David Graham Phillips' "Susan Lenox, Her Rise and Fall" (1908 published 1917) and Theodore Drieser's "Sister Carrie" (1900) are about women of that time that were held in scorn, well that is in the case of Phillips because the main character was a girl born out of wedlock and no one would relalycut her a break because if it, but both books, the authors from time to time sort of retreat into a "Dobie Gillis" outside person style narrative on how the lower classes had to live and get by. "Lenox..." (parts of the book almost had me in tears and would be a good antidote for any "randroids" out there) was a true eye opener for me and although some of the conditions are mitigated in today's world, many of that still exists in one for or another and I fear a lot of these economic policies along with the undoing of many reform the Progressives of 100 years ago,we could return to some sort of a world like that. I think for honorable mention, I would list Jack London, Upton Sinclair and Stephen Crane where some of their works addrss those problems too.
esther waters by george moore was of the same genre.
Much of that literature from the victorian age is a reaction to herbert spencer, then in vogue. Rand basically took a lot of herbert spencer's stuff and re-cycled it.