This is from Hard Times by Charles Dickens.. There were in the nineteenth century and before writers of Dickens’ ilk in books and news sheets graphically exposing society’s ills. . The likes of which there is a pathetic paucity of Today.

“Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.

“The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often, that it was amazing how it had borne all the shocks. Surely there was never such a fragile china ware as of which the millers of Coke town were made. Handle them ever so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such ease that you mighit suspect them of having been flawed before.

They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring of children to shool, they were ruined, when inspectors were appointed to look into there works. they were ruined, when when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in choppping people up with their machinery, they were utterley undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make so much smoke.

Another popular fiction, the  threat – made whenever a Coketowner, felt he was ill used – that is to say, not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him to account for the consequenes of any of his acts – he was sure to come out with the awful menace. that he would ‘sooner’ pitch his property into the Atlantic .

This had terrified the Home Secretary within an inch of his life on several occassions. However, the Cokeowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had pitched their propoerty into the Atlantic, yet. On the contrary, they had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it.

So there it was, in the haze yonder, and it increased and mul;iplied.