Are you ready to destroy the machines?

Dear Mr. Bromide,

You maybe intended this as a fun Q, more on the light side…and here I am about to go all serious and political on you…

…because I do love the Luddites, and they were (sniff) misunderstood…they were not against machinery and progress at all, their concern was that the oppressive policies used to implement the Industrial Revolution were destroying the artisan working class into abject poverty.

So the Luddites were asking for machines that produced high quality goods, in industries that paid a living wage. There was bloodshed, soon squashed by government troops, as well as capital punishment (or deportation to Australia) for damaging any machines.

The Luddites were something of a precursor to labor unions.

 So, their movement which began 1811 was brutally suppressed by 1816, and today the Luddites are discredited even while we STILL reprise those same issues…

* * *
Lord Byron (the poet) defended the Luddites, to his credit, here is what he spoke to the House of Lords, denouncing this ruthless repression of working classes:
“I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country.”