At that time, the shearers were the "nobles of the woolen workers".

The steps they are responsible for are extremely difficult, only one step of shearing, workers need to use a 40-pound hand scissors, standing at a height of 4 feet, and precisely maintain the opening and closing angle of the two blades at about 37 degrees to ensure the smooth completion of the work, and the quality of their work can directly affect the price of about 20% of the finished woolen products.

This group of "senior workers" were well paid, formed one tight guild after another, and were known for their "toughness and unity," which were often frowned upon by their employers, and they had a strict apprenticeship system in which apprentices were not allowed to take up jobs until they had completed seven years.

Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the lethality of the raising machine to their work, once such a high-efficiency machine is used on a large scale, the social and economic status of the shearer will decline rapidly.

With the development of the industrial revolution, textile machines such as raising machines were used secretly, to the government turning a blind eye, to the government completely forgetting the laws of the past and allowing the factory owners to use them, and in 1809, the country even completely abolished all the protective laws of the woolen industry, and the workers could no longer rely on it to protect themselves.

Most people only saw the economic prosperity of the country and the glory of the empire on which the sun never set, but they forgot to see the division of the society of the country. The Industrial Revolution created a greater gap between the rich and the poor, and the rising factory owners slowly became the new masters of the country, while the workers faced more serious problems of survival.

In just over ten years, the wages of most textile workers have mostly dropped by about 70%, the wages of some less difficult jobs have dropped by 97% until they disappear, and the wages of shearers have also been reduced by more than 60%.

Although the birth of new industries generates more jobs, it is clear that the number of unemployed people is higher than the number of new jobs in terms of proportion. For example, in Yorkshire, the number of machine-used shearers has risen from 100 to 1,462, but at the same time 1,170 traditional shearers are unemployed and 1,445 shearers are semi-employed.

Some of the shearers, veterans who had returned from the front lines and were demobilized, sent an anonymous letter to the parliamentarians expressing the desperation of their lives, in which they wrote:

Some of us have served for 6, 8 or even 10 years in the military to defend this country, and now this defended country is sending us to starve after peace!

Yorkshire is ready for a revolution!

Signature: A soldier and his wife and a weeping child.

It was in this social atmosphere that the workers were generally pessimistic about the future, and the government could not come up with good policies to help the workers, so revolutionary sentiments continued to brew, and one uprising after another and demonstrations followed.

At the height of the industrial revolution, the workers' rebellion cast a shadow over the so-called empire on which the sun never sets.

Before the large-scale and widespread movement of violence, the working class had in fact resorted to peaceful reforms and small-scale raids, hoping that the bourgeois rulers would show kindness and thus improve the treatment of the workers.

At this time, standing on the front line of the movement was the most powerful shearer association in the country at that time: the Concise Association.

The Concise Association is a strict trade union, they have a serious oath ceremony, pay high membership fees, and have a unified membership logo, a complete branch structure from the central to the local level, and even some secret action teams.

In 1802, when the raising machine began to be introduced in Wit, the shearers rebelled for the job at hand.

In successive special operations, workers damaged 3 factories, while 6 others suffered losses. They broke into the factory masked while holding their own work scissors and shouting for a living! and so on, the factories were destroyed, and the worst of the factories in Lydington were completely destroyed, with losses of more than 8,000 pounds.

After that, the government, representing the interests of the bourgeoisie, quickly arrested the workers who had been responsible, but ran into difficulties when it came time to try them. Because Edward VI's decree more than 100 years ago has not yet been repealed, there is a stalemate as to whether the factory owners or the workers break the law first.

Although no direct evidence was found, it is likely that the Concise Society was involved in these factory attacks, and they then used Yorkshire wool merchant Benjamin Gault to illegally hire apprentices, launching a four-month Goth strike, which was huge, but with little success, except that Gault gave up hiring apprentices.

The leaders of the Concise Society saw the power of the working class and were ready to use mass strikes and marches to fight for workers' rights. Thus began the seven-year legislative struggle.

They proposed a ban on reinstating the fleece machine, while demanding that the number of other machines be reinstated, and that the treatment of workers be improved. At one point, the Concise Association received the support of 39,000 signatures, who submitted their appeal to the House of Commons through legal means.

However, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie made up the majority of the parliament, and they did not take into account the ideas of the working class. So through legal means, the bill was constantly shelved for several years.

In 1809, George III announced the repeal of all old decrees for the woolen trade, announcing the defeat of the Peaceful Reform Movement led by the Concise Society.

It is already very clear that the government intends to promote industrial upgrading through a tough industrial policy, and completely replace manual production with machines.

In the years when there was a lack of labor protection laws, these unemployed workers did not receive any assistance and protection from the government and society, and gradually became a time bomb.

In the 1810s, Napoleon was hit by a double whammy of war and a blockade of Europe on the other, one of the manifestations of which was the high-speed loss of wheat prices. At one point, the price of wheat reached 120 shillings, and at that time, even the former high-class job of a shearer was only 8 to 12 shillings a week, and a child laborer could only earn 1 shilling a day.

At this time, the widespread use of hosiery machines became the fuse of the Luddite movement. The hosiery machine can sew socks at high speed, but the quality is extremely poor and the price is low, which suddenly hits the market, making countless traditional hosiery factories close down and workers unemployed. The workers had appealed to the factory owners not to use hosiery machines, but to little avail, and a violent movement, known as the Luddite movement, was launched.

There are two versions of the name of Lourdes, one is that in Leicestershire, a worker named Lourdes was the first to smash the hosiery machine; One theory is that Lourdes is a legendary personal name.

The movement, which centered on the shearers and included the vast majority of the lower classes of society, was so powerful that it once made the British army that suppressed the rebellion larger than the army that fought Napoleon on the battlefields of Europe.