Riflebird M

“The full impact of a so-called silver industrial revolution, a term coined by Peter Gaskell just six years before, was just beginning to be felt across the country. Silver-powered machines of the kind William Blake dubbed ‘dark Satanic Mills’ were rapidly replacing artisanal labour, but rather than bringing prosperity to all, they had instead created an economic recession, had caused a widening gap between the rich and poor that would soon become the stuff of novels by Disraeli and Dickens. Rural”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

“The silver industrial revolution had decimated both the textile and agricultural industries. The papers ran piece after piece exposing the horrific working conditions inside silver-powered factories”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

“The papers always referred to the strikers as foreign; as Chinamen, Indians, Arabs, and Africans. (Never mind Professor Craft.) They were never Oxfordians, they were never Englishmen, they were travellers from abroad who had taken advantage of Oxford’s good graces, and who now held the nation hostage. Babel had become synonymous with foreign, and this was very strange, because before this, the Royal Institute of Translation had always been regarded as a national treasure, a quintessentially English institution. But then England, and the English language, had always been more indebted to the poor, the lowly, and the foreign than it cared to admit. The word vernacular came from the Latin verna, meaning ‘house slave’; this emphasized the nativeness, the domesticity of the vernacular language. But the root verna also indicated the lowly origins of the language spoken by the powerful; the terms and phrases invented by slaves, labourers, beggars, and criminals – the vulgar cants, as it were – had infiltrated English until they became proper. And the English vernacular could not properly be called domestic either, because English etymology had roots all over the world. Almanacs and algebra came from Arabic; pyjamas from Sanskrit, ketchup from Chinese, and paddies from Malay. It was only when elite England’s way of life was threatened that the true English, whoever they were, attempted to excise all that had made them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

“Is it really as bad as all that?’ Robin asked Abel. ‘The factories, I mean.’ ‘Worse,’ said Abel. ‘Those are just the freak accidents they’re reporting on. But they don’t say what it’s like to work day after day on those cramped floors. Rising before dawn and working until nine with few breaks in between. And those are the conditions we covet. The jobs we wish we could get back. I imagine they don’t make you work half as hard at university, do they?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution