In the spring of 1812, British textile workers smashed power looms across Nottinghamshire, convinced that the machines would make their skills worthless and their families destitute. They were right about the disruption. Mills did displace hand-weavers. Communities that had organized themselves around a particular kind of skilled labor were genuinely torn apart. The Luddites weren’t stupid, and they weren’t wrong to feel the ground shifting. They were wrong about one thing: the conclusion. The labor those machines displaced didn’t vanish. It migrated into factories, railways, cities, and