As with most movies today, the extremes are over-represented and the underlying issues barely addressed. England was reeling from a Napoleanic, banker-funded war, ending in oppressive debt for the major powers of Europe. The Bank of England and the Bank of France were both formed to lend money to their respective governments, with few constraints on the pyramiding, in order to fund regular wars. The French revolution was trying to spread its socialist conclusions. Men are represented as either cruel, money-grubbing wealthy industrialists or poor, woe-is-me peasant labor, although one could hardly call people who had several sets of clothes, a house and sets of dishes as poor. The gratuitous men-oppress-their-more-intelligent-women folk is consistent with modern social justice bleatings. Consequently, what we see is the plight of what the French called the bourgeoisie, or the merchant and skilled labor class. The entrenched oligarchies were hanging on to their power, generated by industrial technological expansions (in this case the mechanical loom), which ironically needed skilled laborers and supporting merchants, who also were gaining wealth, counter to the woe-is-me picture. Much of the problem was the government-imposed lack of producers' and laborers' ability to negotiate the price of their labor and the markets for their products. The many government-oligopoly controls on cloth production are not presented, but were responsible for most of the tension. Of course, these issues would hardly sell to uninformed viewers.
As with the onset of the French revolution, the key issue is never quite resolved in these movies, or in the social justice bleatings of today: after the dust settles, who will be in charge and what will the new rules be? Will the current oppressors be replaced by worse oppressors? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, both in labor and management. Government meddling has and will cause tragedy.
