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Samuel Gompers
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Samuel Gompers (January 27, 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 served as the AFL's president from 1886-1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that were comprised by 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.
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Encyclopedia
Samuel Gompers (January 27, 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 served as the AFL's president from 1886-1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that were comprised by 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." During World War I, Gompers and the AFL worked with the government to avoid strikes and boost morale, without undermining union wage and hour standards. During that period, the AFL saw membership rise.
Early life
Gompers was born on January 27, 1850 in London, England into a Jewish family which had recently arrived from the Netherlands. He attended the Jewish Free School until age 10 when he left to become an apprentice, first as a shoemaker and then as 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 1866 and became a U.S. citizen in 1872.
He joined Local 15 of the Cigarmakers' International Union in 1864, and was elected president of Local 144 in 1875. He was elected second vice-president of the international union in 1886, and first vice-president in 1896. He served in this capacity until his death. In 1877, the union nearly collapsed. Gompers and his friend Adolph Strasser used Local 144 as a base to rebuild the Cigarmakers' Union, introducing a high dues structure and implementing programs to pay out-of-work benefits, sick benefits, and death benefits for union members in good standing. 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."
Philosophy
His philosophy of labor unions centered on economic ends for workers, such as higher wages,shorter hours, and safe working conditions so that they could enjoy an "American" standard of living -- a decent home, decent food and clothing, and money enough to educate their children. He thought economic organization was the most direct way to achieve these improvements, but he did encourage union members to participate in politics and to vote with their economic interests in mind.
Samuel Gompers inspired later generations of labor leaders, such as George Meany, who paid tribute to Samuel Gompers as a European immigrant who pioneered a distinctly American brand of unionism.
His belief led to the development of procedures for collective bargaining and contracts between labor and management which are still in use today. In practice, AFL unions were important in industrial cities, where they formed a central labor office to coordinate the actions of different AFL unions. Issues of wages and hours were the usual causes of strikes, but many strikes were assertions of jurisdiction, so that the plumbers, for example, used strikes to ensure that all major construction projects in the city used union plumbers. In this goal they were ideally supported by all the other construction unions in the AFL fold.
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..
Fighting radicals
Gompers's trade union philosophy and his devotion to collective bargaining with business proved to be too conservative for more radical leaders who established the Industrial Workers of the World organization in 1905 with the goal of organizing unskilled new immigrant workers. Their long-term goal was to destroy capitalism. Gompers vigorously fought the upstarts; they had almost entirely vanished by 1920. He likewise fought the socialists who wanted to use the labor unions to advance their political cause, typified by the presidential campaigns of Eugene V. Debs. By 1920 Gompers had largely marginalized their role to a few unions, notably coal miners and the needle trades.
Immigration
Gompers, like most labor leaders of his era, opposed unrestricted immigration from Europe because it lowered wages, and opposed all immigration from Asia because it lowered wages and represented (to him) an alien culture that could not be easily assimilated. He and the AFL strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned the immigration of Chinese. 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. At least one study concludes that the link between the AFL and the Democratic Party rested in large part on immigration issues, as the owners of large corporations wanted more immigration and thus supported the Republican party. Other scholars have seriously questioned this conclusion, arguing it oversimplifies the politics and unity of labor leaders and the major parties. As one reviewer argued in the Journal of American History, major Republican leaders such as President William McKinley and Senator Mark Hanna made pro-labor statements, many unions supported their own independent labor parties, and unity within the AFL was never as extensive as claimed.
Gompers also opposed annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines in 1898, arguing this constituted imperialism and would lead to an influx of cheap labor.
Political involvement
During the Spanish-American War, Gompers joined the Anti-Imperialist League to denounce America's efforts at colonization. During World War I Gompers was a strong supporter of the war effort. He was appointed by President Wilson to the Council of National Defense, where he chaired the Labor Advisory Board. He attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as an official advisor on labor issues.
