| Popis: |
In the first decades of the 19th century, British industry was experiencing a technological revolution. The rise of the factory system meant that groups of people were now concentrating at a single location to operate the new machines that were at the heart of the production system. The old system, in which skilled workers who were largely self-employed produced goods by their hands within their own homes, was rapidly waning. The social displacement caused by the imposition of the new system led to the Luddite riots, in which angry craftsmen destroyed what machinery they were able to lay their hands on in the industrial midlands. They did this as an expression of the anxiety provoked by the changes in social organization and because of the widespread belief that the new system contributed to unemployment. |
