OWEN GLEN

. by Ben Ames Williams 'lO.Houghton Mifflin Cos., 1950; 62.9 pages;$3-75•

Three years ago appeared Ben Ames Williams' monumental work, House Divided, which gave the best account in American fiction o£ the Southern side of the Civil War.

In Owen Glen he scrutinizes another important era in American life and tells the story, through the eyes of Owen Glen, a coal miner's son, of how the United Mine Workers grew out of the Knights of Labor in a decade which coincided with America's coming of age.

His tale actually runs from 1890 to 1898, when, after the Spanish-American war, briefly touched on in this book, the United States became a world power. Also he is describing the kind of America which had existed almost since the days of Jackson. To the present day American in his twenties or thirties, Hardiston, Ohio, the scene of Owen Glen, might well have been the Hardiston of 1800, if it existed then, but to a man in his fifties or sixties, it comes close to being a scene from his own childhood.

The growth o£ Owen Glen from a child of ten to a youth of 19 also epitomizes the development of the United States. "There was in Owen the impatience of youth, which seeks to accomplish all in a day, not yet understanding that life takes a long path toward a forever receding goal," a remark which could equally apply to the United States of America.

Owen Glen was born, curiously enough, in the same year that produced John L. Lewis (1880), and like Lewis steadily worked his way up in the Union to a position of trust and responsibility.

Mr. Williams has done an excellent job in re-creating the American small town of the 1890's, and Hardiston is certainly as much the hero of the book, and holds the interest even more than does the rising young labor leader, Owen Glen.

There are many memorable characters who walk with the breath of life through the pages of this book: Owen's mother, his father Tom, BB Beecham, the newspaper editor with a common sense view of things, and the girls Owen knew. Out of Hardiston, and from the people who lived there, came the country and the people we know today.

Owen Glen is an important book written by one of our writers most worthy of serious consideration. There are many fine things in it, not the least of which is a real integrity, and a sympathetic understanding of the meaning of America, and a wealth of information which makes the position of labor in America today more comprehensible to us all. Highly recommended.