's scared of technology, who doesn't know how to

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Speaker 1: use it, doesn't appreciate what it can do for them.

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Speaker 1: But in eighteen twelve in Yorkshire, luddism was no laughing

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Speaker 1: matter for the likes of William Cartwright. Three years before,

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Speaker 1: Cartwright had brought new machinery into his mill. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to automate a job that was hard and slow for humans, cropping,

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Speaker 1: as it was called. When cloth is made, it's rough

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Speaker 1: and uneven. The cropper uses shears to make it smooth.

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Speaker 1: It's a delicate task. It takes real skill to lift

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Speaker 1: the rough cloth and wheeld the shears to get a

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Speaker 1: beautiful finish. It's also painful, at least to start with

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Speaker 1: the handles of the shears dig into the wrist. In time,

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Speaker 1: the skin on the wrist gets hard and calloused. You

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Speaker 1: can tell if someone's a cropper with a glance at

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Speaker 1: their wrist. Because the job is hard and skilled, it

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Speaker 1: pays well. Young men push through that initial pain for

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Speaker 1: the prospect of a gainful career. Cropping is a high

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Speaker 1: status profession in working communities. It's also recently become unnecessary

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Speaker 1: because machines called gig mills and shearing frames can do

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Speaker 1: the job just as well and far more quickly. As

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Speaker 1: William cartrch is making all too clear, Cartright's not the

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Speaker 1: only mill owner who's brought in these new machines, but

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Speaker 1: he's one of the few who's daring still to use them.

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Speaker 1: In the spring of eighteen twelve, other local mill owners

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Speaker 1: have been intimidated by letters signed by General lud dismantle

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Speaker 1: the machines or will smash them up. It's no idle

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Speaker 1: threat if the machines stay in use. Masked gangs come

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Speaker 1: in the dead of night. They use hatchets to break

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Speaker 1: in the door and great hammers to smash the machines.

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Speaker 1: Working people argued about whether or not this would all backfire.

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Speaker 1: Let's rewind to March eighteen twelve, a month before the

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Speaker 1: attack on Cartwright's mill. In a cropping shop, a group

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Speaker 1: of men are talking after work. Our account of this

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Speaker 1: conversation comes from a nineteenth century historian called Frank Peel,

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Speaker 1: who years later recorded the stories that local people handed down.

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Speaker 1: Most of those Peel describes talking are croppers and committed

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Speaker 1: followers of the shef. Do we figure they call General

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Speaker 1: Lud One is not. John Booth is nineteen years old,

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Speaker 1: an apprentice saddle maker, the son of a clergyman with

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Speaker 1: the Church of England. Would it not be better, asks

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Speaker 1: Booth to reason with them rather than infuriate them? By

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Speaker 1: destroying their machines. Reason with them, He might as well

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Speaker 1: reason with a stone. Booth's friend, the cropper, George Meller,

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Speaker 1: is the local leader of those masked marauding gangs. Meller

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Speaker 1: is still working for now, but he's well aware that

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Speaker 1: he can't compete with water powered gig mills and shearing frames.

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Speaker 1: He and his fellow croppers can see that the skill

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Speaker 1: they've spent years perfecting is soon to be rendered worthless.

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Speaker 1: It's all right for John Booth. He's not a cropper,

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Speaker 1: He's a saddle maker, and there isn't a saddle making machine,

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Speaker 1: not yet anyway. These machines aren't taking Booth's trade out

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Speaker 1: of his fingers, says Meller. Or it happens, see things

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Speaker 1: in a different light. But young Booth has thought this

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Speaker 1: through and he argues back. Being a cropper is hard work.

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Speaker 1: He points out, it's painful too, until you develop that hard,

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Speaker 1: callous skin on the wrist. And have you seen those

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Speaker 1: machines in action. You just have to set up the

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Speaker 1: cloth and keep an eye on them. They take away

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Speaker 1: all of that hard, painful work scene like that. The

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Speaker 1: machinery is a thing of beauty. I quite agree with you.

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Speaker 1: Says Booth, respecting the harm you suffer from machinery, but

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Speaker 1: it might be man's chief blessing instead of his curse.

