The Nine-Tenths

The narrative follows Joe, a young pressman whose exposure to industrial conditions and the deaths of young factory workers convinces him to organize colleagues and advocate for social and economic reform. He moves between the printery, the hat factory, and street politics, forming bonds with companions and movement leaders, confronting internal doubts, building a labor organization, and facing opposition that leads to mass conflict, arrests, a public trial, and imprisonment in a workhouse. Interwoven are portrayals of labor meetings, personal relationships, ideological debates, and a recurring vision of a transformed society in which industrial power serves the many rather than the few.