Colliers Across the Sea: A Comparative Study of Class Formation in Scotland and the American Midwest, 1830-1924. (Reviews/Comptes Rendus).

Frank, David

John H.M. Laslett, Colliers Across the Sea: A Comparative Study of Class Formation in Scotland and the American Midwest, 1830-1924 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press 2000)

FROM GLASGOW and Chicago alike, it is only a small distance up the river from the cities of commerce and industry to the country of coal -- a territory centred in these cases on such mining towns as Lark-hall, Wishaw, and Blantyre on the River Clyde, and Braidwood, Streator, and Spring Valley on the Illinois River. Building on a wealth of local research, John Laslett has constructed a powerful comparative study that includes assessments of economic growth, social structure, class formation, and political behaviour. The selection of these communities in the southwest of Scotland and the midwestern United States was not accidental, as considerable numbers of Lanarkshire workers participated in the movement of experienced coal miners to the 19th century American industrial frontier and settled in northern Illinois; in 1870 almost half the miners in Illinois were British-born. Yet this book is much more than a venture in comparative local history or an account of the emigrant worker experience in North America. R ather, this is an exceptionally well-conceived study that uses the tools of the social historian to address major questions concerning the similarities and differences in the process of class formation in Britain and the United States. Rejecting essentialist explanations for the divergent political traditions associated with British and American workers in the 20th century, Laslett invites us to explore the social and historical origins of the acknowledged differences.

The formation of the industrial working class in the Lanarkshire coal towns in the decades after 1830 provides an important foundation for this discussion, for Laslett clearly demonstrates the range of experiences and responses that emerged in this environment and the historical contingencies that gave rise to what are sometimes assumed to be inevitable outcomes. The traditional artisan-collier, with his assumptions about respectability, skill and independence, worked alongside or in contention with less skilled semi-proletarianized workers and newcomer-rebels from the countryside, Ireland, or the European continent. Meanwhile, as the coal industry entered its boom period, the coal operators introduced innovations in technology and social control that fostered resistance, both at the workplace and in the community. Out of this process came the occupational solidarity that, in the long run, produced the militant unionism and political activism often associated with the Lanarkshire coalfields. But Laslett makes it clear that this was indeed a long-run development. The class harmony ideology of the influential union pioneer and Member of Parliament Alexander McDonald prevailed for decades. From the 1870s onwards, however, this approach was challenged by a new generation of leaders such as Keir Hardie, whose unionism was premised on a recognition of the realities of class conflict. This new unionism helped make the Miners' Federation of Great Britain the strongest union in the country, but plans to encourage increased state intervention through an independent labour politics were less successful. Laslett provides a useful reminder that the participation of the coal miners in the political process remained far from complete, as most coal miners could not vote prior to the 1884 franchise reforms and even then the vote was not extended to all male adult citizens until 1918. Hardie (and others) failed to persuade the Lanarkshire miners to follow their political lead until well into the 20th century. Although individual m iners were often elected to Parliament as Liberals and independent labour politics had some success at the community level, Lanarkshire failed to elect even one Labour MP to Parliament until 1918. The impact of the Great War on British workers had much to do with the change in perceptions, as did the broader class conflicts in British society and the ongoing crisis of the Liberal Party in this period. This proved to be an historic breakthrough, and after the promise of mines nationalization was betrayed by the state, the coal miners helped to carry the Labour Party to its first taste of power in 1924.

From this perspective on class formation in southwest Scotland, developments in northern Illinois appear to have been remarkably similar. The timing, of course, was different, as the take-off period for this coalfield arrived in the period of urban and industrial expansion after the Civil War. Initially the American miners enjoyed better housing and higher wages than their Scottish contemporaries, and this was a factor in attracting emigrant coal miners to the American prairie. However, the breakdown of ideals of class harmony was apparent in both places in the 1870s and 1880s, and Laslett draws a series of parallels between the local strikes of this period on both sides of the ocean. In many respects the issues affecting workplace and community experiences in both Scotland and Illinois proved to be similar ones that involved rivalries between local and immigrant workers, contests over workplace discipline and community institutions and struggles for union recognition and state intervention. Growing class pol arization resulted in the formation of strong national unions in both countries in the form of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (1893) and the United Mine Workers of America (1890), and both were engaged in a series of major confrontations with the coal operators and the state in the following decades. Moreover, in both countries the perceived threat of bureaucratization in the unions was answered by rank-and-file revolts emphasizing direct action and syndicalist ideas. Socialist influence was certainly present among the coal miners in Illinois, who emulated the British miners in electing socialists to local office and organizing co-operative stores. But the political consequences of the formation of the Labour Party (1900) and the Socialist Party of America (1901) were ultimately dissimilar. While British miners had engaged in a protracted struggle to achieve political recognition and win the franchise, the political process in the republic had remained relatively open for American trade unionists, or at least for those who were male and white and in command of the language of politics in America. This presented a difficult quandary for militant unionists with social democratic ideas. The Illinois miners' leader John H. Walker, for instance, a Scotsman generally sympathetic to Keir Hardie and a moderate socialism, nonetheless endorsed pro-labour Republicans for state office and affiliated the Illinois miners to the American Federation of Labor's state federation of labour, with its well known policy of non-partisanship. Walker himself later ran for governor on a Farmer-Labor ticket in 1920, but by that time with little prospect of success. Laslett argues that the ultimate parting of the ways between American and British political practice did not arrive until the time of World War I, which exacerbated ethnic and cultural divisions within the American working class and marginalized the socialists as a political force. Meanwhile, the UMWA under the leadership of John L. Lewis had succeeded in burying the pr ogramme for public ownership of the coal industry, thus helping to reduce the expectations that workers would direct at the American state. The success of the Labour Party in Britain accordingly coincided with the collapse of mass politics on the American left, symbolized by the failure of Robert M. LaFollette's 1924 presidential campaign. While this divergence was an outcome of considerable significance to the history of both Britain and the United States, Laslett concludes that there was nothing inevitable about it, and that the case of the coal miners cannot be used to deny existence of class conflict or class consciousness in American society.

In all, this is a compelling study that contributes new perspectives to the debates around such themes as American exceptionalism and the failure of socialism in the United States. While considering some of the perennial big questions in the field, this is also a multi-dimensional discussion that examines the significance of social and geographic mobility, standards of living, temperance, education, gender, ethnicity, religion, and race as contributing factors in each of the contexts. Without qualifying his general argument, Laslett readily notes some of the differences that were apparent only a few miles away in the east of Scotland or the south of Illinois, and his approach accordingly invites further comparative studies involving more local contexts. There are some tentative references as well to class formation in Germany and other countries, but, not surprisingly in a study of this scope, there are only a few brief references to the Canadian context in these pages - not enough to make the index. Of cours e, it is obvious that the characteristics of the Canadian coal country have been shaped not only by complex local conditions and regional variations but also by both British and American influences; in some ways it may be more appropriate for comparative studies in Canada to begin with inter-provincial rather than international comparisons. Meanwhile, Laslett has written a model comparative study that shows how stimulating comparative history can be when it is driven by a vigorous historical intelligence and a thorough command of sources. Moreover, at a time when social history is increasingly caricatured as a record of historical irrelevance, he has shown how the disciplined use of the methods of social history can shed light on major themes in national history.