A SUPERB STUDY OF MEN AND COAL

McMillin, Miles

A Superb Study Of Men And Coal MEN AND COAL, by McAlister Coleman. Farrar and Rinehart, Inc. $3. Reviewed by Miles McMillin MEN AND COAL has provided me with several of the most enjoyable and...

...I do not deny these influences, but I have noted that other reviewers, not beset with the same temptations, have been just as enthusiastic if not more so...
...Believing as I do, that there is no literary abomination greater than the "must book" edicts of some book reviewers, I refuse to say that this is a "must...
...struggle of the miners for a life of something more than squalor, disease, and indescribably wretched working conditions...
...In saying that I am not unmindful that my enthusiasm for the book may be the result of other factors besides its merits...
...Chamberlain put his finger on the real meat of the book...
...In the hands of most labor historians the subject would undoubtedly have been insufferably dull, but Coleman has taken some hard economic history and invested it with—well—with "human juices...
...McAlister Coleman, himself, for instance...
...Anyone who has followed the labor movement or liberal publications in this country has sometime or other come to love and admire Cowman and his work...
...Through its pages stride the great names of American labor—Lewis, Green, Gompers, Mitchell, Siney, Hayward, Ameringer, and all the rest...
...Their greatness and pettiness is set out with an impartiality and insight that could come only from a great labor reporter who knew and worked with most of them...
...Finally, I will, go on record as favoring legislation to make it compulsory reading for all editorial writers—on either side—who feel an urge to sound off about the demands of the United Mine Workers today...
...It is labor journalism at its best, and as Harold Fey of the Christian Century says, it "provides proof that labor journalism has begun to reach a position of maturity and responsibility in the United States...
...The book is a moving story of one of America's great industrial sagas—the...
...Reviewed by Miles McMillin MEN AND COAL has provided me with several of the most enjoyable and profitable hours I have spent reading about American labor...
...It takes you through the bloody and heartbreaking years of organization, from the days when miners were no more than peons, through the years when the lusty young miners' union was earning for itself the title of "shock troops" of American labor, and up to the crisis of a fortnight ago...
...But that is the only reason why I refuse, although I should say that I can conceive of no greater desecration than to have it made the subject of a Junior League Thursday Afternoon Book Review session...
...John Chamberlain, the distinguished critic for the New York Times, for example, has said that it "is the only book with real human juices that has ever been written about the mine workers and their union history...

Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 48


 
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