Death
Gompers had suffered from diabetes, heart failure and renal failure for nearly a year. He collapsed in Mexico City on Saturday, December 6, 1924 while attending a meeting of the Pan-American Federation of Labor. His condition was recognized as critical and that he might not survive for long. Gompers expressed the desire to die on American soil, and he was placed aboard a special train and sped toward the border. Samuel Gompers was buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Quotes
Among the things we advocate is that women should have equal suffrage with men. . . . We not only work for equality of suffrage, but work to fight and obtain equal wages for her. (Samuel Gompers Papers, Vol 3:Rocky Mountain News, Feb. 28, 1891)
The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
(Samuel Gompers, said in 1908 - Quotation #23111 from Rand Lindsly's Quotations)
There are about 8,000,000 negroes in the United States, and, my friends, I not only have not the power to put the negro out of the labor movement, but I would not, even if I did have the power. ... Why should I do such a thing? . . . . I would have nothing to gain, but the movement would have much to lose. Under our policies and principles we seek to build up the labor movement, instead of injuring it, and we want all the negroes we can possibly get who will join hands with organized labor. (Samuel Gompers Papers, Vol 8: St. Louis Globe Democrat, Nov. 18, 1910)
And what have our unions done? What do they aim to do? To improve the standard of life, to uproot ignorance and foster education, to instill character, manhood and independent spirit among our people; to bring about a recognition of the interdependence of man upon his fellow man. We aim to establish a normal work-day, to take the children from the factory and workshop and give them the opportunity of the school and the play-ground. In a word, our unions strive to lighten toil, educate their members, make their homes more cheerful, and in every way contribute an earnest effort toward making life the better worth living. (McClure's Magazine, Feb. 1912)
- 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.
- Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people.
- 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.
Dedications
The United States Navy destroyer tender USS Samuel Gompers was named in his honor.
A bronze monument honoring Gompers by the sculptor Robert Aitken resides in Gompers Square on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., ironically located across from the headquarters of the libertarian Cato Institute.
In San Antonio, Texas, a statue (controversial for its design) was dedicated in Gompers' honor near the riverwalk and convention center.
On September 3, 2007, a life-size statue of Gompers was unveiled at Gompers Park which is on the northwest side of Chicago. 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 to build the monument.
Schools on the far southside of Chicago, Illinois; The Bronx, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Detroit, Michigan an elementary school named after Samuel Gompers, in San Diego, California; and Watts, Los Angeles, California, are named for Gompers, as is an apartment complex of the New York City Housing Authority.
Primary sources
- Gompers, Samuel. Seventy Years of Life and Labor. Abridged ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984. (Originally published in 1925.) ISBN 0875461123
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 1: The Early Years of the American Federation of Labor, 1887-90. Stuart Bruce Kaufman, Grace Palladino, Dorothee Schneider, and Peter J. Albert, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1987. ISBN 0252013506
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 2: Unrest and Depression, 1891-94. Stuart Bruce Kaufman and Peter J. Albert, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1989. ISBN 0252015460
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 3: The Making of a Union Leader, 1850-86. Stuart Bruce Kaufman, ed. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1991. ISBN 0252011376
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 4: A National Labor Movement Takes Shape, 1895-98. Stuart Bruce Kaufman, Grace Palladino and Peter J. Albert, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1992. ISBN 0252017684
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 5: An Expanding Movement at the Turn of the Century, 1898-1902. Stuart Bruce Kaufman, Grace Palladino and Peter J. Albert, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1996. ISBN 0252020081
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 6: The American Federation of Labor and the Rise of Progressivism, 1902-6. Stuart B. Kaufman, Grace Palladino and Peter J. Albert, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1995. ISBN 025202303X
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 7: The American Federation of Labor Under Siege, 1906-09. Stuart B. Kaufman, Grace Palladino, Peter J. Albert, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1998. ISBN 0252023803
- Gompers, Samuel. Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 8: Progress and Reaction in the Age of Reform, 1909-13. Peter J. Albert and Grace Palladino, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2000. ISBN 0252025644
- Gompers, Samuel. The Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 9: The American Federation of Labor at the Height of Progressivism, 1913-17. Peter J. Albert and Grace Palladino, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2003. ISBN 0252027558
- Gompers, Samuel. The Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 10: World War I, 1917-18. Grace Palladino, Peter J. Albert and Mary Jeske, eds. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2007. ISBN 0252030419
External links
- * audio recording of his 1918 speech "Labor's Service to Freedom"
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