Hard times for these times

In the industrial city of Coketown, Josiah Bounderby is a rich and fairly obnoxious factory owner and banker. He loves to tell everyone he meets about how he grew up in the gutter, abused by a drunken grandmother. He is friends with Thomas Gradgrind, a rich politician and an education reformer in whose school students only learn about facts. Gradgrind's own children, Tom and Louisa, also grow up