The mechanic Etienne Lantier, who was expelled from the railway for slapping his boss, is trying to get a job in the Monsoux mine, near the town of Vore, in the village of Two Hundred Forty. There is no work anywhere, the miners are starving. A place for him at the mine was found only because on the eve of his arrival in Thief, one of the haulers died. The old slaughterer Mahe, whose daughter Katrina works with him in the mine as the second hauler, takes Lantier to his artel.
The work is unbearably difficult, and the fifteen-year-old Katrina looks eternally exhausted. Mae, his son Zachariah, the artisans Levak and Chaval work, lying on their backs or on their sides, squeezing in a shaft barely half a meter wide: the coal seam is thin. In the face unbearable stuffiness. Katrina and Etienne ride the trolleys. On the very first day, Etienne decided to leave Thief: this daily hell was not for him. Before his eyes, the company's management blames the miners for the fact that they are poorly concerned about their own safety. The silent slavery of the miners amazes him. Only Katrina’s look, the memory of her, makes him stay in the village for some more time. Mae live in unimaginable poverty. They owe forever to the shopkeeper, they are short of bread, and Mae’s wife has no choice but to go with the children to the estate of Piolen, which belongs to the landowners Gregoires. Gregoires, co-owners of mines, sometimes help the poor. The owners of the estate find all signs of degeneration in Mahe and her children, and having handed her a pair of old children's dresses, they teach a lesson in frugality. When a woman asks for one hundred sous, they refuse her: to submit is not in the rules of the Gregoires. Children, however, are given a piece of bread. Towards the end, Mahe manages to soften the shopkeeper Megra - in response to a promise to send Katrina to him. As long as the men work in the mine, the women cook dinner - a stew of sorrel, potatoes and leeks; Parisians, who came to inspect the mines and get acquainted with the life of the miners, are touched by the generosity of the mine owners, giving the workers such cheap housing and supplying all the mining families with coal.
Washing is one of the holidays in the miner's family: once a week the whole Mae family, without hesitation, takes turns dipping into a barrel of warm water and changing into clean clothes. Mae then indulges in his wife, calling his only entertainment "a free dessert." Katrina meanwhile harasses the young Chaval: remembering her love for Etienne, she resists him, but not for long. In addition, Chaval bought her a tape. He took possession of Katrina in the shed behind the village.
Etienne gradually gets used to work, to comrades, even to the crude simplicity of local customs: he continually comes across lovers walking behind the dump, but Etienne believes that young people are free. He is indignant only with the love of Katrina and Chaval - he is unconsciously jealous. Soon he met with the Russian engineer Suvarin, who lives next door to him. Suvarin avoids talking about himself, and Etienne soon finds out that he is dealing with a socialist-populist. Having fled from Russia, Suvarin got a job at the company. Etienne decides to tell him about his friendship and correspondence with Plyushar - one of the leaders of the labor movement, secretary of the Northern Federation of the International just created in London. Suvarin is skeptical of the International and Marxism: he believes only in terror, in revolution, in anarchy and calls for setting fire to cities, destroying the old world by all means. Etienne, on the contrary, dreams of organizing a strike, but it needs money - a mutual assistance fund that would hold out even for the first time.
In August, Etienne moves to live with Mahe. He is trying to captivate the head of the family with his ideas, and Mahe seems to begin to believe in the possibility of justice - but his wife rightly reasonably protests that the bourgeois will never agree to work like miners, and all talk of equality will always be nonsense. Mae's notions of a fair society boil down to a desire to live as it should, and this is no wonder - the company is in full fines for non-compliance with safety precautions and seeks any excuse to cut back on earnings. Another reduction in payouts is an ideal reason for a strike. The head of the Mae family, receiving a shamelessly reduced salary, is also rewarded for talking with his tenant about politics - rumors have already circulated about this. Tussen Mahe, the old miner, only has to nod fearfully. He himself is ashamed of his own stupid submission. A cry of poverty is spreading throughout the village. On the new site where the Mahe family works, it is becoming more dangerous - it will hit an underground source in the face, the coal layer will be so thin that you can move in the mine only by peeling your elbows. Soon, Etienne's first landslide occurred, in which both Mae's youngest son, Janlen, broke both legs. Etienne and Mahe realize that there is nothing more to lose: only the worst is ahead. It's time to go on strike.
