KING COAL
_A NOVEL_
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
TO
MARY CRAIG KIMBROUGH
To whose persistence in the perilous task of tearing her husband's
manuscript to pieces, the reader is indebted for the absence of most of
the faults from this book.
INTRODUCTION
Upton Sinclair is one of the not too many writers who have consecrated
their lives to the agitation for social justice, and who have also
enrolled their art in the service of a set purpose. A great and
non-temporizing enthusiast, he never flinched from making sacrifices.
Now and then he attained great material successes as a writer, but
invariably he invested and lost his earnings in enterprises by which he
had hoped to ward off injustice and to further human happiness. Though
disappointed time after time, he never lost faith nor courage to start
again.
As a convinced socialist and eager advocate of unpopular doctrines, as
an exposer of social conditions that would otherwise be screened away
from the public eye, the most influential journals of his country were
as a rule arraigned against him. Though always a poor man, though never
willing to grant to publishers the concessions essential for many
editions and general popularity, he was maliciously represented to be a
carpet knight of radicalism and a socialist millionaire. He has several
times been obliged to change his publisher, which goes to prove that he
is no seeker of material gain.
Upton Sinclair is one of the writers of the present time most deserving
of a sympathetic interest. He shows his patriotism as an American, not
by joining in hymns to the very conditional kind of liberty peculiar to
the United States, but by agitating for infusing it with the elixir of
real liberty, the liberty of humanity. He does not limit himself to a
dispassionate and entertaining description of things as they are. But in
his appeals to the honour and good-fellowship of his compatriots, he
opens their eyes to the appalling conditions under which wage-earning
slaves are living by the hundreds of thousands. His object is to better
these unnatural conditions, to obtain for the very poorest a glimpse of
light and happiness, to make even them realise the sensation of cosy
well-being and the comfort of knowing that justice is to be found also
for them.
This time Upton Sinclair has absorbed himself in the study of the
miner's life in the lonesome pits of the Rocky Mountains, and his
sensitive and enthusiastic mind has brought to the world an American
parallel to GERMINAL, Emile Zola's technical masterpiece.
The conditions described in the two books are, however, essentially
different. While Zola's working-men are all natives of France, one meets
in Sinclair's book a motley variety of European emigrants, speaking a
Babel of languages and therefore debarred from forming some sort of
association to protect themselves against being exploited by the
anonymous limited Company. Notwithstanding this natural bar against
united action on the part of the wage-earning slaves, the Company feels
far from at ease and jealously guards its interests against any attempt
of organising the men.
A young American of the upper class, with great sympathy for the
downtrodden and an honest desire to get a first-hand knowledge of their
conditions in order to help them, decides to take employment in a mine
under a fictitious name and dressed like a working-man. His unusual way
of trying to obtain work arouses suspicion. He is believed to be a
professional strike-leader sent out to organise the miners against their
exploiters, and he is not only refused work, but thrashed mercilessly.
When finally he succeeds in getting inside, he discovers with growing
indignation the shameless and inhuman way in which those who unearth the
black coal are being exploited.
These are the fundamental ideas of the book, but they give but a faint
notion of the author's poetic attitude. Most beautifully is this shown
in Hal's relation to a young Irish girl, Red Mary. She is poor, and her
daily life harsh and joyless, but nevertheless her wonderful grace is
one of the outstanding features of the book. The first impression of
Mary is that of a Celtic Madonna with a tender heart for little
children. She develops into a Valküre of the working-class, always ready
to fight for the worker's right.
The last chapters of the book give a description of the miners' revolt
against the Company. They insist upon their right to choose a deputy to
control the weighing-in of the coal, and upon having the mines sprinkled
regularly to prevent explosion. They will also be free to buy their food
and utensils wherever they like, even in shops not belonging to the
Company.
In a postscript Sinclair explains the fundamental facts on which his
work of art has been built up. Even without the postscript one could not
help feeling convinced that the social conditions he describes are true
to life. The main point is that Sinclair has not allowed himself to
become inspired by hackneyed phrases that bondage and injustice and the
other evils and crimes of Kingdoms have been banished from Republics,
but that he is earnestly pointing to the honeycombed ground on which the
greatest modern money-power has been built. The fundament of this power
is not granite, but mines. It lives and breathes in the light, because
it has thousands of unfortunates toiling in the darkness. It lives and
has its being in proud liberty because thousands are slaving for it,
whose thraldom is the price of this liberty.
This is the impression given to the reader of this exciting novel.
GEORG BRANDES.
