How does the setting affect the story’s plot?

"The Time Machine" is primarily a social critique of H.G. Wells's Victorian England projected into the distant future. Wells was a Socialist for most of his life with Communist leanings, and he argued in both his novels and non-fiction works that capitalism was one of the great ills of modern society. Rapid growth in technology, education, and capital had launched the Industrial Revolution in the 17th- and 18th-centuries, and by the late 19th-century of "The Time Traveler," England was a leading force in the new economy: while industrialists reveled in their unbounded wealth, droves of men, women, and young children toiled long hours for meager wages in dirty, smoke-filled factories. While Charles Dickens won sympathy for the poor by sentimentally depicting their struggle, Wells chose to incorporate a number of scientific--both natural and social--ideas in his argument against capitalism.