Down in a Coal Mine

THE STARS LOOK DOWN--A. J. Cronin --Little, Brown ($2.50). HORSE SHOE BOTTOMS--Tom Tippett--Harper ($2.50).

Wherever it was, man found a way to go down under the water, to upturn the sod of quiet pastoral lands, to split open the face of majestic hills, and dig out coal.

Last week two novels of coal-diggers' tragedies, one laid in England and one in Illinois, gave strong evidence of the fascination that the subterranean life exerts on the imaginations of men who spend their days above ground. Both books are packed with information on the technical details of coal mining, discussions of blackdamp, underground floods, explosions, entombments, but the picture that results is scarcely calculated to fill the patriots of either country with pride. The bitterness of Tom Tippett's account of Illinois disasters, in Horse Shoe Bottoms, is matched by the bitterness of Dr. Archibald Joseph Cronin's account of similar disasters beneath the seas of England.

By far the more accomplished and pro fessional of the two books, The Stars Look Down revolves around the career of David Fenwick, whose father and brother died in a flood in Richard Barras' mine. Serious, stubborn, long-faced, intelligent, David won a scholarship, was the first of his family to escape Sleescale, where deep and ancient mines reached out under the sea. His father, who knew that the cutting was dangerous, had led an unsuccessful strike in an effort to compel the adoption of precautionary measures. The most remarkable incident in The Stars Look Down, and a powerful piece of writing in its own right, is Dr. Cronin's account of the flooding of the mine, the death of Father Fenwick and one of his sons who are trapped in a dry shaft between miles of water and rock. In a party that included a 15-year-old boy, a religious fanatic called Jesus Wept, a football player and drunkard, the men waited for death, the fanatic shouting verses from Revelations and the football player keeping track of the days so he would know if he had missed his chance to play in his team's big game.

Dr. Cronin also traces the consequences of the disaster in the lives of Richard Barras, the mine owner, and his son, pictures them living in a class that is in a state of violent flux with its Wartime fortunes and post-War bankruptcies. Discovering that his father had willfully sacrificed the men, young Barras spent a fortune, eventually lost the mine, trying to make it safe and yet pay high wages.

In comparison with The Stars Look Down, Horse Shoe Bottoms is plain and unadorned. John Stafford and his wife Ellen were brought from England to the Bottoms when Old Bill Wantling found coal there and needed skilled English miners to get it out. As long as Old Bill had control, in the last quarter of the 19th Century, the miners endured their hardships stoically, for Old Bill always listened to their complaints even when he could do nothing about them. But when the business expanded and a hard young upstart named Don Simpson, who knew a lot about business but nothing about miners, took charge, the men resisted his attempts to drive them, finally went on strike.

Ellen Stafford could not understand why her husband was so enthusiastic over the secret union meetings, could not share his exaltation over the miners' congress he attended in Youngstown. She only wanted a permanent home for the children, a house where they could have real chairs instead of powder kegs for furniture. But John went on organizing, saw his best friend killed in an explosion, was nearly killed himself, was blacklisted, pondered over the program of the Knights of Labor, dreamed and talked of the union while the children grew older and the home was never made.

Long years after, the union was recognized in Horse Shoe Bottoms, The Staffords went back, but John was too ill with tuberculosis to work in the mine he loved. When Ellen saw the huge crowds that tramped miles to his funeral, she suddenly realized that her plain, impractical husband had been a great man, reflected with anguish, pride and bewilderment that husbands ought to explain things to their wives.

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