Reply #14: Weaving was a highly skilled profession and the weavers owned their looms.

[Ozymanithrax]

The machines they destroyed were used by unskilled low wage labor, and the machine was owned by an unskilled wealthy owner.

Of course, the kind of demand that the machines filled could never have been filled by by women sitting at their looms. The machines worked faster and the owner could, literally, hire a child to do the work.

This conflict at the beginning of the Industrial revolution was inevitable as was its conclusion. The weavers and their way of life are long dead. Their way of life could have only been maintained by strictly controlling population and retaining an ancient economic system that could not meet the needs of larger populations.