As so often, Charles Dickens, in skewering the foibles of Victorian society, highlights something that is still pertinent in our own lives. In Hard Times, here’s what Dickens wrote about the regulation of factory owners: “They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined, when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke.”
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