King Coal

by Upton Sinclair, Georg Brandes (Introduction)

A fellow determined to find the truth for himself about conditions in the mines, runs away from home and adopts the alias "Joe Smith." After being turned away by one coal mine for fear of Hal being a union organizer, he gets a job in another coal mine operated by the General Fuel Company, or GFC. In the mines he befriends many of the workers and realizes their misery and exploitation at the hands of the bosses. What he found there was abhorrent -- thus begins the tale of unionization and the advocacy workers' rights. Unionization, however, is easier spoken of than it is accomplished. It was a dangerous task -- for the leaders of the coal mines were hardened men, men who would not stop at petty threats and minor violence. Upton Sinclair is best known for writing The Jungle -- a novel that exposes the practices of the meat packing industry that lead to governmental investigations and changed food laws in America.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, American, Novels, Politics, Audiobook

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1917

About the author

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). To gather information for the novel, Sinclair spent seven weeks undercover working in the meat packing plants of Chicago. These direct experiences exposed the horrific conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The Jungle has remained continuously in print since its initial publication. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence." In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.

Reviews

[Geldar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dismissing the book as socialist, atheist, outmoded, racist, propagandist, or with some other, yes, accurate (or semi-accurate) descriptor is an easy way to disengage from the actual issues and problems presented by the author and abrogate in oneself the feeling that those injustices so clearly enumerated within actually need to be vigorously sought out, publicized, and fought against in all times and places.

This book obviously takes place over 100 years ago and deals with particulars of that time. And yes, there are no longer such flagrant examples of industrial sovereignty and near-slavery in the US. Still, consider the proposition that gasp, an ancient text dealing with long dead people and their long ago troubles may actually have some relevance to modern Americans.

Human suffering caused by exploitation is still a thing. And so is the concealment and dismissal of it. You don't need to belong to any sort of particular ideological group to acknowledge it nor to fight it. You don't have to use or accept the legitimacy of loaded-words like socialism, patriarchy, privilege, social justice, the 1%, etc. You can be a capitalist, a conservative, a CEO, what have you. None of these things preclude you from being an advocate for human dignity (nay, these identities may in truth be supportive). No matter who you are or what your politics, you can still get down with the idea that it is important to promote individual agency and disallow gain from illegal and immoral activities. You can accept that there are still people and organizations that act with extreme depravity despite putting on a public front of legitimacy and responsibility. Heck, you can fight even white-collar criminals (!) without advocating for a dismantling of the system. You can even fight for actual justice using the system. (The postscript, which excerpts Colorado Supreme Court decision, directly testifies to this.)

In our time, King Coal is, at the very least, an excellent reminder that invisible, difficult-to-imagine atrocities exist, and that making them visible is of dire significance. (E.g. slavery still exists in our world, we should probably care, and many of us may even benefit from it without realizing it.)

Also, it's a fun adventure story about coal mines.

[James Hatton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of the lives and deaths of coal miners in the Western United States in the early Twentieth Century. It is about Americans and immigrants in the land of the free, working as slaves, essentially. And then, their fight back.

The postscript to this book is essential. In it, the author presents excerpts of a Colorado Supreme Court judgement against certain political jurisdictions controlled by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which clearly show that the content of the story is based on fact. The book and the court judgment came out at the same time, therefore the author did not base the book on the court's judgment.

This is a very good book.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

Those lines, composed by Merle Travis and popularized by Tennessee Ernie Ford, pretty much sum up the situation in coal mining that persisted well into the 20th century. Mines were unsafe; workers had no rights; abusive bosses and owners got rich on the backs of their oppressed employees; unions didn't exist (ironically, as in other industries, union membership has been dwindling seriously since the 1980s). Upton Sinclair's 1917 novel King Coal graphically depicts these conditions, providing a reminder -- which seems particularly urgent right now -- of the dangers of unregulated industries and unfettered capitalism.

Told through the eyes of Hal Warner, son of a wealthy coal baron, King Coal is steeped in both gritty realism and melodrama. Hal is taking his summer vacation from college to pursue a sympathetic sociological study of miners' lives, and, knowing that he would be recognized immediately in the camps controlled by his father, he insinuates himself into the camps of a competitor. Adopting the pseudonym "Joe Smith", he slowly gains the confidence of miners and their families -- a melting pot of cultures -- and after a serious mine explosion, he begins to champion their unionization (an effort that ultimately fails, but which appears to lay the groundwork for future success). The melodrama comes into play as Hal is increasingly torn between his new-found social commitments and his unabandoned life as a member of upper-crust society, a dichotomy represented by two women, one from each social stratum. The dirt-poor and fiery Mary Burke seems a lot more attractive than the gilded and naive Jessie Arthur; "Joe" is in love with the former, and Hal with the latter. The author hints at the final outcome, but officially he leaves the choice unresolved.

In a postscript, Sinclair quotes extensively from a 1916 Colorado Supreme Court decision that vividly describes the dismal circumstances in which miners found themselves. Unfortunately, that decision didn't change much of anything, although it provided factual underpinning for King Coal. An unabashed socialist, Sinclair concludes:

The citizens and workers of such industrial communities, whether in Colorado, in West Virginia, Alabama, Michigan or Minnesota, in the Chicago stock-yards, the steel-mills of Pittsburg, the woollen-mills of Lawrence or the silk-mills of Paterson, will find that they have neither peace nor freedom, until they have abolished the system of production for profit, and established in the field of industry what they are supposed to have already in the field of politics -- a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Maybe, however, it's premature to suppose that the people have achieved even that much in the realm of politics. As of this writing (March, 2018), Don Blankenship, a former CEO of Massey Energy, has emerged from prison for violation of mine safety standards involving a mine collapse that killed 29 men, and is currently a West Virginia Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.

[Sub Sakoul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ιστορία εμπνευσμένη από τα γεγονότα που συγκλόνισαν το Κολοράντο του 1914, ξεκινώντας από την απεργία των ανθρακωρύχων της περιοχής μέχρι την πλήρη καταστολή της από τη συμμαχία κράτους - εταιρείας που οδήγησε στο θάνατο 18 ατόμων εκ των οποίων τα 10 ήταν παιδιά.
Διεισδυτικό ανάγνωσμα, το οποίο περιγράφοντας τις εξοντωτικές συνθήκες που επικρατούν στην κοινότητα των εργατών που διοικείται προφανώς από μέλη της εταιρείας (από τον πιο απλό υπάλληλο ενός καταστήματος και τους χαφιέδες μέχρι τον δήμαρχο της πόλης), προσπαθεί να αναδείξει τις αντιφάσεις που βιώνουν οι εργάτες, τις δυσκολίες ανάπτυξης ταξικής συνείδησης, τους επώδυνους συμβιβασμούς που συνάπτουν μέχρι να ωριμάσουν πλέον οι συνθήκες, να οργανωθούν και να αποφασίσουν να διεκδικήσουν τα αυτονόητα, δηλαδή καλύτερες συνθήκες εργασίας.
Αρκετά ευρηματική η επιλογή του βασικού ήρωα που διαφέρει από τους υπόλοιπους εργάτες, προερχόμενος από αριστοκρατική οικογένεια και έχοντας λάβει ανώτερη μόρφωση και φανερά καλλιεργημένος, επιλέγει να διδαχθεί εκ των έσω τον τρόπο κίνησης των γραναζιών της βιομηχανίας.
Όσα θα διαπιστώσει, θα τον οδηγήσουν σε έναν αγώνα δίχως τέλος και ο τρόπος σκέψης του θα διαφοροποιηθεί ολοκληρωτικά. Η απουσία πολιτισμού και πνευματικής καλλιέργειας, η μοναξιά, οι ανύπαρκτοι έρωτες, ο ωκεανός κοινωνικής μιζέριας, η καθολική άγνοια, η απόγνωση, ο διαρκής πόνος που βιώνουν τα βασανισμένα πρόσωπα των εργατών, οι εξοντωτικές συνθήκες εργασίας, η αδικία, ο έλεγχος της πόλης από τη διοίκηση της εταιρείας κ.ο.κ, συνθέτουν ένα τρομακτικό σκηνικό που οδηγεί στην αδράνεια των μαζών, στο φόβο, στην έλλειψη αλληλεγγύης και ταξικής πάλης.
Παράλυτοι πλέον από την κούραση, αδυνατούν να σκεφτούν καθαρά, να διαμαρτυρηθούν με γενναιότητα και αποτελεσματικότητα, καταδικάζονται συνειδητά να παραμένουν στο σκοτάδι και στην άγνοια, πλαισιωμένοι από ένα σύστημα κανόνων που δεν τους επιτρέπει να παρεκκλίνουν και τους κρατάει διαιρεμένους.
Κλείνοντας, θα παραθέσω ένα χωρίο που αναδεικνύει και τη σχέση κλήρου-αστικής τάξης.
Διευθυντής προς παπά «Εμείς θέλουμε το παρόν, το σώμα. Εσείς το μέλλον, την ψυχή. Διδάξτε τους λοιπόν ότι θέλετε για τον παράδεισο, αρκεί να μας επιτρέπετε να τους καταστρέψουμε στη γη».
Ο κλήρος για άλλη μια φορά λειτουργεί σαν πυροσβέστης εμποδίζοντας την ανάφλεξη των απελπισμένων ψυχών, ευνοώντας τη διατήρηση της ισχύος της εταιρείας καταδικάζοντας του εργάτες να ζουν σαν καχεκτικά πλάσματα του σκότους.
ΥΓ. Μπορείτε να ανατρέξετε στα ιστορικά στοιχεία της απεργίας του Κολοράντο προκειμένου να έχετε τη συνολική εικόνα των γεγονότων και να μάθετε ότι ο κύριος υποκινητής της απεργίας ήταν Έλληνας, στοιχείο που μας υπενθυμίζει ότι δεν ήταν όλοι οι Έλληνες μετανάστες υπάκουα σκυλιά που συνεργάζονταν με τις αρχές. Επίσης το ντοκιμαντέρ «LUDLOW, οι Έλληνες στους πολέμους του άνθρακα» αφηγείται τα σχετικά γεγονότα που δυστυχώς ακόμα μοιάζουν επίκαιρα…
5/5 τόσο για το διδακτικό χαρακτήρα και την προσέγγιση του συγγραφέα όσο και για τη λογοτεχνική του αξία.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to believe that Upton Sinclair's novel is 100 years old. His prose has the stirring ring of universal truth -- a vibrancy and immediacy that casts his novel not as the document of past historical events or the portrait of an out-dated industrial period in American life, but as an ever-present social and political reality that continues to shape American life as it has done throughout our nation's history. The corruption and autocracy of big business, the exploitation of the working class, the willful obliviousness of the upper classes, the rigged political machinations that keep corporations in power, the impossibility of the judicial system to effectively secure the rights of citizens...it's all still playing out in the United States today, even as industry has been forced to improve the working conditions of laborers to the point where at least they are not dying so openly and quickly. But the stranglehold on democracy by the corporate caste system remains as real today as it was in 1917.

Sinclair's gripping novel relates the story of Hal, a college kid of privilege who decides he wants to slum it one summer to see first-hand what it's like to work in a coal mine in the United States. He enters the realm of King Coal as a serf named "Joe Smith," and quickly discovers that all he had learned in school about the wheels of industry and glory of American capitalism is a sham, a rigged system built upon the broken backs of men and women -- largely immigrants -- who are cheated and exploited by an industry that values profit over those who risk their health and lives to pad the pockets (and warm the fires) of the elite.

We soon discover that there is more to Hal's backstory than meets the eye. Hal, for his part, learns that "agitators" are not evil anarchists who desire to destroy good old-fashioned American ingenuity, but are courageous and selfless average men and women who often sacrifice themselves for the greater cause of preserving for men and women the basic human rights and dignity which they are denied on a daily basis.

Although not as famous or as popular as The Jungle, King Coal is, in many ways, a much better novel. Sinclair's narrative is fast-moving and is clearly based on real people and events (which he confirms in the postscript) without the trappings of a "muckraking exposé" that The Jungle often displayed in chapters that were factually interesting but interrupted the narrative flow. King Coal is a tighter, more mature work of fiction from a writer just hitting his stride as a novelist. It remains well worth a read.

[Thom Swennes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slavery wasn't ended with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation or with the Union’s defeat of the Confederacy. Well into the Twentieth Century slavery prevailed throughout the United States. True, the buying and selling of human flesh was no longer practiced but the Industrial Revolution enslaved humans of all colors and ethnic backgrounds as sure as the Negro was before the War. Big industry exploited the common workers and kept them in poverty all in the name of riches and profit. King Coal by Upton Sinclair explores these barbarous practices in the coal mining industry in the Rocky Mountain. Hal Warner, a college student from a well to do family, takes time from school to investigate working and living conditions in the coal mining industry. Assuming the name of Joe Smith he enters the mining community and soon discovers the atrocities under which the people were forced to live. Economical depravity and social differences forces him to take affirmative action and organize the workers. Like most stories, love plays a roll and weaves through the tale like a bright yellow ribbon. In a campestral setting of the western American homeland, Sinclair succeeds in capturing and relating a moving tale while exposing an unattractive side to capitalism. From my childhood I listened to “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford and remember it for its aesthetic value and not really paying undo attention to the lyrics and the social message it contained. After reading this moving narrative about social injustice I will forever listen to this Golden Oldie with another ear. I would highly recommend this book for its literary as well as its historical worth.

[Maria Shomaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be a truly captivating representation of the hypocrisy and oppression that the early 20th century coal miners encountered. While the plot is not as notable as his earlier work, The Jungle; King Coal is laced with it's own gruesome depiction of the corruption caused by greed and apathetic treatment toward the mine workers.

Upton Sinclair devoted his life to exposing the flaws of big industry and I think everyone could benefit from reflecting on his work.

I would also recommend Germinal by naturalist, Emile Zola or The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The latter book illustrates the life of a family of sharecroppers during the Dust Bowl while the former concerns the lives of workers in the French mines.

[Jim A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to give up on this one. The prose Sinclair used just didn't compute in my beading little brain.

Talking about jumping a train: "The latter saw that the sport become up, and sprang to the floor on the alternative aspect of the tune and began out of the camp."

Just one example in the first few pages. Not for me. Later in his career Sinclair was awarded a Pulitzer for fiction. Different use of the English language in the later works.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

What to say about this book?

Well. It's the original "slum tourism" aka poverty porn. It's the story of a rich kid, Hal Warner, who wonders what it's like for the other half. So he adopts a generic name and pretends to be just like one of the poor people (he legit fakes their accent and at one point even smears coal on his face to look the part). And falls in love with one of them (Mary Burke). He definitely acts as something of a "white saviour," minus the racial connotation (the people he purports to "save" are mostly poor whites). At first he despises the poor people as filthy and smelly and repulsive and uneducated; then, out of the goodness of his heart, he just pities them. How nice.

And it’s Marxist. So. SO. MARXIST.

Nothing against Marxism. It can be a very nice idea. And I really, genuinely adore Upton Sinclair. I think he did more for America than any other writer except for Rachel Carson (#queen). But my God. WE GET IT. He doesn't just wave the red flag; he shoves it down your throat.

But, as I said, I deeply appreciate his life's purpose. Sinclair really does write with great compassion and love and support for the working class. He writes them as people. Perhaps this novel wasn't the best set up for that (I think, for example, The Jungle did this better; it involved actual working class people, not rich kids "slumming it") but it's still apparent in the background.

