Inspired by contemporary fears that robotics will make workers redundant, we test the well-known hypothesis that early industrial technologies (in this case steam engines) were introduced because they were labour-cheapening. The common understanding is that mechanisation historically allowed firms to replace skilled with unskilled male workers – that is, new technology was deskilling – and moreover involved that male workers could be substituted with less-expensive female and child labourers. To test this idea, we use propensity score matching on two all-inclusive, industry-level censuses from 19th-century France to determine the labour-market conditions that led to the adopting of steam engines, as well as the subsequent effects of adopting them on the demand for male, female and child labour as well as their wage rates. We find that the present worries that automation will be labour- and skill-saving are not supported by the historical evidence. General-purpose technological progress during early stages of industrialisation, captured by the introduction of steam technology in historical France, was ultimately both labour-augmenting and skill-demanding, thus contrasting the labour-cheapening hypothesis.