Colliers Across the Sea: A Comparative Study of Formation in Scotland and the Midwest, 1830-1924. By John H. M. Laslett. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Pp. xv + 314. Cloth, $49.95; Paper, $18.95.) Historians have found it far easier to preach the virtues of comparative history than to practice that art. Professor Laslett of UCLA is to be commended for the clear and methodical manner in which he compares and contrasts the manner in which four successive generations of Scottish and Illinois coal miners practiced their craft, organized their unions, dealt with fellow workers of different ethnic origin, sought to influence their respective governments, and experienced class-consciousness. Although his overriding purpose is to test theses of American exceptionalism and Class Formation, some of the chief virtues of the book reside in the details set forth of life in the Scottish towns of Wishaw and Larkhall (near Glasgow) in the mid-Victorian years and of the northern Illinois towns of Braidwood, Streator, and Spring Valley in the postCivil War years. There a significant number of Scottish immigrants became pioneer miners and subsequently took on leadership roles in the United Mine Workers of America. The pattern of mining town development that Laslett charts turns out to be remarkably similar on the two sides of the Atlantic. The initial process involved small-scale mining in which artisan colliers preserved a high degree of workplace independence and were likely to preach interclass harmony. Then came a more complex technology, larger coal companies, and a greater degree of workplace discipline. By the turn of the twentieth century, mining had become a yet bigger industry, coal-cutting machines were being introduced, and worker-management relations often took the form of largescale strikes. On both sides of the Atlantic miners sought and won protection from the state in the form of workmen's compensation laws and mine safety codes. Analogously, many of them played with the idea of supporting a third political party rather than the Conservatives or Liberals in Britain and the Republicans or Democrats in the United States. Until World War I such efforts had limited success, but thereafter the political paths followed by Scottish and Illinois miners diverged sharply. In Britain, in the aftermath of the breakup of the Liberal party, a new separate Labour party grew rapidly so that by 1924 it could form (under the leadership of a Scot) a ministry of its own in Parliament. …