I also deeply appreciate how Sinclair writes women. At this point in history, strong (physically or emotionally) women were not in vogue whatsoever.

Physically strong women, in particular, weren't a "sexy" trait until the late 70s/early 80s, but he has passages that show him a forecaster of the times. Of love interest Mary Burke, he says, "He [Hal] observed the shoulders which were sturdy, obviously accustomed to hard labor, not conforming to accepted standards of femininity, and yet having an athletic grace of their own."

Mary Burke (who is heavily featured, second only to Hal himself) is also emotionally powerful and resonant: "I’m no slave. I’ve just as good a right to life as any lady. I know I’ll never have it, of course . . . but I know that I done something to help free the workin’ people from the shame that’s put on them. That’s what the strike done for me. I’m going to make more strikes before I quit."

Some other memorable quotes:

“The land belongs to the company, but the landscape belongs to those who care for it.”

“Everybody will be dead!”
Hal turned to Olsen. "Would they possibly do such a thing [as let the men burn in the mine fire]?”
“More than once,” was the organizer’s reply. “Did you never hear about Cherry, Illinois? They did it there, and more than 300 people lost their lives.” He began to tell that dreadful story, known to every coal miner. “They had sealed the mine, while women fainted and men tore their clothes in frenzy, some going insane. They had kept it sealed for 2 weeks, and when they opened it, there were 21 men still alive. They did the same thing in Diamondville, Wyoming. They built a barrier, and when they took it away they found a heap of dead men who had crawled to it, and torn their fingers to the bone trying to break through.”
"My God," cried Hal.

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s interesting that an executive of Massey Energy was sentenced for criminal negligence with regard to a coal mine disaster on the very week I finished King Coal, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel about energy companies (the General Fuel Company), coal miners, and unions. Sinclair’s novel was about the events of a great strike by the United Mineworkers in 1914 and this recent court decision took place in 2015. Now, I’m not the most pro-union guy in the world, but I know that unions have been very necessary in countering unsafe working conditions and providing for better living conditions over the years. And, I have personally been in favor of some union-busting and against others in recent years. So, I approached what I knew was going to be pro-union propaganda with open eyes.

Yet, King Coal is an intriguing story. I am surprised that it wasn’t chosen for a muckraking movie in recent years rather than Oil [The movie was There Will Be Blood.] It may well be that early 20th century California’s oil industry proved a better visual diatribe against capitalism’s excesses and screed in favor of socialism’s assumed “justice” than Colorado’s filthy, depressing, dangerous, coal mines of slightly earlier in that century. For whatever reason, Sinclair performs his usual conceit of taking the scion of privilege and having him mix with the lower class workers in order to learn the evils of society. As usual, there are class and cultural barriers to be overcome and there are empathetic victims to serve as “object lessons” (well, fictional case studies?). And, as usual, there are some amazing coincidences each serving as a deus ex machina as the plot begins to flag.
What wasn’t very enjoyable for a person of my faith and vocation was the extremely negative portrayal of the one allegedly religious figure in the book: “…heard the Reverend Spragg preach a doctrinal sermon, in which the blood of the lamb was liberally sprinkled, and the congregation heard where and how they were to receive compensation for the distresses they endured in this vale of tears.” (p. 99) The negative portrait of the sermon attacked further: “What a mockery it seemed! Once, indubitably, people had believed such doctrines; they had been willing to go to the stake for them. But now nobody went to the stake for them—on the contrary, the company compelled every worker to contribute out of his scanty earnings towards the preaching of them.” (p. 99) Instead, apparently from the book, these workers should have been contributing out of their scanty earnings to the UMW (not so named, but implied) who refused to go to bat for these workers for many years before the Great Strike. Sorry, but Sinclair’s protagonist bought into the UMW propaganda too easily in this story. It was all right for him as he could return to his comfortable life (albeit with ambiguous feelings) while the mine workers continued to suffer and wait for his and the UMW’s messianic return. I’m afraid there are excesses in any movement—Christianity or Socialism. Let’s just not tar everything with the same brush.

If I had any doubt of Sinclair’s complete rejection of faith of all kinds, it was vanquished in the description of the successful brother of the protagonist: “…religious doubts; the distresses of mind which plague a young man when first it dawns upon him that the faith he has been brought up in is a higher kind of fairy-tale. Edward had never asked such questions, apparently.” (p. 670) Apparently, Sinclair had simply traded one fairy-tale (Christianity) for the fairy-tale of an equality that can never quite be obtained. I like his idealism; I don’t like his arrogance.

Certainly, Sinclair spares no punches for the racist and inhuman nature of the pit boss. “Like a stage-manager who does not heed the real names of his actors, but calls them by their character-names, Stone had the habit of addressing his men by their nationalities: ‘You, Polack, get that rock into the car! Hey, Jap, bring them tools over here! Shut your mouth, now, Dago, and get to work, or I’ll kick the breeches off you, sure as you’re alive!” (pp. 144-145) Imagine being an immigrant from Montenegro and being called a “Montynegro.” Every opportunity was taken by the middle-management of the mine to denigrate and humiliate the working men.

