Rage Against the Machines: Labour-Saving Technology and Unrest Industrializing in England

Out­line

Ma­chines in­creas­ing­ly do the work of hu­mans. In the 18th and ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, spin­ners and weavers lost their jobs to the Spin­ning Jen­ny and the Ark­wright frame; more re­cent­ly, phone op­er­a­tors, clerks, and book­keep­ers have been re­placed by com­put­ers. The con­cern that tech­no­log­i­cal mass un­em­ploy­ment may lead to un­rest and po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty has a long lin­eage. Marx fa­mous­ly proph­e­sized that the adop­tion of new tech­nolo­gies, spread by cap­i­tal­ism, would so im­mis­er­ate the work­ing class that work­ers would rise up in re­volt. While the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy-in­duced un­em­ploy­ment was on the minds of clas­si­cal po­lit­i­cal econ­o­mists, it was in­creas­ing­ly called into ques­tion to­wards the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, and is rou­tine­ly dis­missed in mod­ern text­books.

How­ev­er, a grow­ing lit­er­a­ture in la­bor-eco­nom­ics has demon­strat­ed that the IT rev­o­lu­tion has dis­ad­van­taged less ed­u­cat­ed work­ers and re­placed work­ers per­form­ing tasks that are easy to cod­i­fy. There is also good ev­i­dence that new agri­cul­tur­al tech­nolo­gies can dri­ve work­ers out of agri­cul­ture. What is un­clear is whether such la­bor-sav­ing tech­no­log­i­cal change can cre­ate po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty and so­cial un­rest.

How thresh­ing ma­chines caused ri­ots in 1830s Britain

In this pa­per, we ex­am­ine a canon­i­cal his­tor­i­cal case, the so-called ‘Cap­tain Swing’ ri­ots in 1830s Britain. Var­i­ous­ly at­trib­uted to the ad­verse con­se­quences of weath­er shocks, the short­com­ings of the Poor Law, or the af­ter-ef­fects of en­clo­sure, we em­pha­size the im­por­tance of a new tech­nol­o­gy – the thresh­ing ma­chine. In­vent­ed in the 1780s, it spread dur­ing and af­ter the Napoleon­ic Wars. Us­ing farm ad­ver­tise­ments from news­pa­pers pub­lished in 66 Eng­lish and Welsh towns, we com­pile a new mea­sure of the tech­nol­o­gy’s dif­fu­sion. Parish­es with ads for thresh­ing ma­chines had much high­er riot prob­a­bil­i­ties in 1830 – and the re­la­tion­ship was even stronger for ma­chine-break­ing at­tacks. Thresh­ing ma­chines were main­ly use­ful in wheat-grow­ing ar­eas. To es­tab­lish a causal role for la­bor-sav­ing tech­nol­o­gy, we in­stru­ment tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion with the FAO mea­sure of soil suit­abil­i­ty for wheat, and show that this in turn pre­dicts un­rest.

Re­search Team

Author

Joachim Voth

Professor of Macroeconomics and Financial Markets, endowed by the UBS Center

Zurich ZCED

Author

Bruno Caprettini

Post-Doc

Zurich ZCED