Joseph Smith III - 9780252065156

Joseph Smith IIIPRAGMATIC PROPHET\nAuthor(s): Roger D. Launius\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Illinois Press, United States\nImprint: University of Illinois Press\nISBN-13: 9780252065156, 978-0252065156\nSynopsis\nThis masterful study charts the extensive common ground and telling differences between two widely separated coal-mining communities: Lanarkshire, in the Clyde Valley of southwest Scotland, and the northern Illinois coalfield that became a prime destination for skilled Scottish migrant miners in the mid-nineteenth century. Challenging the prevailing exceptionalist paradigm of labor history, John Laslett examines the social, economic, and political context of each of these communities in generous detail. He traces the progressive heightening of class consciousness as the coal industry evolved from skilled hand labor to an increasingly mechanized extraction process and the escalating hostility between miners and mineowners as their interests split along class li.