Hard Times - Bonus: Locked Out

In which we arrive at Preston, a comely manufacturing town made strangely wholesome by the silence of cold chimneys, and find its people thrown into an enforced holiday by a great lock-out that has stilled the mills and sharpened every tongue. Upon the Marsh, amid games paused and speeches begun, we observe the rough parliament of working life while the contest between masters and hands gathers, like weather on the Ribble, into a heavy and expectant air.