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Speaker 1: If society was differently constituted. You can't say the machine

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Speaker 1: itself is evil, says Booth. That's absurd. No, the problem

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Speaker 1: is that the mill owner gets all the benefits. If

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Speaker 1: those benefits were fairly shared out. If if George Meller

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Speaker 1: is not impressed, what's the use of such sermons as

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Speaker 1: thine to starving men? Starving is not just a figure

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Speaker 1: of speech. Another man joins in the conversation. He tells

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Speaker 1: how he went to see a former workmate, a cropper

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Speaker 1: who lost his job. He can't find other work. There's

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Speaker 1: a war on with Napoleon's France. It's disrupted trade. Nobody's hiring,

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Speaker 1: and the price of food has shot up. The man's

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Speaker 1: been struggling to afford to eat, and now his wife

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Speaker 1: has died. There she lay on the bed, poor thing,

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Speaker 1: skin and bone. Now tells he told his fellows. It's

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Speaker 1: hard for John Booth to argue with that. He knows

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Speaker 1: he's right. The machines would be a blessing if society

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Speaker 1: were differently constituted, But he knows his friends are right too.

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Speaker 1: It isn't much comfort to conceive of a different world

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Speaker 1: if you're starving to death in this one. To confess

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Speaker 1: the truth, says Booth. I don't see much chance of

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Speaker 1: reorganizing society on a better and sounder basis at present.

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Speaker 1: I know not what to say. Say you'll join us,

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Speaker 1: says Meller. What to do? Booth doubts that smashing machines

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Speaker 1: will achieve anything, but it's not like he has a

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Speaker 1: better plan, and who knows. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe drastic

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Speaker 1: action will make people sit up and take notice of

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Speaker 1: how desperate the workers are. All right, says Booth, I'm

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Speaker 1: in Mella wants to decide on their next target. In

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Speaker 1: the last few weeks, they've had success after success around

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Speaker 1: the Yorkshire town of Huddersfield. They've smashed up some machines

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Speaker 1: and sent threatening letters to the owners of other machines,

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Speaker 1: and almost everyone has agreed to go back to the

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Speaker 1: old ways of cropping by hand. A local magistrate is

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Speaker 1: even recommending they do so for their own safety. But

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Speaker 1: two local mill owners have been loudly and publicly holding out.

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Speaker 1: One is William Cartwright. He's got nothing but contempt for

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Speaker 1: his peers who are taking down their shearing frames. Pew sillanimous,

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Speaker 1: he calls them. Instead, He's fortified his mill. He's brought

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Speaker 1: in soldiers from a local regiment. He's taken to sleeping

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Speaker 1: in his mill with the soldiers every night. The other

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Speaker 1: local holdout is William Horseful. He's gone even further than Cartwright.

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Speaker 1: He's installed a cannon in his mill. Just let the

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Speaker 1: Luddites try to smash up his machines, he says, to

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Speaker 1: anyone who'll listen, I'll ride up to my saddlegirths in

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Speaker 1: Luddite blood. If the Yorkshire croppers are to win their

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Speaker 1: battle against the new machines, the two Williams Artright and

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Speaker 1: Horsefall need to be taught a lesson whose mill should

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Speaker 1: they attack first. They flip a coin. It's Cartwright. None

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Speaker 1: of them know it. But this time the attack will

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Speaker 1: determine who lives and who dies. Cautionary tales will be

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Speaker 1: back after the break. In his classic book The Making

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Speaker 1: of the English Working Class, the historian E. P. Thompson

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Speaker 1: sees the roots of Luddism in a failure of politics.

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Speaker 1: For years, he says, organizations of workers had been sending

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Speaker 1: representatives to London with policy proposals such as attacks of

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Speaker 1: sixpence a yard on cloth made by machines. That money

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Speaker 1: to go into a fund to support displaced workers. But

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Speaker 1: these ideas went against the mood of the day, which

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Speaker 1: was a sudden passion for lais a fair economics. Politicians

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Speaker 1: were busy abolishing restrictions on what workers and factories could

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Speaker 1: and couldn't do. Those old laws, said Thompson, were often

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Speaker 1: bad for workers, but still somewhere within them was the

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Speaker 1: shadowy image of a benevolent corporate state. There'd always been

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Speaker 1: an ethos of paternalism, the idea that those higher up

