The Tories who condemned the cold calculations of political economy and the dislocation produced by the machine were not alone in their protests. Radical thinkers and labour leaders proclaimed their own critique of political economy and their own hostility to the machine. In many ways they echoed the sentiments of the Tory reaction. Where political economy's analysis of poverty revolted the Tory social conscience, it appeared to radical critics to be a blatant apology for increasing inequality. Where Tories blamed the machine for rising unemployment and the disappearance of the skilled artisan, radicals saw it as a tool of industrial exploitation which had brought only suffering to the poor. In fact, the Tory radical polemic against the capitalist industrial order can be seen directly to have inspired many strands of Owenite, trade unionist, and political radical thought in the years between 1820 and 1848.

The last chapter indicated the way in which the Tory radicals had whipped up virulent polemics against the machine, describing it as the ‘Hydra of the present day’, or as the ‘insatiable Moloch’ named ‘Improvement’. But the Owenites could match the Tories in the extremity of their vituperation when they articulated their feelings about steam.