Over the past half-century, the profit margins of these artisans were steadily squeezed by factory products, and sometimes their income was even pushed lower than that of hired farmers.
This naturally led to their dissatisfaction. The Luddite movement in 1811, which involved smashing factory machinery in locations such as Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Leicestershire, arose from this unrest.
Although Parliament passed a series of related legislation, such as the "Public Safety Act" and the "Machine Breaking Punishment Act," and deployed a large number of police and British Army troops in an attempt to intimidate these rebellious artisans with the death penalty, it didn't have much effect in reality.
The Luddite movement continued sporadically from 1811 until 1816, and the reason it finally ceased was not due to the sudden effectiveness of government control measures, but because the Napoleonic Wars had ended.
