Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gomperswas an English-born, American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor, 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth27 January 1850
CountryUnited States of America
The day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed ... that the workers of our day lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it.
When a man puts a pistol to my head and tells me to deliver, there is no arbitration.
We don't love to work only, ... The Samuel Gompers Papers.
We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor.
There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.
Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better men, time to become better women, time to become better and more independent citizens.
Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . . There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.
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.
We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
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.
Our mission has been the protection of the wage-worker, now; to increase his wages; to cut hours off the long workday, which was killing him; to improve the safety and the sanitary conditions of the workshop; to free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.