King Coal by Upton Sinclair

But Edward would not stop for a single smile; his every faculty was absorbed in the task he had before him, to get his brother out of this predicament, so dangerous and so humiliating. Hal had come to a town owned by Edward's business friends, and had proceeded to meddle in their affairs, to stir up their labouring people and imperil their property. That North Valley was the property of the General Fuel Company -- not merely the mines and the houses, but likewise the people who lived in them -- Edward seemed to have no doubt whatever; Hal got only exclamations of annoyance when he suggested any other point of view. Would there have been any town of North Valley, if it had not been for the capital and energy of the General Fuel Company? If the people of North Valley did not like the conditions which the General Fuel Company offered them, they had one simple and obvious remedy -- to go somewhere else to work. But they stayed; they got out the General Fuel Company's coal, they took the General Fuel Company's wages --

"Well, they've stopped taking them now," put in Hal.