#5. Engines of Mischief
We survey the English Luddites and read a poem by Lord Byron before jettisoning to the 20th century with work by Brian Merchant and a poetry collection by Saretta Morgan.
⍀ Weekly Link Rodeo
Good Friday morning, everyone! I've had to reconcile my notions about technology. I’ve been online since 1997 - everything from ICQ to making websites on Angelfire or Geocities, all the way to curating my Top 8 on Myspace and beyond. The weekly link rodeo is concluded with a writing prompt. It is our hope that whether you are a fiction writer, poet, or multi-disciplinary artist that you can take the links and use them as inspiration.
They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.
-Jeremiah 7:31 (New Revised Standard Version)
In 1812, a decree was sent forth from Ned Ludd’s office in Sherwood Forest that called upon all Machinery hurtful to Commonality to be destroyed. This was not the first call to action issued by an anonymous group centered around the figure Ned Ludd. A year earlier the Luddites decreed, If the workmen dislike certain machines, it was because of the use to which they were being put, not because they were machines or because they were new.1 The letters were distributed by an anonymous group of skilled tradespeople, mainly in the textile industry. These artisans sought political reform through various means: violent action, letter writing, and other forms of protest.
Our friend Lord Byron wrote poems about some manufacturing affair, and later he addressed Parliament to unsuccessfully oppose the Frame Work Bill, legislation designed to turn the destruction of manufacturing frames into a capital offense. The bill was written as a response to the Luddites, who over the course of February 1811 to June 1812, destroyed stocking frames in the East Midlands, shearing frames in Yorkshire, and power looms in part of Lancashire.2
Byron’s ‘Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill’, published in the Morning Chronicle on March 2, 1812.
Published anonymously four days after his speech on this topic in the House of the Lords on February 27, 1812.
In Byron’s poem, we can see the rhetorical tactics used mainly fall on the side of irony. The standout lines come in the middle of the second stanza:
Men are more easily made than machinery -
Stockings fetch better prices than lives -Lord Byron ironiously calls upon the workers to be killed because Those villains; the Weavers, are all grown refractory / Asking some succour for Charity’s sake — / So hang them in clusters round each Manufactory. Byron would be called based in contemporary speech. Yet nowadays, we’ll only post memes on Instagram to voice our consternation, a crucial way that tech has subverted attentions and strategies. These memes are no longer happening right in front of ruling class. The rulers can simply ignore them. Back in the day, factory owners and machinery were destroyed, much less an angry letter was written and posted on a public place for everyone to see. Based Byron closing out his writ with the threat of death, a common sign-off for these types of letters:
That the frames of the fools may be first to be broken, Who, when asked for a remedy, sent down a rope.
Byron calls for compassion, then concludes the poem in a somewhat ambiguous way. I can imagine a poetry workshop teacher asking about that Who in the last line.
Outside of Lord Byron penning wit, the Luddites commonly re-appropriated speech patterns of the ruling class. In these proclamations, the Luddites sought redress for grievances acted upon them by factory owners, who the Luddites charged them with a diverse amount of fraudulent and oppressive act that have reduced a large number of workers into poverty.3 Much of this letter resembles an official proclamation given in the language used in the opening statement:
Whereas, it hath been represented to us: the General Agitators, for the Northern Counties, assembled to redress the Grievances of the Operative Mechanics, …
The letter’s conclusion charges one textile-factory owner, a Mr. Charles Lacy, with making himself rich through the exploitation of his textile workers, who in certain terms would’ve been part of the same trade union. In breaking the machinery, the frameworkers were merely responding to exploitative practices enacted upon them by the owners of the production facilities. Much akin to maybe today with gig-work, where anyone can dream of technology liberating people from labor all by driving for Uber or collecting someone’s groceries with Door Dash.
I’m of the mindset that you should probably go get your own damn groceries.4
Brian Merchant’s article gives an argument for becoming a Luddite in 2023.
Through reading some of the letters written by the Luddites, I love the parody and re-appropriation of form and language used. I’ll write more about that in length in a later essay. For now, I’d like to focus my attention on a letter dated November 28, 1811, an Address from the Framework-Knitters to the Gentlemen Hosiers. The letter’s chief claim is that the Framework-Knitters is a staple Industry and that they support the community, but through the exploitative practices the community has been exposed to Evils.5 Enter Moloch, the child-sacrificial vessel referenced in the biblical verse at the beginning of the article, the letter goes on to describe the social life of the community in Nottingham:
We wish to live peacably and honestly by our Labour, and to train up our Children in the paths of virtue and rectitude, but we cannot accomplish our wishes. Our Children, instead of being trained up by a regular course of Education, for social life, virtuous employments, and all the reciprocal advantages of mutual enjoyment, are scarce one remove from the Brute, are left to all the dangerous Evils attendant on an uncultivated Mind, and often fall dreadful Victims to that guilt, which Ignorance is the parent of.
