Origins
The Luddites were a secret oath-based organization of English textile workers in the 19th century, a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery as a form of protest. The group are believed to have taken their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in what they called "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labor practices. Luddites feared that the time spent learning the skills of their craft would go to waste, as machines would replace their role in the industry. Many Luddites were owners of workshops that had closed because factories could sell the same products for less. But when workshop owners set out to find a job at a factory, it was very hard to find one because producing things in factories required fewer workers than producing those same things in a workshop. This left many people unemployed and angry. Over time, the term has come to mean one opposed to industrialization, automation, computerization, or new technologies in general. The Luddite movement began in Nottingham in England and culminated in a region-wide rebellion that lasted from 1811 to 1816. Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the movement was suppressed with legal and military force. [...]
In the 19th century, occupations that arose from the growth of trade and shipping in ports, also in "domestic" manufacturers, were notorious for precarious employment prospects. Underemployment was chronic during this period,[21] and it was common practice to retain a larger workforce than was typically necessary for insurance against labor shortages in boom times.
Moreover, the organization of manufacture by merchant-capitalists in the textile industry was inherently unstable. While the financiers' capital was still largely invested in raw material, it was easy to increase commitment where trade was good and almost as easy to cut back when times were bad. Merchant-capitalists lacked the incentive of later factory owners, whose capital was invested in building and plants, to maintain a steady rate of production and return on fixed capital. The combination of seasonal variations in wage rates and violent short-term fluctuations springing from harvests and war produced periodic outbreaks of violence.[1]
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