**SPOILERS** Socially minded 1935 drama involving the attempted breaking of a coal-miners union in Coaltown PA. by using underhanded tactics on the part of management. Getting a trouble-making mole, or provocateur, into the labor union the union busting racketeers plan to have the union workers go on a disastrous labor strike in order to break their previous labor contract. Thus lose all the pay and benefits that they got through labor-management negotiations over the last twenty years.
The provocateur Croner, J. Carrol Nash, making himself out to be a man of the people, or working men, starts to get things going as soon as possible. Croner disrupts a union meeting with the miners there throwing away their union badges and walking out in disgust determined to form a rival union electing the very drunk and heart-broken Joe Radek, Paul Muni. Unknow to Radek he's Croner's and his boss' choice for union president. Joe's been on a drinking binge since his sweetheart Anna Novak, Karen Morley, left him for another man union company policemen Slim Johnson, William Gargan, whom she took off with for Pittsburg and a better life; Anna has this thing about a man in uniform.
Joe being used by the unscrupulous and union-busting Croner & co., and with him doing their dirty work, mindlessly starts a strike that leads the mine to be shut down. With all he workers unable to support themselves and their families make the unknowing pasty Joe Radek, Croner had since taken a powder and checked out of town, the most hated man in Coaltown. Things start to get really ugly when Croner's boss Jenkins, Purnell Pratt, sends in an army of scabs protected, from the angry unemployed miners, by company police lead by his second in command McGee, Barton MacLane. This leaves the strikers no choice, since they broke their contract, but to get back to work only with them signing away their hard fought rights and making them and their families nothing but slaves and indentured servants to "The Man", Jenkins, and his band of strike breaking thugs.
It's when Joe's former best friend Mike Shemasnski(John Qualen), he had since thrown him out of his home because of his involvement with the union busting Croner, was brutally murdered by McGee that he finally came to his senses and stopped drinking. With Anna also and unexpectedly coming back to Joe, Slim & Pittsburg didn't turn out to be the bargain that she thought that they would be, Joe finally took matters into is own hands.
Barricading himself in the coal mine Joe had it booby-trapped with explosives. Keeping the miners from coming back to work Joe thus throws their rights benefit's and away. Joe desperately holds off McGee and his police, in fact Joe later took Mcgee hostage, until the truth came out about the Jenkins/McGee attempt to destroy the miners union and then take it over. Making the coal mine a cash-cow for themselves and a prison for those who worked there.
Tension packed final as Joe puts his life on the line holding off McGee and his "boys" who tried to smoke and blast him out of the mineshaft with tear-gas and bullets. The truth is finally brought out into the open to not only the public and local miners but the entire nation of the sleazy attempt to destroy the Coaltown Miners Workers Union by Jenkins & Co. In the end even the US Government, from the President of the United States himself on down, and Federal Courts get into the mix by restoring all the rights that Jenkins and his ilk tried to take away from the miners. And yes both Joe & Anna get married at the end of the movie and live happily ever after on a farm, that Joe bought from the late Mike Shermanski, raising both pigs and a family of little Joe's and Anna's.
The provocateur Croner, J. Carrol Nash, making himself out to be a man of the people, or working men, starts to get things going as soon as possible. Croner disrupts a union meeting with the miners there throwing away their union badges and walking out in disgust determined to form a rival union electing the very drunk and heart-broken Joe Radek, Paul Muni. Unknow to Radek he's Croner's and his boss' choice for union president. Joe's been on a drinking binge since his sweetheart Anna Novak, Karen Morley, left him for another man union company policemen Slim Johnson, William Gargan, whom she took off with for Pittsburg and a better life; Anna has this thing about a man in uniform.
Joe being used by the unscrupulous and union-busting Croner & co., and with him doing their dirty work, mindlessly starts a strike that leads the mine to be shut down. With all he workers unable to support themselves and their families make the unknowing pasty Joe Radek, Croner had since taken a powder and checked out of town, the most hated man in Coaltown. Things start to get really ugly when Croner's boss Jenkins, Purnell Pratt, sends in an army of scabs protected, from the angry unemployed miners, by company police lead by his second in command McGee, Barton MacLane. This leaves the strikers no choice, since they broke their contract, but to get back to work only with them signing away their hard fought rights and making them and their families nothing but slaves and indentured servants to "The Man", Jenkins, and his band of strike breaking thugs.
It's when Joe's former best friend Mike Shemasnski(John Qualen), he had since thrown him out of his home because of his involvement with the union busting Croner, was brutally murdered by McGee that he finally came to his senses and stopped drinking. With Anna also and unexpectedly coming back to Joe, Slim & Pittsburg didn't turn out to be the bargain that she thought that they would be, Joe finally took matters into is own hands.
Barricading himself in the coal mine Joe had it booby-trapped with explosives. Keeping the miners from coming back to work Joe thus throws their rights benefit's and away. Joe desperately holds off McGee and his police, in fact Joe later took Mcgee hostage, until the truth came out about the Jenkins/McGee attempt to destroy the miners union and then take it over. Making the coal mine a cash-cow for themselves and a prison for those who worked there.
Tension packed final as Joe puts his life on the line holding off McGee and his "boys" who tried to smoke and blast him out of the mineshaft with tear-gas and bullets. The truth is finally brought out into the open to not only the public and local miners but the entire nation of the sleazy attempt to destroy the Coaltown Miners Workers Union by Jenkins & Co. In the end even the US Government, from the President of the United States himself on down, and Federal Courts get into the mix by restoring all the rights that Jenkins and his ilk tried to take away from the miners. And yes both Joe & Anna get married at the end of the movie and live happily ever after on a farm, that Joe bought from the late Mike Shermanski, raising both pigs and a family of little Joe's and Anna's.