The East Midlands Nottingham group came at them in a respectful manner. Perhaps most of the time, the Luddites here seemed non-violent.
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! . . . Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Turning away from the Luddites of 1812. Saretta Morgan’s book Alt-Nature found my attention earlier in the week. The book is a recent publication over at Coffee House Press. I found a connection between Morgan’s book, the violence of the textile industry in England during the 19th century, and the violence of Empire present in Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”. Here Saretta Morgan explains the book:
This book was written between 2018-2023, while I lived between the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts for 5 and a half years learning an intimacy with the desert through grassroots migrant justice and humanitarian aid work in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Simultaneously, I was repairing internally from my own history with the U.S. military and carceral systems.
This book is a love letter to the desert. One that moves with an awareness of how desires for love and belonging underwrite the violence of empire, and how the sensual experience of occupation extends and disrupts geographies and experiences of time and scale.
The following is excerpted from the long poem “Consequences upon Arrival” from the book Alt-Nature. According to Morgan, the poem expresses itself through the plural first-person as it orients itself through systematic isolation and the political consequence of feeling alone (read a brief excerpt here).
Moloch the vast stone of war!
CONCLLUSION: AS WE LOOK AT THE MIRROR AND SEE MOLOCH
Nothing is your fault. The other remaining links are the anonymous social media posts that I saw this week. They’ll likely never read this, but the nothing is your fault connects to the idea that we’re always connected to Moloch, who as lore states entered all our souls from a young age.
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
The ubiquity of the smartphone, hailed as cheap and accessible, shall carry the name Moloch.
Things used to be better. Now I ride the subway and everyone looks at their phone. Zombies nosedown walking the streets, only to be yanked out of the way by their friend yelling, HEY THERE’S ANOTHER PERSON THEY’RE WALKING STRAIGHT TOWARDS YOU. Grown-ass men playing derivative mobile games as they congest the escalators. It’s not their fault. Like many people there’s a constant itch that we all need to be connected. We are all afraid to be alone; rather maybe we’re all afraid to be bored. To sit in an awkward silence as we stare at our friend in silence.
I sit in a bar after work on a Wednesday. I come here for the shitty pizza and deep-fried lotus root fries, and for a chance to unwind midweek. That’s the lie I tell myself though. Instead I send my friend a picture of the beer, text them some stupid joke, and then await a response.
Now the only thing I hear is the stupid AI generated music on TikTok reverberating through the restaurant, or the idiotic McDonald’s commercial on a 30 second loop. Turning on the smartphone to doomscroll is the moment you ignore your brain, the torturous decisions, the creeping boredom, and the realization that someone lied to you when they said, hey bud just vote with your dollars.
I guess the only thing that I’m really arguing for is that you’re missing something around you that we should all be bored with ourselves.
×/⍳ Writing Prompt
Write a poem about boredom and how things used to be better.
Write a poem that addresses the seemingly uni-directional social media post and the heavy-lifting that poetry or creativity can aid in.
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Leave a comment to contribute to the discussion.
May you be forever on your way.
Published in the Nottingham Review, which from my understanding was a more political newspaper, or perhaps it was that way given the demographics and industry situated in Nottingham as have a strong presence in the Industrial Revolution with the textile industry and introduction of new machinery and techniques that revolutionized the process.
Much of the source material comes from Writings of the Luddites, edited by Kevin Binfield.
A version of this letter appears in John Russell’s “The Luddites,” Transactions of the Thoroton Society 10( 1906): 53-62. I’ve paraphrased and modernized some of the spelling, ie divers into diverse, and similar other updated spelling.
Like except for if you cannot physically go to the store, then maybe just ask a friend, family member, co-worker, etc. Otherwise stop be a lazy asshole and get your own fucking stuff.
Nottingham Review (28 November 1811). An address to Hosiers, which refers to the owners of the legwear garment industry. The term according to Wikipedia can be used for all types of knitted fabric, and its thickness and weight is defined by opacity.