Automation and the Unions

In the first quarter of the 19th century, secret societies of English working men banded together to defend themselves against the machine. Determined to destroy the looms that were displacing them, they roamed through West Riding and Lancashire and Nottingham hammering into junk the frames and gigs that had disrupted a settled way of life. But so to violate the sacrosanct principles of private property merely brought on an outlaw existence and eventually the gallows. In the end, the angry outbursts were to little avail, for the 200,000 hand loom weavers were reduced to almost half their number within three decades. Moreover, they did not go to work in the factories, for as the new system spread, the hand loom weaver was left to rot in misery. “History discloses no tragedy more horrible,” says Marx, “than the gradual extinction of the English hand loom weaver, an extinction that was spread over several decades….”

Last July Life magazine,...