Wineblood's Mine

The sixteenth book by V. M. Straka, published in 1939.

It makes a big theme of what art takes and returns to an individual, while commerce just takes.

Content
Features Hieronymus Wineblood (based on Hermès Bouchard), who has a mining empire and tent-cities, the most purely evil of Straka's characters. A man produces for Wineblood a propagandist newspaper distributed to his tent-cities. As Wineblood tells him, you can lure away a town's best breadwinners; then you can then starve the town literally until the come to you begging for work.

Other characters include Mr. and Mr. Magnusson, who have some parallels to Anca and Waqar in Ship of Theseus. On p. 299 Big Jurek talks about the heads having the avantage of insensibility, while common people are cursed of caring.

On p. 322 Caswell is dying and writes his last words on the side of the mine cart with his blood. All he can think of is an inventory of his meager possessions but he dies before specifying the heir.

In Ch. 6 Wineblood says that the world is burning.

In Ch. 16 Hobo preacher makes a speech about the history of capitalism, which contains Straka's most scathing indictment of the practice of the ownership class to exile key figures in labor movements. As Mr. Wineblood doesn't like it, it is the beginning of the end for the preacher.