Read "King Coal" by Upton Sinclair online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Soon after dinner the kidnapped committee arrived, bedraggled in body and weary in soul. They inquired for Johann Hartman, and were sent up to the room, where there followed a painful scene. Eight men and a woman who had ventured an act of heroism and been made the victims of a crime could not easily be persuaded to see their efforts and sacrifices thrown on the dump-heap, nor were they timid in expressing their opinions of those who were betraying them.
"You been tryin' to get us out! " cried Tim Rafferty. "Ever since I can remember you been at my old man to help you -- an' here, when we do what you ask, you throw us down!"