American workers v technological progress: the battle heats up

For more than 200 years Luddites have received bad press—worse even than the British Members of Parliament who voted in 1812 to put to death convicted machine-breakers. Yet even at the time, the aggrieved weavers won popular sympathy, including that of Lord Byron. In an “Ode to Framers of the Frame Bill” the poet wrote: “Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking/ When Famine appeals, and when Poverty groans/ That life should…