It's different from the early automation that happened in agriculture and textiles then. Because people in those days could see how a Jethro Tull device planted regular seed much better than the labourer's random scatter. And an Arkwright spinning jenny or Jacquard loom could work faster. This caused the Swing Riots and the Luddite movement.
But as these devices upped productivity, it was necessary to have more human labour to deal with the increased crop yield and the extra yards of cloth.
A bit like a server that is starved of RAM. Give it more RAM and it does more but then the CPU can't keep up. Give it more CPU so it does even more and then IO can't keep up. Improve IO and get your 8 hour process down to 1 hour. So now you can run 8 x 1 hour processes in that 8 hours, rinse and repeat.
Even today there are still food crops that can't be picked and processed by machine without so much loss and damage that it means low paid human labour is still economically viable. Harsh, boring repetitive tasks that lead to back problems. I expect most of these workers would prefer to be doing something else for a living.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
