THE SECOND DECADE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS ALSO A TIME OF
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC TENSION
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of
political and economic tension in England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade
blockades and embargoes limited the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of
England where these goods were produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control
any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or other subversive ideas created further resentment. These
were turbulent times. It didn’t take much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in
England, to bring on a riot. Tom Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to
give support for American independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of
Man, written in 1791 and 1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized
that most of the order that prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex
interdependency and trust, a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had
been heavy-handed: “Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural
cohesion.” And in 1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the
Bible, did for theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously
undermined any inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority
from whatever source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
The second decade of the nineteenth century was also a time of political and economic tension in
England. The country was still at war with Napoleon. Trade blockades and embargoes limited
the export of fabric and apparel, which in turn hurt the areas of England where these goods were
produced. And a series of laws meant to contain and control any sympathetic Jacobin impulses or
other subversive ideas created further resentment. These were turbulent times. It didn’t take
much, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, to bring on a riot. Tom
Paine’s Common Sense had been printed in America in 1776 to give support for American
independence, but it was well known in England. Paine’s Rights of Man, written in 1791 and
1792, was a blueprint for an egalitarian society. In it, he emphasized that most of the order that
prevails in a country is not the result of government but of a complex interdependency and trust,
a kind of natural order, that exists among its people. Government had been heavy-handed:
“Instead of consolidating the society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion.” And in
1794 and 1795, Paine’s Age of Reason, by challenging the authority of the Bible, did for
theology what his earlier writings had done for government. Paine seriously undermined any
inclination on the part of the people to feel a particular obligation to authority from whatever
source, political or religious.
It is hard today to envision how radical these books were. Ordinary individuals felt empowered
by Paine’s words both to think for themselves and to stand up for rights they’d hardly known
they had. Although banned, copies had always been available— a common method of obtaining
it was to select a book from a bookseller’s cart, then give the vendor twice the price, whereupon
he would slip a copy of one of Paine’s books into the parcel. Paine’s writing had helped
crystallize concepts of liberty, representative government, and human rights in the minds of a
good portion of the population— even as the ruling class wished him in jail or worse. Even
twenty years later, as the new machines began to appear, a perceptible residue of Paineite
radicalism remained.
At the same time, grievances against enclosures, press-gangs, bread prices, tolls, excise taxes,
and new machinery all could be “reason enough” to take to the streets in protest. “The British
people were noted throughout Europe for their turbulence, and the people of London astonished
foreign visitors by their lack of deference,” notes the historian E. P. Thompson in The Making of
the English Working Class. Some of these uprisings were
organized by outsiders and were deliberate attempts to rouse the mob to create political pressure
for reform, but others were spontaneous direct actions by frustrated individuals. Of this latter
type, bread and food riots were most common, and the protests, sometimes culminating in the
looting of shops, were “legitimized,” says Thompson, “by the assumptions of an older moral
economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions
by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.” Workers expected that wages set and agreed
upon would be sufficient to cover basic necessities— this was only right and just, part of the
unwritten contract between master and worker — and the idea that prices would rise and fall
according to supply and demand, a bedrock assumption of a developing market economy, was
not a concept that had yet taken hold in the minds of ordinary working folk. Any sudden increase
in prices was thus a reason to riot.
But whatever the cause of the unrest, the government was nevertheless relentless in its attempt to
control and isolate expressions of disaffection whenever and wherever they arose. Not every
effort demanded soldiers, however. Individuals or groups could be tarnished by mere accusations
of treasonous conspiracy or by exaggerating the threat of insurrection with wild allegations —
some generated by infiltrators from within the dissident movements themselves. “In a sense,”
says Thompson, “the government needed conspirators to justify the continuation of the
repressive legislation which prevented nation-wide popular organization.”
It was in this atmosphere that the Luddite Rebellion had its beginnings. The government’s
oppressive surveillance and infiltration led to such increases in secrecy within the dissident
groups that it was sometimes difficult for them to operate at all. Suspicion ran riot; many were
suspected of double-dealing. Thus there are no personal reminiscences, no periodicals, no
meeting minutes — unfortunately for us. With government spies everywhere, looking for
evidence, watching the post, the risk was simply too great and remained so. When Luddism
became a hanging offense, secrets were kept for forty years or more. To have announced oneself
a Luddite, even after the rebellion had ended, would certainly have attracted unwanted attention
from the law. Thus the stories, the songs, the memories of the rebellion were not committed to
paper but “were handed down as a secret tradition,” Thompson tells us, sung or told to
grandchildren. What is known of the actual rebellion, therefore, is mainly from secondary
sources or from its
opposition or from the occasional anonymous letter to the newspaper claiming (and likely) to be
from the followers of Ned Ludd.
And who was this King Ludd? There is no definitive answer but any number of competing ideas.
Various individuals in the uprising seemed to have used the name as a pseudonym, applying
“General” or “King” in front of it with ironic humor. In 1811, the Nottingham Review had itself
offered an explanation, saying that a reluctant weaving apprentice named Ned Ludd had been
beaten for refusing to work and, in retaliation, had taken a hammer and smashed his knitting
machine. He was given credit, thereafter, for any smashed machinery: “Ned Ludd must have
done it,” was probably said with a wink and a nudge. This story has variations, and there are
other explanations besides: attempts to link Ludd to a real King Lud reputed to be fierce in battle,
or even to an early King Ludeca, about whom little is known but whose kingdom of Mercia was
in the Midlands region. There is also a Cumbrian phrase using the word lud to mean heap. None
of these explanations seems entirely satisfactory. Perhaps all are true in the way meanings and
associations have of blending. But Luddite, with its onomatopoetic resonance, seems a good
name for a machine smasher, in any case.
Those who organized the Luddite Rebellion were for the most part among the aristocracy of the
weaving industry: men who were called croppers and shearers and those who operated the
knitting frames. The first two classes, highly skilled artisans, were facing the inevitable
introduction of two machines — the gig mill and the shearing frame— that could essentially
eliminate the need for their work. No one supposed that these machines could do the job as well
— but they could do it. And inevitably the decision would be made that the higher quality cloth
produced by the craftsmen was simply not worth paying for if an acceptable substitute could be
produced by mechanical means at far less cost.
It was not as if, at the first sign of the new machines, the croppers and shearers simply took to the
streets. They had attempted to negotiate compromises with the factory owners over a long
period. They had proposed a more gradual introduction of the machines, with alternative work
found for the displaced men. A tax per yard was proposed that could raise
