Davis

Rebecca Harding Davis promotes change within industrial capitalism. The harsh imagery she depicts using realism of her native hometown Wheeling, VA, is ostensibly worse for the lower working class than it is for the wealthy industrialists. She creates a notable division between the impoverished and the powerful through the interaction at the iron mill. The difference between the mill workers and Dr. May, Clarke, Kirby, and Mitchell was even evident to Hugh Wolfe who is one of the downtrodden characters suffering from Tuberculosis. 

Davis alludes to industrialism and greedy capitalists destroying the environment and the people's spirit. She even generalizes that most of these soulless upper-class individuals are passive christians who believe in and find solace with God, but aren't charitable nor benevolent because they don't think that pity is the proper way to reach the poor working class. These passive christians are metaphorically portrayed later on in the story before Hugh goes to prison, when he is in the upper-class church. The preacher fails to reach Hugh using language meant for cultured and well-educated church members.

All-in-all, Davis speaks out against the ignorant nature of greedy capitalists who fail to see all the damage they have done to the environment and the people who live in it because of their passive coexistence with the lower class, and failure to understand the needs, desires, and aspirations of the lower working class.