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Speaker 1: in the social order had some kind of obligation to

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Speaker 1: those below. Workers might be low down the order, but

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Speaker 1: they had a place. The new ideal was to free

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Speaker 1: up markets. If machines and unskilled workers could do things

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Speaker 1: more cheaply than skilled artisans. The artisans were simply out

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Speaker 1: of luck. No redundancy pay, no unemployment benefit, no programs

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Speaker 1: to help them reskill and learn another trade. Luddism, writes Thompson,

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Speaker 1: appeared with an almost inevitable logic to the croppers. Ned

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Speaker 1: lud was the defender of an ancient right the upholder

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Speaker 1: of a lost constitution, and who exactly was this mysterious

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Speaker 1: Ned Lud. He was from Nottingham, a town in the

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Speaker 1: English Midlands that was famous for its stocking industry and

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Speaker 1: for its centuries old stories about another popular outlaw who

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Speaker 1: was feared by the bad and loved by the good

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Speaker 1: chant no moyal rhymes about bold robin Hood his feed

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Speaker 1: ci but little man our singly achievements of General Lord

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Speaker 1: now in a hero Nottingham sh robin Hood was mythical,

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Speaker 1: so was General Lud. He was based on a well

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Speaker 1: known local story about a man called ned Lud, supposedly

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Speaker 1: a young stocking maker who once smashed up his stocking

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Speaker 1: frame in a fit of rage. In eighteen eleven, when

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Speaker 1: masked gangs started to smash up stocking frames in Nottingham

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Speaker 1: at night, people joked that ned Lud must have done it.

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Speaker 1: The gangs picked up the joke and ran with it.

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Speaker 1: They called themselves an army and imagined ned Ludd as

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Speaker 1: their general. When their leaders sent threatening letters, they signed

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Speaker 1: them General Lud. Newspapers reported breathlessly about the exploits of

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Speaker 1: the Nottingham Luddites. They inspired workers in other industries in

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Speaker 1: other parts of England, such as the croppers in Yorkshire.

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Speaker 1: The government responded with a legal clamp down. It was

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Speaker 1: hard to get anyone to testify against the masked machine smashers,

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Speaker 1: As one magistrate complained, almost every creature of the lower

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Speaker 1: order is on their side. So they sent out spies

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Speaker 1: and offered money to tempt informers, and they rushed through

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Speaker 1: new legislation smashing machines could now be punished with the

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Speaker 1: death penalty. On the night of the eleventh of April

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Speaker 1: eighteen twelve, around one hundred and fifty men leave their

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Speaker 1: homes and make their way to a quiet country lane

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Speaker 1: three miles from William Cartwright's mill. They wear masks or

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Speaker 1: blackened faces. They sought themselves by weapon. Some have got

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Speaker 1: hold of muskets or pistols. Others have hatchets or hammers

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Speaker 1: or bludgeons. George Meller gives them a pep talk. Cart writes, boasted.

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Speaker 1: He reminds them that he'll defend his mill, but we're

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Speaker 1: well armed and we shall handle him. You know what

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Speaker 1: to do. They march the three miles to Cartwright's mill

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Speaker 1: and stop just short of the gates. There'll be two

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Speaker 1: guards outside. They know. A few of the men sneak

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Speaker 1: up on them, grab them and muffle their cries. The

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Speaker 1: hatchet men advance on the gates and batter them inwards.

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Speaker 1: The men swarm into the yard. They hurl rocks through

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Speaker 1: the mill's windows, and with a yell, the men with

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Speaker 1: guns opened fire through the shattered glass. But then there's

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Speaker 1: gun fire back from inside the mill. Hatchetmen to the

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Speaker 1: front cries mellow. The hatchets rain down on the mill's

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Speaker 1: wooden door, but it's so well reinforced they're mostly hitting

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Speaker 1: iron Sparks are flying all around. George Meller His men

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Speaker 1: are crying out in pain as bullets find them. And

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Speaker 1: now someone sounded an alarm calling for reinforcements from a

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Speaker 1: regiment nearby. How long will it take them to arrive?

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Speaker 1: Shoot at the bell? Damn that bell, Mello yells, get it, lads.

