A biography of Samuel Gompers (1850-1924)

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Samuel Gompers was president of the American Federation of Labor for almost forty years,  between 1886 and 1924, and the nation's leading trade unionist and labor spokesman. A cigarmaker by trade, an intellectual by nature, and a skilled organizer and administrator by vocation, Gompers dedicated his life to the working class. He was a passionate advocate of shorter hours, higher wages, safe and sanitary working conditions, and workplace democracy. And he believed that strong, well-financed trade unions would humanize industry, protect workers' interests, and in the process, create opportunities for workers to educate themselves and claim a larger role in industrial society. Essentially, Gompers promoted the idea that economic organization was the key to a more satisfying life, in and out of the shop.

Gompers was born in London, in 1850, the oldest of five sons. Although he had been agood student at the Jews' Free School, by age ten he was already learning to make a living, apprenticing first as a shoemaker and then taking up his father's trade, cigarmaking. In 1863 he moved with his family to New York City. Settling into an apartment on the Lower East Side, where Gompers and his father made cigars, he joined the Cigar Makers' International Union in 1864. Before too long he was earning his living in cigar shops around the city.

Married by age 17 and a father by 18, Gompers was already recognized as a skilled and valuable cigar roller by employers, and an aggressive and confident spokeman by his shopmates.By 1875 he was president of his local union, CMIU 144, and by 1886, vice-president of the international union.

In the 1870s, he was also a student of socialism. With colleagues like P.J. McGuire, Hugh McGregor, Adolph Strasser, and J.P. McDonnell (all of whom would become longtime associates) he participated in meetings of the International Workingmen's Association, the Economic and Sociological Club, and the Workingmen's Party of the United States. The experience strengthened what came to be called his "pure and simple" approach to trade unionism: that economic class power preceded political class power, and that it would be achieved through trade organization based on practical working-class issues.

In 1881 Gompers helped organize the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (FOTLU), an annual congress of national unions and local labor councils designed to educate the public on working-class issues, prepare labor legislation, and lobby the U.S. Congress to act on it. As an officer of FOTLU from 1881 to 1886, Gompers worked for compulsory school attendance laws, the regulation of child labor, the eight hour day, and the mechanics' lien law, among others. He soon learned, though, that the new federation had neither the money nor the authority to do much more than talk about these issues. So in 1886 he supported P.J. McGuire's call to organize an

"American Federation or Alliance of all National and International Trades Unions to aid and assist each other . . . to secure national legislation in the interest of working people and influence public opinion . . . in favor of Organized Labor."

Gompers was elected president of the American Federation of Labor in December 1886 and held that position for the rest of his life, save for one year -- his "sabbatical" in 1895 -- when John McBride, president of the United Mine Workers of America, replaced him. Gompers also served as vice president of the CMIU (1886-1924) and played an active role in the New York State Workingmen's Assembly. Whether he was testifying before Congress or state legislatures on the importance of labor laws, rallying his troops at a mass meeting, or negotiating strike settlements, Gompers proved to be a capable, dependable, and unflappable spokesman for the trade union movement, well-known and respected for his integrity, his generosity, and his willingness to speak truth to power.

Gompers had his opponents, of course, both within and outside the labor movement. On his left were those who believed him to be more interested in personal power than in moving the masses forward. To them, his pure and simple strategy was no match for corporate power, and they dismissed the AFL as a narrow, conservative organization designed to serve skilled workers only. On his right were those who considered him a foreign-born trouble maker determined to destroy property rights and individual initiative.

Whatever their complaints, though, Gompers made no apologies to his critics.

"The ground-work principle of America's labor movement has been to recognize that first things must come first,"

"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."

"But while our Federation has thus been conservative,"

"it has ever had its face turned toward whatever reforms, in politics or economics, could be of direct and obvious benefit to the working classes. It has never given up its birthright for a mess of pottage. It has pursued its avowed policy with the conviction that if the lesser and immediate demands of labor could not be obtained now from society as it is, it would be mere dreaming to preach and pursue . . . a new society constructed from rainbow materials -- a system of society on which even the dreamers themselves have never agreed."

Samuel Gompers dedicated his life to working for a new order of things: a revolution based on the evolution of trade unionism, the progressive improvement of working and living conditions, and the emergence of the working class as an equal partner in industrial life. He had no illusions about the task, though, as he made clear in a speech in 1900:

"Conscious that we are right in our movement to secure better conditions for the workers; conscious that we are entitled to it, to a continual larger share of the ever-increasing production and the productivity of the laborer, we shall continue the struggle for better homes and better surroundings. We want your co-operation to attain those ends. We want the good will and the co-operation of all; but if that is withheld from us, we shall conclude to go on organizing and struggling for that goal in spite of the opposition."

Samuel Gompers died on December 13, 1924, in San Antonio, Texas. His farewell message, which he gave to a colleague two days before his death, summed up his life's work:

"Say to them that as I kept the faith I expect they will keep the faith. . . . Say to them that a union man carrying a card is not a good citizen unless he upholds the institutions of our great country, and a poor citizen . . . if he upholds the institutions of our country and forgets the obligations of his trade association."