Of course, Sinclair is basically a romantic—not just in the sense of the romantic triangle he builds between the protagonist’s past and present lives and the women who represent each, but also when he waxes poetically about what he believes in. I loved his allusion to Lord Byron: “’Eternal spirit of the chainless mind,’ says Byron. ‘Greatest in dungeons Liberty thou art!’ The poet goes on to add that ‘When thy sons to fetters are confined—‘ then ‘Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind.’” (pp. 309-310) Such was the comfort which came to Hal as he was briefly imprisoned on behalf of the cause.

Fortunately, though, the protagonist does have sufficient weakness to make things interesting. I particularly liked this line: “Like every one who has not suffered much, he was repelled by a condition of perpetual suffering in another.” (p. 256) At another point, “…he might be struggling against temptation, he might be in the toils of it, and only half aware of it. He was a man, and therefore blind; he was a dreamer, and it would be like him to idealize this girl, calling her naïve and primitive, thinking that she had no wiles.” (p. 599)

Though King Coal covers issues that were largely settled a century ago, both this novel and recent events remind us that the relevance of organized labor is not entirely behind us as some of my more conservative friends believe. When I picked it up, I expected to read some quaint story of society’s ills long past and feel good about all that had changed. Instead, I was reminded of my own failings, as well as those of society. Even after all these years, Upton Sinclair’s work does its job.

[Nicholas Armstrong · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, it's pretty awesome that Upton Sinclair brought attention to all of the issues that he did. It's even more awesome that he did it through a fictional medium which would be more appetizing and consumable to the broadly uneducated masses. It's amazing to think of it like that, that a man changed world views by showing people a picture of an imaginary world. For some reason, we can much more easily find fault in something like that and then start asking questions of our own. For some reason, this is infinitely more appealing to us than simply being told about these faults in our world.

For what he accomplished, and what he set out to do, I have nothing but respect for Mr. Sinclair. I'll admit to being grossly fascinated by the pervasiveness of the cronyism in the Coal industry - cronyism that is far too familiar in our under-regulated business world of today.

Granted, people today aren't being blown up in mines and forgotten about (not in American... er, not as regularly anyway), but it is fascinating in a horrible kind of way to see the lack of agency of any of the workers or citizens of these coal cities. It must be similar to what it's like trying to regulate a small coal town today, just with less brutal beatings since everyone has a camera phone.

Point being, the characters are silly, the events largely uninteresting except in a historical sense, but a good read for someone wanting to see the darker side of industry and history. (I'm saying it's not great, okay? I'm saying it's kind of poopy. I'm saying it's like reading a history book which I kind of like sometimes so I enjoyed this).

[Sally Hallman · Rating 2 out of 5]

An eye opener!

I have a great deal of interest in the business of coal mining, as my grandmother's father and older brothers were lost in the Monogngah W V mining disaster in 1907. I want to understand the world that she lived in and the horrors of the work they did and sadness that must have permeated all of their life. This book helps me to understand the mindset of that time and how my great grandmother must have felt waiting for word after the mine collapse. The interest to you may be in the authentic voice he gives to our American Industrial history , in his many. well researched treatise.
Of course, Mr. Sinclair wrote this book many many years ago I and so there is a odd formality to the storytelling. I have read many old books, and I enjoy that style, if you are new to the style, please hang in, you will come to enjoy the difference. I am going to look at his other books now, and expect to learn more about where the roots of our middle class came.

[Tanya Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really can't say how profoundly affected I was by this book. I have been interested in the history of coal camps, and the coal industry overall, for years, but never delved into it head first until about two years ago. I can say honestly that Sinclair's portrayal of labor relations, politics, and humanitarian struggles are just as true today as they were when he wrote this. I've seen things first hand... and at times it's disheartening to know that while some things have changed, so many other things have not... I read Zola's "Germinal" years ago, and this book touched me in the same way. Personally, I think "King Coal" should be required reading. I definitely recommend this book.

[Cathy Sites · Rating 4 out of 5]

I nearly gave up on this book within the first 100 pages, but it does get better as the characters develop and show their true selves. This is an important piece of history for anyone who lives in a coal town or a coal state (like Colorado, least we forget, of which the book is based upon). While not the main character, "Red Mary's" struggle and triumphs over one's "place" was the subtle highlight of this story.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you have ever read The Jungle; just replace "meat packing industry" with "coal mining industry" and you don't have to read this book...

actually, a pretty good read. Sinclair is pretty up front about his socialism...

[Paris Golfakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ακόμα κ για τους πιο δύσπιστους, αυτό το βιβλίο αποκαλύπτει, με ευανάγνωστο τρόπο, το διαρκές απάνθρωπο πρόσωπο του καπιταλισμού. Πίσω στο 1914 μια ιστορία πιο επίκαιρη από ποτέ.

