"In the nineteenth century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new technologies on …
They are called “labour-saving” machines—a commonly used phrase which implies what we expect of them; but we do not get what we expect. What they really do is to reduce the skilled labourer to the rank of the unskilled, to increase the number of the “reserve army of labour”—that is, to increase the precariousness of life among the workers and to intensify the labour of those who serve the machines (as slaves their masters).
— Breaking Things at Work by Gavin Mueller (Page 64)