Those who hired the Piper were solely concerned with material life, and their decisions ended up costing the entire town its happiness. The poem subtly makes a comment on economics and politics in this way. First, the use of the word "Corporation" makes the poem more updated than the classic tale. The suggestion is that a population is ruled not only by its government (personified by the Mayor) but also its economic systems (represented by the Corporation). In the poem, these entities do not control the population through deceit but rather with the support of the population. The people in this poem are content to stay quiet until their safety is explicitly threatened, at which point they make demands of the Mayor and Corporation. Considering that Browning lived in an age of European revolutions, it is an interesting element that seeps in and makes the poem contemporary to his Victorian period.