For two days, October 25–26, 1991, about forty scholars—mostly, but not exclusively, historians—sat around a conference table in the Alumni Room of the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and discussed “Tradition and the Working Class, 1850–1950.” We came from nine countries (the largest delegations were from France and the United States) to participate in the third of what has become a tradition in itself among historians of the working class, an international colloquium sponsored by ILWCH and the French social history journal. Le Mouvemem social, and supported as well by the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. CNRS. and DAGIC.