Consider Hard Times as a social satire.

This excellent Dickensian classic promotes the fear that
the author had of the impact of embracing industrialisation in society and how this
would, in turn, inhibit humanity and turn them into machines, stunting their emotional
and intellectual development. Note how in the novel, both Gradgrind and Bounderby follow
this approach, though in different environments. Gradgrind brings up his children and
his students to focus on "Facts" alone, eschewing any form of fancy or the emotions.
Bounderby treats his workers, referred to with the dehumanising title of "Hands," in a
similar way, as his workers are objects whom he exploits to better
himself.

Notice the link that Dickens draws between
Gradgrind's children and Bounderby and Coketown society in terms of their philosphical
approach to life in Chapter Five:

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Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material
aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M'Choakumchild
school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between
master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in-hospital and
the cemetry, and what you couldn't state in figures, or show to be purchaseable in the
cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without
end, Amen.

Note the
repetition of the word "fact" and the way that there is no room for emotion, for fancy,
or for anything that cannot be purchased or sold or quantified. Dickens thus presents us
with a view of life that removes emotion and the imagination, and which makes humanity
suffer as a result.