The director of the Enbo mines is informed that no one went to work. Etienne and several of his comrades made up a delegation to negotiate with the owners. Mahe also entered it. Pierron, Levac and delegates from other villages went with him. The requirements of the miners are null and void: they insist that they add to the pay for the trolley only five sous. Enbo is trying to cause a split in the deputation and talks about someone's vile suggestion, but not a single miner from Monsu is yet a member of the International. Etienne begins to speak on behalf of the miners - he alone is able to argue with Enbo. Etienne in the end directly threatens that sooner or later the workers will be forced to resort to other measures in order to defend their lives. The board of mines refuses to make concessions, which finally hardens the miners. Money runs out at the whole village, but Etienne is convinced that the strike must be kept to the last. Plushar promises to arrive in Thief and help with money, but he is slow. Etienne finally waited for him. Miners gather for a meeting with the widow of Desir. The owner of the squash Rasner is in favor of ending the strike, but the miners tend to trust Etienne more. Plushar, considering strikes too slow a means of struggle, takes the floor and calls for a continuation of the strike. Ban the meeting is a police commissioner with four gendarmes, but warned by the widow, the workers manage to disperse in time. Plyushar promised to send the allowance. The board of the company, meanwhile, planned to fire the most stubborn strikers and those who were considered instigators.
Etienne is gaining more and more influence on workers. Soon, he completely supplants their former leader - the moderate and cunning Rasner, and he predicts the same fate over time. An old man named Immortal at the next meeting of miners in the forest recalls how his comrades fruitlessly protested and died half a century ago. Etienne speaks passionately as never before. The meeting decides to continue the strike. Only the mine in Jean Barth works for the whole company. The local miners are declared traitors and they decide to teach them a lesson. Arriving at Jean Barth, the workers from Monsoux begin to cut the ropes - this is why they force the miners to leave the mines. Katrina and Chaval, who live and work in Jean Bart, also go up. A fight begins between strikers and strikebreakers. The company's management calls the police and the army - dragoons and gendarmes. In response, workers begin to destroy the mines. The uprising is gaining strength, spreading fire through the mines. With the singing of the Marseillaise, the crowd goes to Monsu, to rule. Enbo is lost. Miners rob the store Megra, who died while trying to save his good. Chaval leads the gendarmes, and Katrina barely has time to warn Etienne so that he does not fall into them. This winter, police and soldiers are deployed in all mines, but work is not resuming anywhere. The strike covers new and new mines. Etienne finally awaited a direct skirmish with the traitor Chaval, whom Katrina had long been jealous of, and won: Chaval was forced to yield to her and flee.
Meanwhile, Janlen, the youngest of Mahe, although limping on both legs, learned to run rather briskly, rob and shoot from a sling. He was dismantled by the desire to kill a soldier - and he killed him with a knife, jumping like a cat from behind, unable to explain his hatred. Clash of miners with soldiers becomes inevitable. The miners themselves went to bayonets, and although the soldiers were ordered to use weapons only as a last resort, shots were soon heard. The miners throw dirt and bricks at the officers, the soldiers fire back and kill two children with the first shots: Lydia and Beber. Murdered Muketta, in love with Etienne, killed Tussen Mahe. Workers are terribly frightened and depressed. Soon, authorities from Paris came to Mons. Etienne begins to feel the culprit of all these deaths, ruin, violence, and at that moment Rasner again becomes the leader of the miners, demanding reconciliation. Etienne decides to leave the village and meets with Suvarin, who tells him the story of the death of his wife hanged in Moscow. Since then, Suvarin has neither affection nor fear. After hearing this terrible story, Etienne returns home to spend his last night in the village with the Mahe family. Suvarin, on the other hand, goes to the mine, where the workers are going to return, and files up one of the staples of the casing protecting the mine from the underground sea - the Stream. In the morning, Etienne finds out that Katrina is also going to go to the mine. Succumbing to a sudden impulse, Etienne goes there with her: love makes him stay in the village for another day. By evening, the stream broke through the casing. Soon, water broke through to the surface, blasting everything with its powerful movement. At the bottom of the mine, old Muck, Chaval, Etienne and Katrina remained abandoned. They try to get out into the dry mine through the chest in the water, wander in the underground labyrinths. Here Etienne’s last skirmish with Chaval takes place: Etienne opened his skull to an eternal rival. Together with Katrina, Etienne manages to scrape some kind of bench in the wall on which they sit above the stream rushing along the bottom of the mine. They spend three days underground, waiting for death and not hoping for salvation, but suddenly someone blows through the thickness of the earth: they make their way to them, they are saved! Here, in the dark, in a mine, on a tiny strip of firmament, Etienne and Katrina merge for the first and last time in love. After this, Katrina is forgotten, and Etienne listens to the impending tremors: the rescuers reached them. When they were raised to the surface, Katrina was already dead.
Having recovered, Etienne leaves the village. He says goodbye to the widow of Mahe, who, having lost her husband and daughter, goes to work in the mine - a hauler. In all the mines, more recently on strike, work is in full swing. And the thumping blows of Kyle, it seems to Etienne, come from beneath the flourishing spring earth and accompany his every move.
