With the Luddite uprisings of the 1810s still terrifyingly fresh in his memory, and with Chartist agitation for the suffrage gathering strength among the working class, Ure looked to industrial and technical means to quell proletarian disruption. At the bidding of Minerva—the Roman goddess of crafts and commerce—an “Iron Man, as the operatives fitly call it, sprung out of the hands of our modern Prometheus.” By subjecting workers to the political fatigue induced by factory regimentation, this mechanical golem would “restore order among the industrious classes” and “strangle the Hydra of
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