Artificially protecting jobs by holding back technology is terrible form. At best it’s short term before the economics become an order of magnitude cheap and at worst it’s hamstringing your economy so you’re left behind.
Be that as it may, I would argue there's a straight line from "it's okay to destroy this fairly-low-skill-career for the good of the economy" to the overall situation the US finds itself in today
I figure that’s the way of the world. We’ve gone from a majority low skill economy to a much more complex one over the decades. It will probably continue.