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Speaker 1: The bell stops ringing, but not for long. They've shot

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Speaker 1: through the rope that Cartwright's man was pulling. That Cartwright

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Speaker 1: has simply sent the man up onto the roof to

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Speaker 1: ring the bell by hand. They can't have long before

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Speaker 1: the soldiers get there, and the door's still holding. Is

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Speaker 1: there another way in to the back, lads, Mello commands.

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Speaker 1: Some of the attackers try to find their way round

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Speaker 1: the back of the mill that the river runs right

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Speaker 1: next to it. One slips and falls in, the others

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Speaker 1: stop and scramble to help him out. So now there's

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Speaker 1: no alternative. It all depends on getting that door down fast.

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Speaker 1: And suddenly there's a break through, a hole in the

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Speaker 1: wood of the door about the size of a man's head.

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Speaker 1: In with your lads, damn them, kill them everyone. The

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Speaker 1: men surge at the door, but still it holds, and

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Speaker 1: the soldiers in the mill start to shoot through the hole.

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Speaker 1: Someone cries out and fall to the ground holding his leg.

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Speaker 1: It's nineteen year old apprentice saddle maker John Booth. He

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Speaker 1: never did think this attack on the mill was a

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Speaker 1: good idea. And now the attackers with muskets and pistols

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Speaker 1: have run out of ammunition. If they do get him,

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Speaker 1: what then the bell's still ringing. You can't have long

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Speaker 1: before more soldiers get there. Attackers start to fall back.

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Speaker 1: It's clear that they've failed. Split up, lads, get home

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Speaker 1: as quick as you can. Two men can't get home.

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Speaker 1: John Booth's leg is shattered. Another man's been shot in

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Speaker 1: the chest. He's lying on the ground struggling for breath.

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Speaker 1: Mella has no choice but to leave them inside the mill.

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Speaker 1: Silence falls except for the moans of the injured men

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Speaker 1: in the yard. Outside. Cartwright checks on his workers and

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Speaker 1: borrowed soldiers. Not one has been hurt. The defense he

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Speaker 1: had planned so carefully has worked exactly as intended, except,

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Speaker 1: of course, for that soldier who refused to shoot. They'll

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Speaker 1: deal with him later. What to do about the injured attackers,

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Speaker 1: It might be a trap. I'm not opening that door,

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Speaker 1: says Cartwright until the reinforcements arrive. Soon they do, and

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Speaker 1: so do other local people. They gather around the two

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Speaker 1: injured men. John Booth is writhing in agony, blood rushing

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Speaker 1: from his leg. The other man is choking on the

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Speaker 1: blood from his chest wound. Help me breathe, he says,

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Speaker 1: Lift up my head. Cartwright opens the mill's door and

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Speaker 1: strides over. He recognizes the man who's been shot in

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Speaker 1: the chest. The man used to work for him as

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Speaker 1: a cropper before the machines came in. If you want

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Speaker 1: us to help you, says Cartwright, tell me who's your leader.

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Speaker 1: One of the locals decides to ignore Cartwright he lifts

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Speaker 1: the head of the wounded man, another puts a glass

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Speaker 1: of water to his lips. The growing crowd murmur their approval,

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Speaker 1: and Cartwright understands that he isn't out of danger yet.

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Speaker 1: Take the two men to the inn, he says, we'll

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Speaker 1: care for them there, but both men die. It's later

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Speaker 1: rumored they were tortured to try to get them to

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Speaker 1: give up the names of the local Luodite leaders. John

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Speaker 1: Booth's supposed last words become legend. He calls over the priest,

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Speaker 1: a well known friend of Cartwright. Can you keep a secret,

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Speaker 1: he asks? I can, says the priest. So can I marry?

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Speaker 1: Says John Booth. Thousands of people gather for John Booth's funeral.

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Speaker 1: On the doors of local houses, a message is chalked

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Speaker 1: vengeance for the blood of the innocent. Cautionary tales will

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Speaker 1: be back after the break. Economists have coined the phrase

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Speaker 1: Luodite fallacy to describe the mistaken belief that technological progress

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Speaker 1: is bad for working people. It's bad for particular workers.

