Another vote for the book linked in the article. It gets into the history of how machines were introduced into the textile industry in England. Wealthy mill owners forced child laborers to run the machines while simultaneously making the artisan workers unable to sustain themselves or their families by producing shoddy low quality items in bulk.

As always the problem wasn't necessarily the machines but that they were controlled by wealthy mill owners who reaped all the profits and left the rest of society to starve. England really was patient zero for the toxic economic system still being used in the US.