Mary Barton: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

The Carsons, who own the mill that burned, aren’t too sorry about the fire: they have insurance and wanted to replace the old machinery anyway. Moreover, demand for cotton goods is currently low. Thus, the Carsons decide to close the mill while they make repairs so they don’t have to “drain” their coffers paying their mill-worker employees. Indeed, they enjoy the closure as a sort of holiday from managerial work. Meanwhile, the workers go without food and heat. Some become vicious, while others display astonishing religious faith and self-sacrifice.

In the spring, other mills, reacting to the same bad market, reduce workers’ hours or close entirely. John, given reduced hours, and Mr. Wilson, unemployed, are both unhappy. One evening, Mr. Wilson visits John and asks whether he has any money to spare: Ben Davenport, who used to work at Carsons’ mill, has contracted a fever and has no food in his house. Though John crankily informs Mr. Wilson that he has no money, he packs up his own supper and goes to visit the Davenports. The two men find Davenport, his wife Mrs. Davenport, and his small children living in a cellar in a filthy slum. The children immediately wolf down the food John has brought.

John tells Mr. Wilson to stay with the Davenports and hurries home. There, he grabs his only remaining valuables. He pawns them, uses the money to buy food, candles, and coal, which he brings back to the Davenports. He and Mr. Wilson light a fire and try to give Mrs. Davenport bread, but she is too starved and weak to eat. Mr. Wilson goes home to fetch her tea, while John cooks a thin gruel and spoon-feeds it to her. When Mr. Wilson returns with the tea, Ben Davenport snatches it and gulps it down “with a selfishness he had never shown in health.”

After consulting with Mr. Wilson, John walks to a pharmacy in search of medicine. The juxtaposition of the Davenports’ horrid cellar and the full shops he passes troubles him. He finds himself hating all the apparently cheerful people he passes—though he doesn’t actually know their secret lives, which may be saintly, evil, or simply desperate. At the pharmacy, the pharmacist diagnoses Ben Davenport with typhoid from John’s description, gives John a medicine unlikely to be effective, and tells him to ask for an “Infirmary order” the next day. 

Later that night, while the Davenports sleep, Mr. Wilson and John talk. Mr. Wilson explains that Ben was his coworker at Carsons’ mill for about three years and that, while Ben was gone looking for work, he read aloud to the illiterate Mrs. Davenport a lovely letter Ben had written to her: no complaining, only suggestions that they should remember God is their father and that they should bear hardship humbly. John comments ironically that God is also the father of the employers—whom he’d hate to have as brothers. When Mr. Wilson scolds John, claiming that some employers must be better people than they, John asks whether the employers have treated others how they’d like to be treated, given that they get rich and leave the poor to their poverty.

John goes on to say that if employers earn interest on their capital, workers ought to earn interest on their labor, as employers get rich off of workers’ labor: they grind the workers’ down to become rich themselves, and now many of the workers are starving. When Mr. Wilson protests that Mr. Carson told him that the Carsons would have to economize after the fire, John asks whether the employers have ever seen one of their children starve.

John and Mr. Wilson watch over the Davenports until dawn. At dawn, Mr. Wilson walks to Mr. Carson’s house to ask for an Infirmary order. The house, on the edge of the city, is opulently beautiful. Mr. Wilson enters through the kitchen and waits for the servants to let Mr. Carson know he’s there. Waiting in the kitchen, Mr. Wilson becomes terribly hungry at the food odors—but the servants, though they’d feed him if they knew of his hunger, don’t guess he’s hungry because they’re not hungry themselves. Mr. Wilson becomes sick with hunger while the servants gossip.

Meanwhile, Mr. Carson and his son Harry Carson are eating a large breakfast in the library. Harry, the very handsome only son of the family, is so beloved by his parents and sisters that he has become arrogant. A servant enters and announces that a mill worker named Wilson wants to speak with Mr. Carson. Mr. Carson has the servant show Mr. Wilson in. Mr. Wilson, looking around nervously, enters and explains that he wants an Infirmary order for Ben Davenport. Though Mr. Carson doesn’t remember who Ben is—he lets “the over-looker” deal with the employees—and can’t spare an in-patient order, he gives Mr. Wilson an out-patient one. Meanwhile, Harry gives Mr. Wilson five shillings for Ben and rushes off, hoping to see Mary Barton on her walk to work.

When Mr. Wilson returns to the Davenports’ cellar, Ben has taken a turn for the worse. After struggling to speak for a long time, Ben thanks God that his life of suffering will soon be done. Mrs. Davenport begs him to say something else, something that will comfort her, but he is unable to speak. He places a feeble hand on her head and dies. Mary knocks and enters, having been summoned by John. He asks her to comfort Mrs. Davenport. Mary embraces the new widow and weeps with her, forgetting all about seeing Harry. Mr. Wilson, unemployed, takes responsibility for organizing the funeral while John and Mary go late to work. After work, Mary lets out the hem of her old black dress to give to Mrs. Davenport for mourning.