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Speaker 1: To be sure, machines do displace certain jobs, but the

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Speaker 1: story of economic progress is that new jobs have always

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Speaker 1: come along to replace them, and those new jobs have

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Speaker 1: tended to be more productive and better paid. The problem

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Speaker 1: is that those better jobs don't necessarily appear straight away.

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Speaker 1: In their book Power and Progress, the economists dare An

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Speaker 1: Assamoglu and Simon Johnson describe how it took a century

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Speaker 1: for the inventions of the Industrial Revolution to translate into

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Speaker 1: higher wages and improve working conditions for ordinary people. The

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Speaker 1: new machines created wealth quickly, but that wealth accrued to

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Speaker 1: their owners, people like William Cartwright. This had happened before,

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Speaker 1: say Assmoglu and Johnson. In medieval Europe. Advances in agriculture

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Speaker 1: created new wealth that funded magnificent cathedrals but didn't improve

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Speaker 1: the lives of peasants at all. And it's happening again now,

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Speaker 1: they say. Digital technologies are giving us new billionaires, but

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Speaker 1: shared prosperity not so much. In many rich countries, wages

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Speaker 1: for typical workers have been growing much more slowly than

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. If they've been

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Speaker 1: growing at all, perhaps then we can sympathize with the

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Speaker 1: luddite croppers. They were facing all the immediate costs of

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Speaker 1: new technology, while the uncertain benefits lay decades in the future.

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Speaker 1: No wonder some risked and early death to try to

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Speaker 1: prolong the status quo. Even some wealthy aristocrats sympathized at

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Speaker 1: the time, such as the poet Lord Byron, who spoke

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Speaker 1: out against the government's bill to bring in the death

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Speaker 1: penalty for machine breaking. The excesses of the Luddites, said Byron, however,

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Speaker 1: to be deplored and condemned can hardly be a matter

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Speaker 1: of surprise. A week after the attack on his mill,

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Speaker 1: William Cartwright rides to the town of Huddersfield. He has

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Speaker 1: to give evidence at the court martial of the soldier

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Speaker 1: who had refused to shoot at the Luddite attackers. The

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Speaker 1: regiment's commanders greeked him warmly. It's not easy for the

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Speaker 1: army to deal with the Luddites, they say, when the

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Speaker 1: mill owners keep giving in to them. What a pleasure

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Speaker 1: it is to find a man who will fight to

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Speaker 1: defend his property and the law. Another local mill owner

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Speaker 1: congratulates Cartwright too, William Horsefall, the man who'd installed a

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Speaker 1: cannon at his mill and said he'd ride up up

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Speaker 1: to his saddlegirths in Luddite blood. The court martial is

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Speaker 1: over quickly. Cartwright gives his evidence. The soldier makes no defense.

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Speaker 1: The sentence is pasted three hundred lashes, three hundred. Cartwright

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Speaker 1: mounts his horse again to ride the eight miles home.

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Speaker 1: As he passes a woodland, a pistol fires from behind

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Speaker 1: a tree. The bullet flies past him. His horse rears

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Speaker 1: and bolts. Another shot brings out another miss. Cartwright gallops home.

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Speaker 1: There he finds, to his horror that the soldier's punishment

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Speaker 1: is going to happen right outside his mill. A crowd

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Speaker 1: of hundreds gather to watch as the soldier's hands are tied,

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Speaker 1: his back is bared. After just a few lashes, the

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00:27:05,530 --> 00:27:10,730
Speaker 1: skin is broken. Soon the width is cutting flesh, and

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00:27:10,890 --> 00:27:15,690
Speaker 1: the crowd is getting restive. Cartwright pushes through them and

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Speaker 1: speaks to the officer in command. Enough now, he says,

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Speaker 1: can't we leave it at that? The officer ignores him.

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Speaker 1: Carry on, he says to the man with a whip.

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Speaker 1: Another lash, another, and another, for only twenty lashes in

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Speaker 1: it's clear the soldier will die long before three hundred.

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Speaker 1: In fact, he seems to have passed out already. A

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Speaker 1: doctor checks his pulse and nods to the officer in command.

