Leeds Woolen Workers Petition Essay

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The Leeds Woolen Workers Petition appeared in a newspaper in 1786. The petition was written by Joseph Hepworth, Thomas Lobley, Robert Wood, Thos. Blackburn, and thousands of other Leeds workers. The petition centered around machines taking over the jobs of the workers, which caused many of them to become unemployed. Since more people were becoming unemployed, it was making it hard for people to support their families. It was stated in the petition that for every one machine, there were twelve workers thrown out of their job. I found this number to be astonishing because usually when we think about technology, we think about all the positive impacts it has but we are never really shown the negative effects it can have. One quote that stuck …show more content…

However, there were some points that the writers of the petition brought up that I am not sure I understood correctly. For example, when they stated, “This is not all; the injury to the Cloth is great, in so much that in Frizing, instead of leaving a nap upon the cloth, the wool is drawn out and the Cloth is left thread-bare”. What I interpreted this sentence to mean was that the machines did not do as great of a job as the skilled workers did. Although, after reading it over a few times I feel that it could also be discussing the process of creating the wool. Another point that I struggled to understand was in paragraph six when the petition stated, “Many more evils we could enumerate, but we would hope, that the sensible part of mankind, who are not biassed by interest, must see the dreadful tendancy of their continuance; a depopulation must be the consequence; trade being then lost, the landed interest will have no other satisfaction but that of being last devoured”. I think this quote meant that the unemployment of these workers would lead to other terrible things. For instance, if the unemployment rate increases, then less people will be able to support their families which would result in less people reproducing. I think that if this is what the writers of the petition are saying then they did make a valid

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