Rather than a review, this essay, like “Unhealthy Employments” and “The Work of Young Men”, expresses Price’s a social concerns. He uses Gaskell’s novels as a vehicle for discussing poverty, overpopulation, and collective bargaining. In the last paragraph he justifies his use of Gaskell as evidence of England’s social ills: “Comparing them with authentic documents and our own experience, we can confidently assert we have never elsewhere read so veritable and unbiassed exposition of both sides of the perplexing questions introduced” (451-451).