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January 21, 2010

Luddites and sabotage

Took this in August 2008.  While the locals claim adamantly that the movement introduced the word “sabotage”, Wikipedia is more cautious:

Claimed explanations include:

• That it derives from the Netherlands in the 15th century when workers would throw their sabots (wooden shoes) into the wooden gears of the textile looms to break the cogs, feeling the automated machines would render the human workers obsolete.^[1]
• That it derives from the French sabot (a wooden shoe or clog) via its derivative saboter (to knock with the foot, or work carelessly).^[2]
• That it derives from the late 19th-century French slang use of the word sabot to describe an unskilled worker, so called due to their wooden clogs or sabots; sabotage was used to describe the poor quality work which such workers turned out.^[3]
• That it was coined during a French railway strike of 1910, when workers destroyed the wooden shoes, or sabots, that held rails in place, thus impeding the morning commute.^{[citation needed]}
• That it dates from the Industrial Revolution: it is said that powered looms could be damaged by angry or disgruntled workers’ throwing their wooden shoes or clogs (known in French as sabots, hence the term Sabotage) into the machinery, effectivelyclogging the machinery. This is often referred to as one of the first inklings of the Luddite Movement. However, this etymology is highly suspect and no wooden shoe sabotage is known to have been reported from the time of the word’s origin.

One can never be too careful.