What bearing does an increase in the overall number of industry workers have on whether or not the manual weavers and spinners were justified in their concerns

What bearing does an increase in the overall number of industry workers have on whether or not the manual weavers and spinners were justified in their concerns (with respect to their own livelihood) about automation? With respect to that increase, there is context missing around the American South exponentially increasing cheap cotton exports around the same time, where coincidentally laborers were not even workers but enslaved peoples. Even if the takeaway is livelihoods overall improved because of more jobs, then that is at the hidden cost of free (and grossly inhumane) labor elsewhere in the supply chain during the time period.