In 1779, in a village somewhere in Leicestershire, one Ned Lud broke
into a house and "in a fit of insane rage" destroyed two machines used
for knitting hosiery.... Far from being revolutionary, much of the
machinery that steam was coming to drive had already long been in
place, having in fact been driven by water power since the Middle
Ages.... [T]he target even of the original assault of 1779, like many
machines of the Industrial Revolution, was not a new piece of
technology. The stocking-frame had been around since 1589.... Ned
Lud's anger was not directed at the machines, not exactly. I like to
think of it more as the controlled, martial-arts type anger of the
dedicated Badass.... The knitting machines which provoked the first
Luddite disturbances had been putting people out of work for well over
two centuries. Everybody saw this happening -- it became part of daily
life. They also saw the machines coming more and more to be the
property of men who did not work, only owned and hired.... Public
feeling about the machines could never have been simple unreasoning
horror, but likely something more complex: ... serious resentment
toward at least two multiplications of effect that were seen as unfair
and threatening. One was the concentration of capital that each
machine represented, and the other was the ability of each machine to
put a certain number of humans out of work -- to be "worth" that many
human souls. What gave King Ludd his special Bad charisma, took him
from local hero to nationwide public enemy, was that he went up
against these amplified, multiplied, more than human opponents and
prevailed.... It was open-eyed class war.