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Samuel Gompers Biography

Samuel Gompers (January 27, 1850 – December 13, 1924) was an English-born American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining, to secure shorter hours and higher wages, the first essential steps, he believed, to emancipating labor. He also encouraged the AFL to take political action to "elect their friends" and "defeat their enemies". He mostly supported Democrats, but sometimes Republicans. He strongly opposed Socialists. During World War I, Gompers and the AFL openly supported the war effort, attempting to avert strikes and boost morale while raising wage rates and expanding membership.

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Samuel Gompers Quotes

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers. . . It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.

Movement, Organization, Reality, Social, Union, Workers

One fact stands out in bold relief in the history of man's attempts for betterment. That is that when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused, and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to man's reason can a movement succeed.

Attempts, Betterment, Excellence, Men, Relief, Succeed

The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.

Day, Hands, Lay, Men, Voice

W. Z. Foster {head of the American Communist Party}, who had no money, went to Moscow and came back and announced that he was building a great secret machine to undermine the American labor movement and turn it over to the Red International, owned by Lenin. He began publication of an expensive magazine and proclaimed 'a thousand secret agents in a thousand communities. '

Community, Labor, Magazine, Moscow, Party, Secret

The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle. . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.

Business, Challenges, Civilization, Cycle, Depression

So long as there is one [person] who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.

Employment, Hours, Long, Person, Work

To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work.

Choices, Conditions, Hands, Under, Workers

The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong.

Freedom Of Speech, Granted, Order, People, Press, Things

You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.

Iron, Man, Men, Pigs, Soul, Weigh

Workingmen are at the foundation of society. Show me that product of human endeavor in the making of which the workingman has had no share, and I will show you something that society can well dispense with.

Endeavor, Foundation, Making, Share, Workingmen

Do I believe in arbitration? I do. But not in arbitration between the lion and the lamb, in which the lamb is in the morning found inside the lion

Arbitration, Believe, Lamb, Lion, Morning, Umpires

Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.

Country, Liberty, Strikes

No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money

Children, Economic Inequality, Existed, Money, Race

The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.

Citizens, Country, Know, People, Working

All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Dayis devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.

Dayis, Degree, Holiday, Men, Race, Strife

It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.

Capitalists, Common, Impossible, Interests, Struggle

Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it on riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots?

Country, Gold, Hoard, Peaceful, Rolling, Workman

What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.

Beautiful, Bright, Happy, Manhood, Revenge, Teaching

Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.

Busybodies, Dangerous, Ought, People

There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.

Doe, Exercise, Here And There, Reasons, Union

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