King Coal (Heathen Edition)
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), a self-described socialist propagandist, was a prolific American author and trailblazing social crusader who sought to uncloak the "wage slavery" of workers by pioneering investigative journalism known as "muckraking." His 1906 exposé The Jungle blew the whistle on deplorable sanitary and labor conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, triggering a thunderous public outrage that contributed to the swift passage of both the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Following the Ludlow Massacre - the seminal event of the 1913-1914 Colorado Coalfield War, and a strike identified as "one of the most grueling, long-lasting industrial conflicts in the history of the United States" - Sinclair focused his reformer attention on the coal mining industry with his 1917 novel King Coal, wherein the fuse ignites when Hal Warner relentlessly organizes a strike to help fellow coal miners unionize against a corrupt and exploitative coal baron, erupting in an explosive climax.
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"King Coal is to the mining world what Sinclair's The Jungle is to the meat-packing industry." -Library Journal
"Better than The Jungle, progresses swiftly, with many dramatic situations and a constant flow of incidents." -New York Times
"King Coal is perhaps as fine a labor novel as could be written . . . a brilliant success." -Floyd Dell, Upton Sinclair: A Study in Social Protest
"Undoubtedly impressive, a masterly delineation." -New York Tribune
"Nothing so brilliant and thrilling for many a day." -Chicago News
"The technology in the novel moves with the muscles of men and mules. But aside from changes in technology, too much of what Sinclair writes about remains a problem in mines today." -Susan Williams, Charleston Gazette-Mail
"It is seldom that truths concerning conditions in coal mines are brought to light in so readable and popular a form as Mr. Sinclair's novel." -Hazel Wilkinson, Social Thought in American Fiction
"I wish that every word of it could be burned deep into the heart of every American." -Adolph Germer
"Sinclair's achievement was impressive . . . He saw through the lies of his era and exposed a world long hidden from view. He showed compassion for the weak and the poor, the powerless and the despised . . . He fueled anger at injustice." -Eric Schlosser
"When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to [Sinclair's] novels." -George Bernard Shaw