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Speaker 1: The lashing resumes. People cry out and jostle forward. The

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Speaker 1: crowd seems on the verge of a riot. Cartwright tries again,

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Speaker 1: stop there, you have to stop. Cartwright must sense he's

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Speaker 1: pleading for his own life as much as for that

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Speaker 1: of the soldier, and perhaps the officer understands, because this

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Speaker 1: time he nods. The soldier's hands are untied and he's

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Speaker 1: led away. The crowd calms down. William Cartwright breathes again.

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Speaker 1: He's narrowly escaped being shot and then being lynched. You

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Speaker 1: might expect his fellow mill owner, William Horseful, to decide

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Speaker 1: to keep a low profile for a while. Not a

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Speaker 1: bit of it. Horseful keeps loudly denouncing the Luddites. Every week,

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Speaker 1: Horsefull rides into Huddersfield on business. His routine is well known.

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Speaker 1: At six o'clock he sets off for home. He never

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Speaker 1: rides quickly, and then as he passes a woodland, an

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00:29:01,930 --> 00:29:08,890
Speaker 1: unseen marksman takes aim a bullet rips into Horsefull's flesh.

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Speaker 1: He slumps forward and grabs onto his horse's neck. Blood

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00:29:13,090 --> 00:29:18,210
Speaker 1: starts spurting from his leg. Forceful falls off his horse.

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Speaker 1: Passers by help him back to the inn and call

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Speaker 1: a doctor. Horseful has been shot in the stomach and thigh.

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Speaker 1: One bullet has cut an artery. He's bleeding profusely. What's

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Speaker 1: your opinion, doctor asked the injured man. Indeed, mister Horsefall,

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Speaker 1: I consider you in a very dangerous state. These are

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Speaker 1: awful times. Doctor Horseful dies soon after news of his

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Speaker 1: death gets back to the cropping shop where George Meller works.

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Speaker 1: It comes with other news too, a reward of two

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00:29:59,970 --> 00:30:07,890
Speaker 1: thousand pounds for information about the assassin, a fortune. George

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00:30:07,890 --> 00:30:13,130
Speaker 1: Meller knows very well who shot William Horsefall, and he

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00:30:13,210 --> 00:30:17,530
Speaker 1: knows that all his friends know it too. If I thought,

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00:30:17,970 --> 00:30:22,050
Speaker 1: says Meller, there was one man who would whisper a

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00:30:22,130 --> 00:30:29,970
Speaker 1: single word, this day would be his last. It's hard,

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Speaker 1: as I said, not to feel some sympathy with the

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Speaker 1: luddite croppers. But then I find it hard not to

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00:30:38,530 --> 00:30:43,570
Speaker 1: sympathize with the mill owners too. William Cartwright and William

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Speaker 1: Horsefall were stubborn, but they weren't bad men. They were

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Speaker 1: seen as fair employers. Their workers liked them. Yet Cartwright

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Speaker 1: and Horsefull could hardly ignore the fact that new machines

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00:30:56,730 --> 00:31:00,530
Speaker 1: could finish cloth more cheaply than human workers. If they

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00:31:00,530 --> 00:31:05,330
Speaker 1: didn't use those new machines, someone somewhere would, and they'd

398
00:31:05,370 --> 00:31:09,370
Speaker 1: soon be out competed. Both the croppers and the mill

399
00:31:09,410 --> 00:31:15,130
Speaker 1: owners were trapped by the same economic system. The parallels

400
00:31:15,170 --> 00:31:20,410
Speaker 1: with today's economic system are all too obvious. Skilled workers

401
00:31:20,450 --> 00:31:24,650
Speaker 1: in high status jobs find that robots or algorithms can

402
00:31:24,690 --> 00:31:27,770
Speaker 1: do their work as well as they can, or well enough,

403
00:31:28,130 --> 00:31:33,130
Speaker 1: and much more quickly. Technologists may have some qualms about

404
00:31:33,170 --> 00:31:37,130
Speaker 1: the impacts of the tech they're developing, but they tell themselves,

405
00:31:37,770 --> 00:31:43,850
Speaker 1: if I don't do it, someone else will. The author

406
00:31:43,970 --> 00:31:48,610
Speaker 1: Brian Merchant explores these parallels in his new book Blood

407
00:31:48,810 --> 00:31:53,090
Speaker 1: in the Machine, think about policy proposals to respond to

