>legislate supernatural beings showing up to make misers better people. Sometimes this might be the only type of legislation that would have a chance. Since w

>legislate supernatural beings showing up to make misers better people. Sometimes this might be the only type of legislation that would have a chance. Since well before the time of Dickens there have been major organizations controlled by influential elites which have always been dependent on the kind of expolitation that can only be maximized up the chain when there exists at least a certain amount of this type of poverty toward the bottom. Even when there are more than enough resources to go around. Even sometimes when there is no maliciousness involved. The tradition is that deeply ingrained. Employed workers like Cratchit were not suffering as badly from the full prevailing poverty at the time. Their financial disadvantages were great, but not nearly as bad as the vast unemployed had to face in order for their services to be made available to elite ventures when needed at relatively insignificant cost with little notice. The unwashed masses really are masses and sometimes will need to include white-collar professions more than others. When it becomes possible for enough working-class people to rise financially through mere education and/or merit, then adjustments will be made by those whose control did not arise from merit in order to keep the distance and maintain the status quo. This seem to be what Dickens was getting at.