[Illiterate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too didactic even for a fellow traveler.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

King Coal is a 1917 novel written by Upton Sinclair. Sinclair was an American writer who wrote nearly 100 books (I'm not sure I could get through 100 Sinclair books) and other works in several genres. I've found that Sinclair seems to write one awful novel after another, not awful in that I can't bring myself to finish the novel the writing is so bad, but I can hardly bring myself to finish the book because of all the terrible things going on in it. Besides writing books Sinclair ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party, something I didn't even know we had. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for Governor of California during the Great Depression, running under the banner of the End Poverty in California campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 elections, I'm curious now as to who won. I found out that Sinclair's father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed his son's childhood, and his mother was a strict Episcopalian who disliked alcohol, tea, and coffee. I bet that was a wonderful marriage. Sinclair wrote jokes, dime novels, and magazine articles in boys' weekly and pulp magazines to pay for his college tuition. That sounds like he must have written some happy, fun stories, but I haven't come across any of them yet. He also sold ideas to cartoonists, again, happy things. Using stenographers, he wrote up to 8,000 words of pulp fiction per day, although whether that is good or not I don't know. His only complaint about his educational experience was that it failed to educate him about socialism. After leaving college, he wrote four books in the next four years; King Midas (1901), Prince Hagen (1902), The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1903), and a Civil War novel titled Manassas: A Novel of the War (1904). I haven't seen any of those either. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.

Now onto the bad stuff, writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of industrialized America from both the working man's and the industrialist's points of view. Novels such as King Coal (1917), The Coal War: A Sequel to "King Coal" (published posthumously), Oil! (1927), and The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time. The top of my list has to be The Jungle. The book depicts working-class poverty in the meat packing industry, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. I think the best thing that happened in the book is a person died from food poisoning, thereby missing being raped or eaten by rats. Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business (no kidding). In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper - that is just really disturbing. Don't worry, I'm moving on to King Coal finally.

As in his earlier work, The Jungle, Sinclair uses the novel to express his socialist viewpoint. The book is based on the 1913-1914 Colorado coal strikes and written just after the Ludlow massacre. The sequel to King Coal was posthumously published under the title, The Coal War. This book disturbed me because of all the coal around here. Not too far from where I live begin the coal towns, one after another. The closest one to me at one time, in the early 1900's when coal was huge around here, had a movie theatre, a ballroom, three hotels, an opera house, and now they are all gone, either turned into something else, or just sitting empty for years now. And all around these towns were coal breakers, also one after another, and coal mines. Some of them are still here and still thriving, but most of them are gone. I've heard of people who died of "black lung" and of people who were killed or crippled in mining accidents, but I've never known anyone that has happened to. I don't even know anyone who works in a coal mine, but at one time almost every man did. The small creek that runs past these towns, and eventually through my town is known as the "black creek", not because that it is it's real name, but because of all the coal dust that used to run into it turning the water black. It is clear now but the name remains. But we had nothing like what happens in King Coal, at least I hope not.

In the book we have Hal Warner, a young man who has never worked in a coal mine, but decides he wants to see what it is like, a terribly bad idea as it turns out. After being turned away by one coal mine for fear of Hal being a union organizer, he gets a job in another coal mine operated by the General Fuel Company, or GFC. Anyone suspected of having anything to do with a union does not make it out of the book in very good shape, Hal himself winds up beaten badly. In the mines he befriends many of the workers, and realizes their misery and exploitation at the hands of the bosses. Miners had to live in company houses, horrible places to live, and had to shop in company stores where the prices were so high there was no money left by the end of the week. Here is a description of the mining town Hal saw on his first walk through the village:

"As one walked through this village, the first impression was of desolation. The mountains towered, barren and lonely, scarred with the wounds of geologic ages. In these canyons the sun set early in the afternoon, the snow came early in the fall; everywhere Nature's hand seemed against man, and man had succumbed to her power. Inside the camps one felt a still more cruel desolation—that of sordidness and animalism. There were a few pitiful attempts at vegetable-gardens, but the cinders and smoke killed everything, and the prevailing colour was of grime. The landscape was strewn with ash-heaps, old wire and tomato-cans, and smudged and smutty children playing.

There was a part of the camp called “shanty-town,” where, amid miniature mountains of slag, some of the lowest of the newly-arrived foreigners had been permitted to build themselves shacks out of old boards, tin, and sheets of tar-paper. These homes were beneath the dignity of chicken-houses, yet in some of them a dozen people were crowded, men and women sleeping on old rags and blankets on a cinder floor. Here the babies swarmed like maggots. They wore for the most part a single ragged smock, and their bare buttocks were shamelessly upturned to the heavens. It was so the children of the cave-men must have played, thought Hal; and waves of repulsion swept over him."



Next is Hal's first impression of a coal mine:

"But Hal stuck it out; and little by little new vision came to him. First of all, it was the fascination of the mines. They were old mines—veritable cities tunnelled out beneath the mountains, the main passages running for miles. One day Hal stole off from his job, and took a trip with a “rope-rider,” and got through his physical senses a realisation of the vastness and strangeness and loneliness of this labyrinth of night. In Number Two mine the vein ran up at a slope of perhaps five degrees; in part of it the empty cars were hauled in long trains by an endless rope, but coming back loaded, they came of their own gravity. This involved much work for the “spraggers,” or boys who did the braking; it sometimes meant run-away cars, and fresh perils added to the everyday perils of coal-mining.

