Men and Masters — Hard Times

After four days in Coventry, Stephen is summoned to Bounderby’s drawing room. Harthouse dawdles from the sofa; Louisa and Tom watch tea served while Stephen stands hat in hand by the door. Bounderby, windy and loud, demands he speak up about the Combination and treats silence as proof he still serves the agitators.

Stephen says he has nothing to report, not from fear. Bounderby performs for Harthouse: the specimen who will not denounce Slackbridge. Stephen admits he passed a promise that kept him out of the union, but when Bounderby calls the hands rebels and rascals, Stephen turns to Louisa and defends the men he has toiled with for life. Pressed on what workers complain of, he delivers the muddle speech: look at Coketown’s wealth beside its crowded poverty, mills that never lead anywhere but death, masters always right and hands always wrong.

Bounderby proposes indicting Slackbridges and shipping them off. Stephen says drowning every agitator would leave the muddle where it is; the strong hand and treating people as figures in a sum will never fix it. Bounderby calls him a grievance farmer and fires him: finish the week, then go elsewhere. Stephen knows that means no work in Coketown. Louisa will not meet his eyes. He barely breathes Heaven help us aw in this world and departs.