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The Luddites During The Industrial Revolution

748 Words3 Pages

The year is 1811, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution; steam looms in the lace and stocking trades are replacing skilled workers. The factory owners begin to bring in small children and women, who are generally easier to exploit and are cheaper to employ. The formerly skilled men who manned the looms began to band together under the name Luddites to destroy the steam looms that replaced them. They pleaded with the government for assistance but the pleas fell on deaf ears, and they began to take matters into their own hands. Motivated by the loss of their livelihood and their indignation at the hands of “progress”. (Lindholdt, 1997) While overall the Luddites were not successful in their main objective of getting the steam looms …show more content…

Since the second industrial revolution in the United States, the worker has been seemingly a by-product of the change. The men in charge controlled the worker. Andrew Carnegie, whose steel factories were some of the most technologically advanced in the world, ran his company with a dictatorial hand. He ran his factories around the clock, burdening his workers with long hours. Similarly, John Rockefeller, domineered over his workers and fought aggressively against them organizing and unionizing. (Engelman, 2015) At the same time, the workers began to band together to protect themselves and ensure they had a voice. With the founding of the American Federation of Labor in 1886 workers had an avenue to negotiate wage increases as well as better and safer workplaces. (Brief History of Unions, n.d.) Today, we continue to see some decline in the American Industrial Complex, with many manufacturing jobs becoming automated. While some workers are able to retrain or become more educated and move on to something different, many still are unable to. From April 2007 to January of 2009 the automotive manufacturing industry lost over 108,000 jobs in the U.S. (U.S. Dept of Labor, 2017) This loss in jobs can be directly linked to the recession experienced during that time period and the fact that people were not buying new vehicles. While the industry has bounced back, the workers who lost their jobs were angry at the industry and the

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