 folk don't expect. Yo may take my word for that, Jem.«
    Jem was very willing to take it, but did not express the curiosity he should
have done. So John Barton thought he'd try another hint or two.
    »Working folk won't be ground to the dust much longer. We'n a' had as much
to bear as human nature can bear. So, if th' masters can't do us no good, and
they say they can't, we mun try higher folk.«
    Still Jem was not curious. He gave up hope of seeing Mary again by her own
good free-will; and the next best thing would be, to be alone to think of her.
So muttering something which he meant to serve as an excuse for his sudden
departure, he hastily wished John good-afternoon, and left him to resume his
pipe and his politics.
    For three years past trade had been getting worse and worse, and the price
of provisions higher and higher. This disparity between the amount of the
earnings of the working classes and the price of their food, occasioned, in more
cases than could well be imagined, disease and death. Whole families went
through a gradual starvation. They only wanted a Dante to record their
sufferings. And yet even his words would fall short of the awful truth; they
could only present an outline of the tremendous facts of the destitution that
surrounded thousands upon thousands in the terrible years 1839, 1840, and 1841.
Even philanthropists who had studied the subject, were forced to own themselves
perplexed in their endeavour to ascertain the real causes of the misery; the
whole matter was of so complicated a nature, that it became next to impossible
to understand it thoroughly. It need excite no surprise, then, to learn that a
bad feeling between working men and the upper classes became very strong in this
season of privation. The indigence and sufferings of the operatives induced a
suspicion in the minds of many of them, that their legislators, their
magistrates, their employers, and even the ministers of religion, were, in
general, their oppressors and enemies; and were in league for their prostration
and enthralment. The most deplorable and enduring evil that arose out of the
period of commercial depression to which I refer, was this feeling of alienation
between the different classes of society. It is so impossible to describe, or
even faintly to picture, the state of distress which prevailed in the town at
that time, that I will not attempt it; and yet I think again that surely
