How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #4
Here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. (13.9)
Hank explains why a class society like this is neither right nor just. Like a lot of his quotes, it gets right to the point—part of what makes him different (and in a lot of ways better) than the nobles who ruled the country.
Quote #5
"It's a Factory where I'm going to turn groping and grubbing automata into men." (17.11)
More than once Hank cuts through class labels like peasant and lord and uses the term men to refer to educated equals. Here he's also using terms like factory and automata, which are connected to the Industrial Revolution (which was in full swing during Twain's time). Could there be some irony here, since the Industrial Revolution wasn't really known for its equality?
Quote #6
It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery. (30.10)
The comparison here reminds us that class inequities still exist in Twain's time… and beyond it as well. (We could draw the same conclusions about political issues today.) It also explains why people will support their own subjugation… or in American terms, why we cheerfully vote against our own interests sometimes.