Children working in a cotton mill in Macon, Georgia, in January 1909. Today is not the first time that people have worried that machines will render human labour obsolete, making a few very rich and the majority very poor.
Since the Industrial Revolution, mechanization has been controversial. Machines pushed up productivity, raising incomes per capita. But they threatened to put people out of work, to lower their wages and to divert all the gains from growth to the owners of businesses. The stocking-frame operators of Nottingham, UK (the Luddites), wrecked improved knitting machines that threatened their jobs. Mobs burnt down […]
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