RETURN OF THE LUDDITES? 

In the year 1811 a new phenomenon of the burgeoning industrial age swept through Nottingham, England. From the same village that generated those tales of Robin Hood came tales of another hood, King Ludd, named after a mythical and legendary deity of the British Celts. The Ned Ludd of that day, according to The International Everyman's Encyclopedia, was "a Leicestershire imbecile, who, it is said, unable to catch someone who had been tormenting him, destroyed some stocking frames in a fit of temper". Those who started the subsequent riots years later took on his name and decreed that modern technology was the bane of the weaving man and that all machines contributing to this new age and its lifestyles should be destroyed. These rioters were organized bands of English workmen displaced by the introduction of machinery that greatly reduced demand for manual labor. During one or two years, Luddites destroyed stocking frames, steam power looms and shearing machines throughout Nottingham, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Yorkshire.

Now 181 years later, a modern hood is roaming the land bashing new (mostly made-in-the-U.S.A.) Japanese cars. What have these new automobiles done? Their only crime is that they pollute the atmosphere less than the larger, energy-inefficient, more expensive automobiles produced by the older, mainly antiquated North American plants. Japanese cars are certainly more in demand than the models still cranked out by GM, Ford or Chrysler on those up-to-50-year-old assembly lines, by overpaid, locked-into-the-past union workers whose excesses in absenteeism, drug abuse and actually sleeping-on-the-job attitude, diminished productivity. Sleepy management in North American car business in "The Big Three (now a misnomer) has resulted in fading profits.

The useless and short-lived rampages of the 19th century Luddites resembles what is happening today in America. Luddites were mainly weavers of cotton and wool during the days when it took 50,000 manhours in India -- at that time the worlds largest producer of inexpensive cotton cloth -- to spin 100 pounds of cotton into cloth. The rapid introduction of such machines as the cotton gin and the spinning loom into the global marketplace, including England -at that time one of the first major consumer products, clothing fabric, to be so rapidly dislodged -- certainly did disrupt the previous stable marketing process of the past.

With what result? Spinning cloth production went from 50,000 workhours per 100 pounds of cotton to under 150 hours for the same quantity of raw material. What did this do? It created more jobs than ever before. Why? Because good cloth previously was very expensive and available only to the rich. Suddenly good cloth became so cheap that everyone could afford it. Sales increased dramatically and jobs were created. The reign of the Luddites was short-lived. After Nottingham it spread briefly to other towns in the British Midlands and then collapsed as the man in the street realized he was now better off wearing machine-spun clothing than handmade cloth which previously he could never afford anyhow.

The same will occur with the present day Luddite-mentality of Japanese car bashing. Want cleaner air? Buy a Japanese car. Mine gets 55 miles to the gallon. If everybody in North America drove a new Honda there would be minimum pollution. Fail to drive the most efficient modern car, where ever it comes from, and you will be doing yourself and the environment a disservice. You will also be wasting money. In most cases precious after-tax money. Or would you prefer to pay, when you buy an American car, $550 to pay for Medicare for people that don't even work in the North American car factories that are producing those larger automobiles?

Will more new jobs appear if more North Americans buy Japanese cars? Some, at Japanese North American plants, but certainly not as many as will lose jobs at the former American factories. Why? Because General Motors needed 100,000 workers in the U.S. alone. Toyota, now the worlds largest car manufacturer, only requires that number to operate around the world. Technology, as in the days of the Luddites, allows more to be produced at less cost and permits more people to buy such products. Another 100 million cars will be registered in the next decade and there will be less congestion and pollution on the highway than today! Fewer than 50 percent of them will be Ford or GM products.

And, Luddites will learn they can be better off when they transform destructive energy into higher skills.

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