WELSH, JAMES C. Underworld. *$1.75 (1½c) Stokes
20–17082
A story of the British coal industry by the author of “Songs of a miner.” While yet a mere boy Robert Sinclair sits up long past his bed time to listen to the talk between his father and Robert Smillie, and it is the inspiration of that remembered conversation that sends him far in the growing labor movement. Robert goes into the pit at twelve years and on that very day there is an accident in the mine that kills his father and brother and leaves him his mother’s chief support. The story pictures the hard conditions in a disorganized industry, the tyranny of the foreman and his control of the private lives of the men, and the discouraging efforts to form a union. Robert loses the girl he loves and in the end meets his father’s fate in the mine while trying to save others. His mother is left desolate and the author’s final plea is to the men to stand firm together and protect their women folk from such tragedies.
“James Welsh, the miner, has rough-hewn a rather powerful and readable tract.”
+ N Y Evening Post p22 O 23 ’20 230w + Sat R 129:477 My 22 ’20 180w
“As he commands a fluent and forcible pen, complete mastery of the dialect, and an unflinching realism in the treatment of details, his work claims attention as well as respect.”
+ Spec 124:765 Je 5 ’20 670w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p202 Mr 25 ’20 170w
WENDELL, BARRETT. Traditions of European literature, from Homer to Dante. *$6 Scribner 809
20–20996