The Luddite protests began to peter out, stamped down by a draconian set of laws and counter-militias. Around this time, England had only a few thousand automatic looms. But by 1850 there were a quarter of a million. The battle had been lost, the technology diffused, the old life of weavers destroyed, the world changed. To those losing out, this is what an uncontained wave of technology looks like.