408
00:31:53,130 --> 00:31:55,850
Speaker 1: the rise of big tech. He says, such as a

409
00:31:55,930 --> 00:32:01,170
Speaker 1: robot tax or a universal basic income. Such ideas seem new,

410
00:32:01,450 --> 00:32:04,890
Speaker 1: but they're in the same tradition as those old proposals

411
00:32:05,370 --> 00:32:08,530
Speaker 1: for a tax on cloth made by machine to keep

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00:32:08,570 --> 00:32:16,770
Speaker 1: the unemployoid croppers from starvation. Those old proposals failed. In

413
00:32:16,850 --> 00:32:21,090
Speaker 1: their book Power and Progress, the economists Darren Asimoglu and

414
00:32:21,170 --> 00:32:24,610
Speaker 1: Simon Johnson ask why it took so long for the

415
00:32:24,650 --> 00:32:29,050
Speaker 1: wealth creating machines of the industrial evolution to benefit people

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00:32:29,090 --> 00:32:33,810
Speaker 1: more widely through higher wages, better working conditions or social

417
00:32:33,850 --> 00:32:39,330
Speaker 1: safety nets. Their answer, it happened only when workers and

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00:32:39,410 --> 00:32:44,090
Speaker 1: citizens found new ways to organize through trade unions and

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00:32:44,130 --> 00:32:48,970
Speaker 1: political parties, to force the gains from technological progress to

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00:32:49,050 --> 00:32:54,490
Speaker 1: be more equitably shared. Today, they argue, we need to

421
00:32:54,490 --> 00:33:01,690
Speaker 1: do the same again. The thought of a two thousand

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Speaker 1: pounds reward proved too much for one of George Meller's

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Speaker 1: fellow croppers was arrested, tried, and convicted of the murder

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Speaker 1: of William Horsefall. He was sentenced to death by hanging.

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Speaker 1: Five other men were condemned to be hanged too, not

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Speaker 1: for killing anyone, but for their part in the attack

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Speaker 1: on William Cartwright's mill. The crackdown worked. As the historian E. P.

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Speaker 1: Thompson puts it, Luddism ended on the scaffold. In January

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Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen, Mella stood on a wooden platform, a rope

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Speaker 1: around his neck. Some of my enemies may be here,

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Speaker 1: said Mella. If there be, I freely forgive them and

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Speaker 1: all the world, and I hope the world will forgive me.

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Speaker 1: Luddism ended on the scaffold. But the words of the

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Speaker 1: young apprentice saddlemaker on booth live on new Machines might

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Speaker 1: be man's chief blessing instead of his curse. If society

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00:34:19,690 --> 00:34:27,610
Speaker 1: was differently constituted, quite so, but George Meller's response also

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00:34:27,890 --> 00:35:01,250
Speaker 1: echoes down the years if if IF. For a list

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Speaker 1: of the sources used in this episode, please see the

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00:35:04,250 --> 00:35:12,210
Speaker 1: show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written

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00:35:12,210 --> 00:35:15,930
Speaker 1: by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by

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00:35:15,930 --> 00:35:19,970
Speaker 1: Alice Fines with support from Edith Uslow. The sound design

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00:35:20,130 --> 00:35:24,970
Speaker 1: and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah

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00:35:25,050 --> 00:35:28,290
Speaker 1: Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of

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00:35:28,370 --> 00:35:34,010
Speaker 1: Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The

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00:35:34,050 --> 00:35:37,810
Speaker 1: show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,

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00:35:38,090 --> 00:35:43,010
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohene, let, Al Millard, John Schnaz, Carlie

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00:35:43,050 --> 00:35:48,250
Speaker 1: mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is a production of

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00:35:48,330 --> 00:35:52,370
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardall Studios in London

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00:35:52,490 --> 00:35:55,570
Speaker 1: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember

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00:35:55,650 --> 00:35:58,370
Speaker 1: to share, rate and review go on you know it

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00:35:58,450 --> 00:36:00,810
Speaker 1: helps us And if you want to hear the show

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00:36:00,970 --> 00:36:04,410
Speaker 1: ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show

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00:36:04,450 --> 00:36:08,770
Speaker 1: page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot Fm, slash

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Speaker 1: us int