The Coal War: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

The scion of a coal-mining empire sides against his family in the bloody fight to unionize Colorado’s mines in this gripping sequel to King Coal

The son of a prominent coal magnate, Hal Warner is horrified by the dangerous working conditions, long hours, and starvation wages endured by the men who toil in his family’s mines. He tries to rouse other members of his privileged class to a similar state of indignation, but soon faces a much more severe test of his progressivism. When a labor group organizes a massive strike and the mining companies respond with punishing brutality, Hal’s commitment to the cause of reform becomes a matter of life and death.
 
The Coal War is Upton Sinclair’s searing follow-up to King Coal. Based on events surrounding the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, it dramatizes one of the most significant conflicts between labor and capital in American history and offers an unflinching look at the shocking realities of a miner’s life in the early twentieth century. Published posthumously, this powerful and tragic novel is one of Sinclair’s finest.
This ebook has been authorized by the estate of Upton Sinclair.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Classics

417 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 1976

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

[Geoffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's the posthumously-published sequel to King Coal! It's...of interest to scholars only, really. There's not even a token effort at a plot here. It's all very thinly-veiled documentary stuff, which, in spite of accurately covering horrible things that actually happened, does not a compelling novel make.

[Joel Etra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story from 100 years ago that brings out the corruption of government by big money still alive today.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a long book and took me a while to read but I'm glad I stuck it out. It's about the coal worker strikes in Colorado. I would recommend it to anyone living in Colorado. I think it's important to know something about the history of a place where you live.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I was reading this book, I thought to myself of writing a review which framed it as Upton Sinclair's fantasy of a possible proletarian revolutionary movement which took action against the power-structure, as a sort of Marxist conceptualization brought to life under the guise of fiction. Only when I reached the postscript did I understand that this was no mere fantasy, but was actually a chronicle of the real actions committed against workers in the coal-mining business by the owners of the facilities, housing complexes and, indeed, the entire system for the production for the fuel industry of the U.S.A., true to life as it played out in the legal, journalistic and political worlds of Sinclair's time. To my way of thinking, the basic question in this book is a question that the author leaves unresolved - and is it still quite unsolved to this very day in 2024, nearly one hundred years after this book was written - is, when and to what extent can an individual's efforts for personal gain become collectivized and eventually distributed in an even-handed way according to an egalitarian process of fairness that is socially redeemable? This, it seems to me, is the main thrust of Sinclair's book, in which a figure from the leisure-class shirks the bastions of private property to which he is born in order to experience the common lots of the working-class in an attempt to see life from the standpoint of oppression and the harsh realities of antidemocratic labor practices. I find that there are hints that Sinclair feels the American system of government contains the seeds for the overcoming of the tyrannical forces of totalitarian power in the extension of voting rights to all upstanding people, rather than merely through the checks and balances of political forces found in our bicameral legislature. Three stars.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent look back at the Ludlow massacre and all the players. This is an empathetic look at this coal strike from the perspective of the workers and an idealistic wealthy supporter, whose belief system is tested as he is pulled between his wealthy family and friends and the working class folks. Characters are well developed and detail, drawn from Congressional records and other documented legitimate sources, is - to be frank - horrifying. We can learn from this strike and its ramifications. We can see the similarities, sadly, between then and now as well.

[Mike Zickar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sequel to King Coal that was posthumously published. This book is interesting in a fictional retelling of the Ludlow Massacre, helping the reader visualize what really happened (horrible events). And the book carries on with the characters from King Coal and so if you want to hear what happens to Hal Warner, Mary Burke, Jessie Arthur, Mike Sikora, and others from the first novel, you'll want to read this one. But as a work of fiction, it's simply just mediocre, without the typical attention to pacing that Sinclair had in many of his best works.

[MaryCatherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book by a favorite author. Sinclair writes with passion and compassion, with a journalist’s inquisitive approach and a big heart. He puts us in the center of an unnamed miners’ strike that matches the events of the Ludlow Massacre (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlo...) of the 1913-14 attempt to organize a union at Colorado Fuel & Iron sites—except that he places the event in Wyoming, possibly because Upton Sinclair loves to involve influential society ladies, and in Wyoming, those women could vote!

Sinclair uses many historically documented events and characters, sometimes only names are changed slightly. He uses the language of that time, with ethnic slurs that we find disrespectful and unacceptable now, and the attitudes and language of his humanitarian progressive protagonist, as well as other well-meaning friends and family are both deliberately and inadvertently condescending in their desire to good.

But the class strata of that time, as we have to sometimes admit now, divides those who belong to a particular class or social group from those of privilege and power who may wish to stand in solidarity with them. They may only identify (even suffering and striving with that cause) but could not belong in the same way, because they are treated differently, their help and support can help, but also do harm, and they can leave at any time.

Upton Sinclair writes a lot of internal dialogue. I love that his protagonists examine their consciences, motives, and actions, constantly debating and considering the consequences of their actions, encouraging his readers to likewise interrogate past and present events. His inquiring mind and fundamental decency make all his books a pleasure to read.

Additional Links:

The Ludlow Massacre Still Matters | The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/business/cu...

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/td...

https://www.pbs.org/video/colorado-ex...