Thoughts and Reflections on: Hard Time-Charles Dickens

Ben Howson
World History 2 per. 3
01/22/15

How do Engel's observations in his piece Conditions of the Working Class support what Dickens writes about in Hard Times?

First off, both Engel's writes about the atmosphere of London, and how it is just hideous. He talks about how the air is polluted with carbonic acid gas due to horrible ventilation. Charles Dickens talks about this very subject in his book. He writes about the never ending smoke trailing out of the thousands of chimneys, and the ashes from the fires floating around the city. Engel's observations of the atmosphere of true London in Conditions of the Working Class supported what Dickens said about Coketown in Hard Times. Engels then goes on to talk about the health of the people in London and the conditions in which they lived. He talks about how the people that lived in the city, that their lungs would fail to bring in enough oxygen, so people would often have mental or physical problems. He talks about how just living in a city in itself is injurious to health let alone living in one with an abnormal atmosphere. He then starts talking about how these people would have to live in tiny quarters among closely built lanes. Due to everything being so close together, this would pollute the city more, because the gases had no where to escape to, instead it would just hang around further poisoning the atmosphere. Dickens also talks about the small living areas in which all these people would have to live in. He then talks about how people would often become sick often, or even die at a young age due to the pollution in the air, and working around the machinery. Engel's observations of the health of London in Conditions of the Working Class supported what Dickens had to say about about Coketown in Hard Times. Engel's later talks about the treatment of the working class as being "revolting". He talks about how the working class was severely underpaid, and that they were treated as dirt. There lives didn't matter to the businessmen, and they didn't get really any pay. He says that they would have been better of dead. Dickens says very similar things in his book. He talks about how the gap between the two were huge, and that the working class would often have lots of kids to bring in more income. He also goes on to talk about that the value of their lives was really nothing in the eyes of the businessmen, and that they were basically just slowly killing them selfs each day by going to work. Engel's observations of the treatment of the working class in London in Conditions of the Working Class supports what Dickens has to say in about the treatment of people in Coketown in Hard Times. 

Friedrich Engels 

Charles Dickens