The vein varied from four to five feet in thickness; a cruelty of nature which made it necessary that the men at the “working face”—the place where new coal was being cut—should learn to shorten their stature. After Hal had squatted for a while and watched them at their tasks, he understood why they walked with head and shoulders bent over and arms hanging down, so that, seeing them coming out of the shaft in the gloaming, one thought of a file of baboons. The method of getting out the coal was to “undercut” it with a pick, and then blow it loose with a charge of powder. This meant that the miner had to lie on his side while working, and accounted for other physical peculiarities.

Thus, as always, when one understood the lives of men, one came to pity instead of despising. Here was a separate race of creatures, subterranean, gnomes, pent up by society for purposes of its own. Outside in the sunshine-flooded canyon, long lines of cars rolled down with their freight of soft-coal; coal which would go to the ends of the earth, to places the miner never heard of, turning the wheels of industry whose products the miner would never see. It would make precious silks for fine ladies, it would cut precious jewels for their adornment; it would carry long trains of softly upholstered cars across deserts and over mountains; it would drive palatial steamships out of wintry tempests into gleaming tropic seas. And the fine ladies in their precious silks and jewels would eat and sleep and laugh and lie at ease—and would know no more of the stunted creatures of the dark than the stunted creatures knew of them. Hal reflected upon this, and subdued his Anglo-Saxon pride, finding forgiveness for what was repulsive in these people—their barbarous, jabbering speech, their vermin-ridden homes, their bare-bottomed babies".



In Sinclair’s novel, English, Scottish, Welch, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Serbian, Greek, Mexican, black and Japanese workers all work in the mine, I think I got them all. The point seems to be that many workers cannot understand the words of their co-workers, making it almost impossible to join together to fight for better conditions, which any condition would be better. The mine owners seem to use this lack of language skill against their workers. At one point when Hal comments on the coal dust being inches thick on the floor of the mine, and so thick on the walls he could write his name on it, one of the other workers tells him that the dust being so thick explosions happen easily, even from the friction of the shovels on the coal. The owners are supposed to "sprinkle" the mines, but have never been known to do it. He's told by one miner:

"Once, only last year, there had been an accident of that sort. A young mule-driver, a Croatian, told Hal about it while they sat munching the contents of their dinner-pails. The first cage-load of men had gone down into the mine, sullenly protesting; and soon afterwards some one had taken down a naked light, and there had been an explosion which had sounded like the blowing up of the inside of the world. Eight men had been killed, the force of the explosion being so great that some of the bodies had been wedged between the shaft wall and the cage, and it had been necessary to cut them to pieces to get them out. It was them Japs that were to blame, vowed Hal's informant. They hadn't ought to turn them loose in coal mines, for the devil himself couldn't keep a Jap from sneaking off to get a smoke."

Cheer up, a little anyway, there are men in there who are good men, who are kind men, with kind wives and homes as good as they can be made where they are, there are good friendships, and even a love story. Well, kind of. If you can take all this, go ahead and read it, I was never bored, but I hope I never find out that the people in our mines were never treated the way the miners in our story were. On to the next book. Happy reading.

[Naeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am always on the lookout for "political economy novels." This one hits the bullseye, as did his novel Oil!.

I listened to Oil! and King Coal, back to back (and I am now listening to the Jungle which I read as a 20 something).

In both novels Sinclair's strategy is similar: show the operations of capitalist logic through the eyes of capitalists themselves. Specifically, take the child or college level progeny of a capitalist and let him discover the life of workers. These books are close to ethnography. But also Sinclair makes sure that we learn about how the commodities (oil and coal) are made. He takes you through every step of the process, from extraction, to processing, to sale -- a kind of narrative vertical integration. He also shows you what has to be done by capitalists to make all this happen, the graft - from small tips to civil bureaucrats- to the rigging of presidential elections. Oppositional ideologies are the beating heart of his novels.

He does not demonize the capitalists. This is because their humanization allows him to showcase the logic of the system instead of focusing on the merits of this or that person. Actions flow from roles rather than from individual impulses.

All the while Sinclair is explicit about his concerns -- unionization, socialism, the overthrow of capitalism. His narrator never says these things but some of his working class characters do. This is no small miracle, the simultaneous presentation of his politics with the humanization of all his characters. Sheer genius of vision.

I haven't seen books like this. Some come close: John Nichols' Milagro Beanfield trilogy and Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt trilogy. But neither of these present the working class, unions, and socialism as vital energy within the novels. Remarkable.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young man of the early 1900's decides to investigate the coal-mining industry by taking a job as a miner. He has a tough time getting hired on, but things get even tougher after that. The outside world, especially the coal-mining magnates, like to believe that miners are protected by state laws, but young Hal finds out that laws are no protection at all if they’re ignored. And of course there are plenty of accidents, and naturally there’s an explosion, with miners dying underground because the mine bosses saved their mules first. Upton Sinclair, the author, also wrote The Jungle, about the abuses in the meat-packing industry. (Yes, you remember the part where a guy falls into a vat of raw meat and gets made into sausages.) These were called “muckraking” books, and they were wildly popular. They even helped bring about reforms that were badly needed. And even now, they still make for very exciting reading.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

As topical today as when it was written (1917). Muckraking of the highest order by a master of the genre. Today, with the economy about as far south as it can be, albeit rebounding somewhat, we read, hear about and experience firsthand curtailment of the rights of workers. The prevailing mentality is "if you don't like no breaks and no lunch periods, there is the door. There will be 45 applicants for your job tomorrow". So it was then and so it is now.

