sister to a tear." Elliott, chapter XXI), courtship, duty, suffering, steadfast courage, honesty, time and change. Social conditions Context Gaskell lived during the period of upheaval which followed the Industrial Revolution, and was aware of the difficult conditions of daily life and the health problems suffered by the workers of Manchester. North and South has been interpreted by Roberto Dainotto as "a kind of apocalyptic journey into the inferno of the changing times—modern poverty, rage, desperation, militant trade unionism and class antagonism". The strike described in North and South resembles the Preston strike, which occurred the year before the novel was published. The strike's slogan was "ten per cent and no surrender", and it was led by George Cowell and Mortimer Grimshaw. Lasting nearly seven months (from September 1853 to April 1854), it was ultimately unsuccessful. The strike is described in detail, with intelligent leaders like Higgins, the desperate violence and savagery of the rioters, and the reactions of both sides. Through the eyes of Margaret, a horrified, compassionate outsider, Gaskell illustrates the social misery of the slums Margaret visits, misery occasionally documented in parliamentary papers (blue books) with suggestive illustrations which resulted in the Factory Act of 1833. Gaskell uses a cause of conflict between masters and workers (the installation of ventilators in the carding rooms) to illustrate the greed of one and the ignorance of the other, making social progress difficult, and calls attention to anti-Irish prejudice in a city where the Irish are a small minority. She exposes the beliefs and reasoning of manufacturers in Thornton's defence of a theory approaching social Darwinism: capitalism as naturally (almost physically) obeying immutable laws, a relentless race to progress in which humanity is sacrificed; the weak die, whether they are masters or workers. Mrs. Thornton expresses the middle-class view of the working class as "a pack of ungrateful hounds". Gaskell's position North and South belongs to the canon of "condition of England" novels (also known as social-problem, industrial or social novels) which analyse Victorian social realities, offering "first-hand detailed observations of industrialism, urbanism, class, and gender conflicts". It attempts to answer questions posed by contemporary changes positioning itself between the individual worker freedom championed by John Stuart Mill (author of The Claims of Labor, published in the Edinburgh Review in 1845) and developed by Thornton in Chapter 15 and the responsibility of employers to their employees promoted by John Ruskin