Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) labor leader

Gompers was born in London and moved to the United States with his family when he was 13. He began rolling cigars with his father at an early age and became involved with labor unions when he was 14, becoming the first member of the Cigar Makers International Union. Soon he became a skilled cigarmaker, in demand by many companies that manufactured tobacco products.

Although he received a scant education, Gompers nevertheless studied socialism while in his 20s, and he participated in meetings of the International Workingmen’s Association and the Workingmen’s Party of the United States. In 1875, he became the president of a local union. In 1881, he helped organize the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (FOTLU), a congress of national and local labor unions designed to educate the public on working-class issues and to lobby the U.S. Congress. As an officer of FOTLU, Gompers advocated compulsory school attendance laws, the regulation of child labor, and the eight-hour work day. He became president of the AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR in 1886 and held the post for the next four decades.

Gompers believed that economic power preceded political power, and therefore unions should bargain and negotiate directly with employers so that their members could attain an economic status that they could then translate into political action. To this end, he constantly sought to protect the workingman from privations and what he called little tyrannies that could deprive workers of a better quality of life. He believed that government should refrain from becoming involved in the process and that political influences should also be excluded. He was a firm supporter of the CLAYTON ACT when it was passed in 1914, often hailing it as the Magna Carta of labor. The act exempted unions from some of its ANTITRUST provisions. He asserted that unions should be exempt from antitrust actions because there was a philosophical difference between a man’s labor and the goods he produced, since the goods could be exploited by corporate management. He also championed a host of labor reforms, including higher wages, shorter working hours, and safe and clean working conditions.

After World War I, Gompers represented labor at the Versailles Peace Conference. He died in 1924 in San Antonio, Texas, and has been hailed as one of the giants of the American labor movement.

See also LEWIS, JOHN L.

Further reading

• Chasan, Will. Samuel Gompers: Leader of American Labor. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971. 
• Gompers, Samuel. Seventy Years of Life and Labor. New York: Dutton, 1957. 
• Kaufman, Stuart B. Samuel Gompers and the Origins of the American Federation of Labor. New York: Greenwood Press, 1973. 
• Livesay, Harold. Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978.