The story begins cruelly with the miners returning to work after a lengthy and unsuccessful strike that has caused substantial hardship, to the point of desperate hunger. Robert Fenwick led the strike to obtain changes he felt essential for the miners' safety, but is now scorned by the miners and his own wife. Inevitably, the disaster he foresaw does occur: the miners break through a barrier into an underground reservoir, flooding the mine. Over 80 miners are quickly drowned, while Robert, with controlled intelligence and courage, leads his son Hughie and 10 others to safety into an old portion of the mine. They become trapped, however, by tons of collapsed tunnel and must wait for rescue. As days pass, first lit by candlelight and eventually in darkness, the miners die one by one. The account of the deaths by drowning, though short, is vivid and chilling; the drawn out description of the deaths of the trapped miners is harrowing.
Over the next decades, the story reveals the effects of this disaster on Robert's idealistic son Davey, on Arthur, the tortured son of the domineering and rapacious mine owner, and on Joe Gowlan, who flees the mines to become a successful and powerful war-profiteer. SPOILERS: Davey fights for miners' rights by striving to promote nationalization of the mines. Eventually elected to Parliament, Davey becomes a prominent miners' advocate, but the crushing realities of politics as usual and the influence of well-heeled capitalists defeat his efforts. After his father is debilitated by a stroke, Arthur uses the mine's astonishing war profits to initiate massive improvements. Crushingly, his outlays, coupled with economic downturn, lead him to the brink of bankruptcy, while his perceived weakness and the disregard for miners shown by politicians and other mine owners, make him an object of scorn rather than appreciation among the miners. The despicable Gowlan succeeds in business beyond his wildest dreams, makes massive amounts of money during the war, and eventually defeats Davey's attempt to be re-elected to Parliament.
Written in 1935, the book expresses a view of capitalism that resonates with present conditions:
At last, through their constitutional hidebound apathy, people were beginning to question the soundness of a political and economic system which left want, misery and unemployment unrelieved. New and bold ideas went into circulation. Men no longer retreated in terror from the suggestion that capitalism, as a system of life, had failed.At book's end, both Davey and Arthur are back in the mines, working under Gowlan. Jeez, this sounds depressing! The fundamental inequalities and unfairness of British society depicted here are leavened, however, by the rich interpersonal relationships, which provide many heart-warming and heart-rending incidents. Moreover, Davey convincingly achieves individual fulfillment, even as his professional ambitions are thwarted, and the book ends on an optimistic note. Very highly recommended!
Interesting; I have never heard of this.
ReplyDeleteThis was recommended to me by a fellow swim-dad I was talking to at a meet. He's from Scotland and I was telling him how much I like Robert Louis Stevenson and he recommended Cronin - nice tip!
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking more about the book. On re-reading my write-up, I was struck by how the straight narrative sounded so depressing, but that at the end of the book, the main character, David Fenwick, was uplifted rather than defeated. I realized that his outlook emphasized the importance of being true to yourself and of forming meaningful human relationships and that in both of these ways, he had succeeded much more than the superficial victors. And this conclusion rang true with the events in the book.
Sounds very interesting. There's a genre of novel like this, it probably has a real name but I'd call it industrial realist; they focus on the conditions of life under wage labor. Marxists have found these useful novels to study, for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteThough not my period, unfortunately.
ReplyDelete