September 20 is the birthday of Upton Sinclair, a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction and acquaintance of Elbert Benjamine. From 1901 to 1976 he produced books that were and still are informative about each decade. His 1917 novel King Coal is closely based on actual events of the 1914 Colorado mining war described in this historical article. A free audiobook edition is available on Librivox, along with many other Sinclair titles. The entire book is available in multiple editions, and gutenberg.org provides a free online edition. The sequel The Coal War was rejected by publishers in the 1910s but finally published in Colorado in 1976, eight years after his death.
An editorial PS– what would Elbert and Upton have had in common to talk about other than interest in parapsychology, acquaintances in California literary circles, and local/state politics? The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor relocated from Denver to Los Angeles after board members lost faith and trust in the leadership of Henry Wagner, who was a millionaire thanks to mining investments in Colorado, and re established their order as the Brotherhood of Light in California. Wagner had become involved in a Spiritualist community in Colorado, while his wife Belle had joined a Theosophical lodge in Kansas, which presumably caused the dissolution of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor in the US. Its former board members recruited Benjamin Williams to create a series of Lessons that would take 20 years to complete.