The Industrial Revolution had an effect on the imagination of society, it made people think that their culture was to be judged solely by its commercial success in a struggle of which the whole world was now the arena. The test of success was the test of profits :if a society could make its social and political conditions favorable to the earning of high profits that society was prosperous.1
As a theme the Industrial revolution has been subject to bulks of critical papers resulting to an abundance of literature, scholar exploration and surveys researching its effects on the social and economic structure of society; the quality of life; laboring and the emerging of new social classes. Nonetheless one distinct feature, considerably investigated, but rather unknown, would be the chapter of the Luddites. The legendary counterrevolution movement of the skilled English artisans, who spiritedly and actively opposed to the evolutionary one-way of the industrial revolution and to the effects that it would have on their livelihood.
It has been argued among social historians that: 'The Luddites were desperate bands of weavers who hated machines' or that the Luddites were involved in a emotional 'pointless frenzied industrial Jaquering.' Opposition to these views supports that the Luddites were well aware of their social status; as well as their potential power and that they organized in a early form of 'conscious class struggle' using 'collective bargain by riot' as a means of pressure, when all other measures had failed.
Nedd Ludd
We shed light in yet another aspect of this peculiar revolutionary movement. That of the distinguished and prominent artisans who saw their art and craft be pounded on the 'anvil of progress.'Although the Luddites may have, lost that battle; the seeds of their revolution would be planted in the gardens of all creative arts; beginning from the Romantic poets and the Victorian novelists, far- reaching the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts movement, thereby touching literally all that follows.
Who would imagine that Mary Shelly's Gothic novel 'Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus' (1818) was in fact a reflection of the zeitgeist; working both as a warning against the over-reaching of humanity as well as a critique on the Industrial revolution.
The Luddides avowedly were smashing textile machines in response to the production of inferior goods, which they felt was traumatizing the reputation of their craft, taking it down the road of obscurity. Goods that would have required the skill of a Master or at least a journeyman to be produced in the first place.
Close you eyes and imagine a society where all goods are handmade ,tailors, shoemakers, woodworkers, carpenters and cabinet makers, spinners weavers, stockingers and croppers, ironworkers, blacksmiths metalworkers, armorers and gunmakers, potters, glassblowers,silversmiths and the list goes on and on... Now open your eyes and picture the same people forced to leave their small original workshop only to be swarmed under the roofs of the soleless, colorless new big factories...