Here in this book the setting was an insular coal mine. The miners lived on company rentals, worked the mines on company property and had to shop at the company store. The bottom line was to mine as much coal as possible in the shortest amount of time. Safety took a back seat. The workers were paid by weight of coal they mined, often with "dishonest scales". However, there was work that had to be done that did not produce coal. For this labor, the miners were not paid. There was no union. Indeed, union sympathizers were considered agitators at best, anarchists and Socialists at worst.

Comparing this book to the other literary masterpiece concerning coal- "Germinal" by Emile Zola, this book was written in minimalist social realism style and dealt strictly with working conditions in the mine. Germinal, on the other hand, dealt with the daily lives of the workers and their families in substandard housing and how they scraped for their daily bread.

Anytime there is a closed non union shop, or an economic downturn, workers suffer as they hump to meet the demand for production so as to keep the owners in their pre-downturn lifestyle to which they are accustomed.

Anyone working today or aware of the Occupy Movement will find resonance.

[Charmaine Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was inspired to listen to more Upton Sinclair books because of that amazing masterpiece, The Jungle. Sadly, this doesn't come close - and it is unfortunately because if I had encountered this first I probably would have been quite dazzled by it. I do like the way SInclair explores the world of work and societal issues. I enjoy the contrasting and conflicting perspectives and agendas. The quality lady interests me here. Who is the one? The fancy fiancé or the daughter of the drunk? And of course, the have's versus the have not's, the workers vs the dilettantes, the exploiters vs the exploited, the idealistic son versus the realistic son. Our protagonist is interesting but not entirely believable. Too much of a hero; too little reality. Anyway I have acquired Oil and will look forward to that in the future.

[Shane Jarman]

King Coal tells part of the long, underappreciated history of the labor movement in the US by looking at the lives of Colorado coal miners in the early 1900s.

Upton Sinclair did a great job of making this novel accessible to those who might not be familiar with the struggles of the working class. By telling the story from the perspective of Hal, the college-educated son of a coal baron, Sinclair is able to explicitly counter many of the common arguments against unionization and misconceptions about life in a closed coal mine.

This is a great read for anyone with a negative impression of unions. You can't read about the day-to-day lives of the miners without rooting for the 'organiser' and the workers to strike and fight for their rights in the end.

[Daniel Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read "The Jungle" in high school and remember liking Sinclair's writing. After a random google to find out what else he wrote I discovered he wrote nearly 100 books. So I resolved to at least read one other muckraking yarn of his now that I am a bit older.

I liked "King Coal". It's really blunt with it's pro-union LET'S GO SOCIALISM messaging, and frankly that's fine. I knew what I was delving into when I began the audio book. It's a simple, enjoyable story. There are a few great scenes between Hal (our increasingly radicalized protagonist) and GFC powers that be. I liked most of the dialog and the characters (simply drawn as they are) are well presented.

The audio book was narrated by the always fantastic Grover Gardner which made it an addictive read.

[Hortensia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook version of this, and it was good, didactic fiction. Really nicely based upon real research on the coal mining process, the problems involved in organizing a union, the problems involved in enforcing safety provisions, gender relations, inter-ethnic competition and solidarity, etc. Great as a book to assign to students. Especially nice that is an audiobook.

Spoiler alert: It is disappointing, though, that we find out the protagonist is not really a wage worker but an upper class kid in college, doing a "semester at the coal mine" as part of a sociology class experience. In that way the book fits in the Jacob Riis variety of semi yellow journalism.

[John Convery · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I bought my Kidle I set to reading a bunch of books in the public domain, with the goal of "paying for" the thing by not spending on books for a while. King Coal was free and worth every penny.

Sinclair had an axe to grind, and he did so reasonably well. Interesting but by no means great art. More of a period piece than anything else.

Me, I'm easily amused, so I liked it. Reminds you there was a time when unions were necessary to help working people defend themselves from ruthless capitalists. Wasn't that long ago either...

[Scott Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has really stuck with me. Just as Upton Sinclair exposed the meatpacking industry in The Jungle, here his target is the coal mining industry during the 1910s. Hal Warner, a rich young guy determined to find the truth for himself, is the hero of this tale of appalling conditions, corporate greed and an unjust system of "slave" labor. Sure, it's occasionally a bit flip, maybe slightly over-dramatized. But the messages from that long-ago time still ring true today.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Sinclair’s great muck raking novels, King Coal focuses on the human abuses of a huge coal mining company in 1910. Affluent Hal Warner, AKA Joe Smith, spends his summer vacation from college living the life of a coal miner to see the real story for himself. The lessons learned are still relevant today: reference the 2010 Chilean mine disaster.

[Shelagh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good book, in fact I enjoyed it much more than Oil, the other Sinclair book I had read. I found it particularly interesting working on a tunnel project and working with the tunnel union and see what the conditions were like. The greed was remarkable

[Geoffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sinclair was unquestionably on the side of the angels, and I love him for it, but he wasn't what you'd call a great writer, on the evidence of this novel. That said, it does pick up a bit towards the end, which also features an incongruously zany cross-dressing episode.