Today’s Labor Quote: Captain Swing

“Sir, This is to acquaint you that if your threshing machines are not destroyed by you directly we shall commence our labours.”

Captain Swing was the fictitious name often signed to the threatening letters sent to farmers, magistrates, parsons, and others before and during the “Swing Riots” in England (see History, below). The mythical Captain Swing was described as a hard-working tenant farmer driven to destitution and despair by social and political change in the early nineteenth century.

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