Progress is slow but sure.
I'm reminded of the amazing constancy with which the topic of 'women at work' resurfaces in the American press. Just so, there were instances and circumstances of life in 19th C England that were far worse than what most poor Americans know today. These things had nothing to do with life in the middle-classes of which AT was a member. Just as the lives of homeless men and women living under bridges in modern american cities have nothing to do with ours. More than 100 years after Trollope's death, we live in a time in which the economic and social divisions between rich and poor, owner and worker, are widening, not closing.