Responses to the Industrial Revolution

In this class we will discuss several different responses people had to the Industrial Revolution. We'll talk about the Luddites who defended their livelihood with violence. We'll talk about those advocated for benevolent factory-owners or regulation. We'll also talk about those who advocated that with the new methods of production our days of toil are over and we would all just work a few hours a day.

While the focus of our class will be the early 19th century we will draw comparisons with modern situations and ideas. For example, we might discuss the use of automatic tellers at grocery stores. Does using them destroy jobs or does it help reduce the workload for grocery store employees? Or we may discuss the challenge of pricing handicrafts. How does one put a price on a home-knitted sweater with the hours and hours of labour that entails? Is there a virtue to homemade production?