The success of Meikle’s third threshing machine ended up playing a role in farm riots in 1830. Farm workers were fed up with years of high taxes, low wages, and wars. They faced massive unemployment because the thresher made the workers redundant. British enclosure laws, which had begun centuries earlier, accelerated greatly at the end of the 18th century. Farmers lost their grazing rights and many were left without even enough land to eke out a subsistence living. The General Inclosure Act of 1801was for many farmers the final nail in the coffin of their profession. Most received small, if any, compensation for the tiny plots of land they were forced to give up.
These laws were responsible for a number of British leaving for the new country across the Atlantic, the United States. The laws also resulted in a ready-made workforce for the rapidly accelerating industrial revolution in Britain. The advent of the thresher drove many farmers to the brink of starvation even as yields improved. The Swing Riots of 1830 brought angry former farm workers out to smash and destroy threshers and threaten the farmers who used them. Those participating in the riots were punished severely. Several were hanged and nearly 500 were transported to Australia.
