"North and South"

The industrial revolution spurred on a change in the social make up of England. The short BBC series, "North and South" depicts these differing societies as an adaptation of the book "North and South" by Elizabeth Gaskell. Luckily my wife is English so I had an excuse to watch this educational chick flick.

Much of the monetary capital came from the wealthy land owners of Southern England. The wealthy upper class had largely inherited their wealth. The traditionally poor classes in Northern England used the Southern capital and the availability of cheap labor to construct factories. "North and South" brings the daughter of a Southern preacher-turned-teacher to a Northern industrial town centre. The chick flick represents a large portion of the dialog, but I was most interested by the entanglement of John Thornton, the protagonist mill owner. We easily hate Thornton at the start of the series because we watch him savagely beat a worker caught smoking in the cotton mill; we learn later that Thornton acts with the understanding that his successful mill lifts himself and his workers out of the depths of poverty. The savage beating was on behalf of all the workers who would lose their livelihoods should the factory burn down because of one ignorant smoker. I must admit I enjoyed the movie.

Are we too harsh on industrious owners like Bill Gates? How many people are employed by Microsoft? What other parallels to our time do we see in this drama from the Industrial Revolution?