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'Samuel Gompers' (January 26, 1850–December 13, 1924) was an American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and held the position as president of the organization for all but one year from 1886 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL. Focused on higher wages and job security, he fought against both socialism and the Socialist Party. After 1907 he formed alliances with the Democratic Party at the local, state and national levels. He enthusiastically supported the American entry into World War I (opposing Eugene V. Debs and other leftists who were opposed to the war).

Contents

Biography

Early life

Leading the AFL

Political involvement

Death and legacy

Quotes

Dedications

References

Primary sources

Scholarly secondary sources

External links

Biography

Early life

Gompers was born on January 26, 1850 in London, England into a Jewish family which had recently arrived from the Netherlands. He left school at age ten to become an apprentice, first as a shoemaker and then as a cigar maker. The family immigrated to the United States in 1863, settling on Manhattan's Lower East Side in New York City. He married Sophia Julian in 1867 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1872. Gompers never received a formal education, but said about the factory he worked in: "The factory was my Harvard and my Yale."
In 1877 the union had collapsed and Gompers and his friend Adolph Strasser using local 144 as a base rebuilt the Cigar Makers' Union, introduced a hierarchical structure, and implemented programs for strike and pension funds, which were paid for by charging high membership dues. He told the workers they needed to organize because wage reductions were almost a daily occurrence. The capitalists were only interested in profits, "and the time has come when we must assert our rights as workingmen. Every one present has the sad experience, that we are powerless in an isolated condition, while the capitalists are united; therefore it is the duty of every Cigar Maker to join the organization. . . . One of the main objects of the organization," he concluded, "is the elevation of the lowest paid worker to the standard of the highest, and in time we may secure for every person in the trade an existence worthy of human beings." (Mandel p. 22)
His philosophy of labor unions centered on economic ends for workers, such as higher wages, benefits, and job security. His goal was to achieve these without political action or affiliation by the union, but rather through the use of strikes, boycotts, etc.
Gompers viewed unions as simply the labor component of a business, neither superior nor inferior to the management structure. This belief led to the development of procedures for collective bargaining and contracts between labor and management which are still in use today.

Leading the AFL

Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881 as a coalition of like-minded unions. In 1886 it was reorganized into the American Federation of Labor, with Gompers as its president. He would remain president of the organization until his death (with the exception of one year, 1895).
Under Gompers's tutelage, the AFL coalition gradually gained strength, undermining that previously held by the Knights of Labor, which as a result had almost vanished by 1900. He was nearly jailed in 1911 for publishing with John Mitchell a boycott list, but the Supreme Court overturned the sentence in ''Gompers v. Buck's Stove and Range Co.''.
Gompers's insistence against political affiliation and radicalism in the AFL, combined with the AFL's tendency to cater to skilled labor over unskilled, led indirectly to the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World organization in 1905, which tried with limited success to organize unskilled workers.
Gompers, like most labor leaders, opposed unrestricted immigration from Europe because it lowered wages , and opposed any immigration at all from Asia for the previous reason and also because it brought an alien culture. The AFL was instrumental in passing immigration restriction laws from the 1890s to the 1920s, such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924, and seeing that they were strictly enforced. As Mink shows, the link between the AFL and the Democratic Party rested in large part on immigration issues; the owners of large corporations wanted more immigration and thus supported the Republican party.^[1]

Political involvement

During the First World War Gompers was a strong supporter of the war effort. He was appointed by President Wilson to the powerful Council of National Defense, where he instituted the War Committee on Labor. He was an attendee at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as a labor advisor

Death and legacy

Gompers died in San Antonio, Texas, aged 74, and is buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
The United States Navy destroyer tender USS ''Samuel Gompers'' was named in his honor. An impressive monument honoring Gompers resides in Gompers Square on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., ironically located across from the Cato Institute building.
In San Antonio, TX a statue, controversial for its design, was dedicated in Gompers' honor near the current riverwalk and convention center.

Quotes

★ Colored workmen have not been asking that equal rights be accorded to them as to white workmen, but [they] somehow convey the idea that they are to be petted or coddled and given special consideration and special privilege. Of course that can't be done.

★
★ Quoted in ''The Wall Street Journal,'' September 3, 2007. [1]

Dedications

On September 3, 2007 a life-size statue of Samuel Gompers was unveiled at Gompers Park which is on the Northwest Side of Chicago at Pulaski and Foster. Gompers Park was named after the labor leader in 1929. This is the first statue of a labor leader in Chicago. Local Unions throughout Chicago donated their time and money for this statue.^[2]

References

1. Gwendolyn Mink. ''Old labor and new immigrants in American political development: union, party, and state, 1875-1920.'' (1986).
2. Samuel Gompers Statue Unveiled

Primary sources

★ Samuel Gompers, ''Seventy Years of Life and Labor'' (1925, 1985 reprint)

★ ''The Samuel Gompers Papers'' (1986- ) definitive multivolume edition of all important letters to and from Gompers. 9 volumes have been completed to 1917. The index is online. For details and more on Gompers see [2]

Scholarly secondary sources

★ Greene, Julie . ''Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917'' (1998)

★ Livesay, Harold C. ''Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America'' (1993)

★ Mandel, Bernard. ''Samuel Gompers: A Biography'' (1963)

★ Taft, Philip. ''The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers'' (1957)

External links

★ Gompers Memorial in Washington, D.C.
1. Gwendolyn Mink. ''Old labor and new immigrants in American political development: union, party, and state, 1875-1920.'' (1986).
2. Samuel Gompers Statue Unveiled