Fair day’s wage for fair day’s work
“What does labor want?” Samuel Gompers was often asked by the press. “More and more, here and now! Wages, benefits, better and safer working conditions!” replied the President of the American Federation of Labor.
Source: Samuel Gompers, AFL Convention, Chicago, 1893.
"We want more schoolhouses and less jails;
more books and less arsenals;
more learning and less vice;
more constant work
and less crime;
more leisure and less greed;
more justice and less revenge;
in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.
We are educating the public to the eight-hour movement; teaching America the evils of sweatshops, tenement factories, and child labor. That kind of education brings results.
It is not our purpose to bring the workers Beethoven and Shakespeare; it is our purpose to bring good food into their kitchens and clean toilets into their factories. When we have won the economic fight, the men will be free to pursue whatever life they want. Every hour spent in a filthy tenement factory, and every unfed child at mealtime is a crime against humanity…"
For thirty-seven years, Samuel Gompers represented the single most important force in the American labor movement. He had immigrated from London at 13, the family’s passage paid by his father’s Union of British Cigar Markers. When Samuel was seventeen, he joined the union at the shop where he worked and led a strike which got him blacklisted. he soon became president of the New York local of Cigar Markers’ international and was active in the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, whose main goal was the eight hour workday. The FOTLU, founded in 1881, was replaced by the American Federation of Labor, which Gompers and Peter McGuire of the Brotherhood of Carpenters co-founded in Columbus, Ohio, where some twenty-five unions met on December 8, 1886. Their goal was “to organize small trade unions into a powerful national organization and to protect the skilled labor of America … and to sustain the standard of American workmanship and skill.”
President of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 (except for one year) until his death in 1924, Samuel Gompers believed that separate unions of skilled craftsmen should be organized by their occupations under a national umbrella. He thought these should be governed as independent trade unions with their own officers, constitutions and rules to deal with employers, in the same way federal government presided over states. This was different from Powderly’s plan of one single union for skilled and unskilled workers. Unskilled workers, blacks, and women were excluded from membership in the AF of L. The AF of L signed on half a million members its first year and, by 1902, had more than a million.
Gompers believed the main purpose of unions to be economic. He was a practical man, willing to compromise. In his opinion, progress for the labor movement would come gradually, by working within the system. He thought gains for labor should be won by collective bargaining. [negotiation of wages and other conditions of employment by an organized body of employees.] He worked with government and business to achieve AF of L aims and disassociated the organization from socialists and radicals.
The AF of L continually fought for higher wages, compulsory education laws, an end to child labor for all under fourteen, safety and health at the workplace, and legal protection against cheap foreign labor. Gompers believed all workers had earned the right to a decent standard of living.
“What does labor want?” Samuel Gompers was often asked by the press. “More and more, here and now! Wages, benefits, better and safer working conditions!” replied the President of the American Federation of Labor.
Source: Samuel Gompers, AFL Convention, Chicago, 1893.
"We want more schoolhouses and less jails;
more books and less arsenals;
more learning and less vice;
more constant work
and less crime;
more leisure and less greed;
more justice and less revenge;
in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.
We are educating the public to the eight-hour movement; teaching America the evils of sweatshops, tenement factories, and child labor. That kind of education brings results.
It is not our purpose to bring the workers Beethoven and Shakespeare; it is our purpose to bring good food into their kitchens and clean toilets into their factories. When we have won the economic fight, the men will be free to pursue whatever life they want. Every hour spent in a filthy tenement factory, and every unfed child at mealtime is a crime against humanity…"
For thirty-seven years, Samuel Gompers represented the single most important force in the American labor movement. He had immigrated from London at 13, the family’s passage paid by his father’s Union of British Cigar Markers. When Samuel was seventeen, he joined the union at the shop where he worked and led a strike which got him blacklisted. he soon became president of the New York local of Cigar Markers’ international and was active in the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, whose main goal was the eight hour workday. The FOTLU, founded in 1881, was replaced by the American Federation of Labor, which Gompers and Peter McGuire of the Brotherhood of Carpenters co-founded in Columbus, Ohio, where some twenty-five unions met on December 8, 1886. Their goal was “to organize small trade unions into a powerful national organization and to protect the skilled labor of America … and to sustain the standard of American workmanship and skill.”
President of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 (except for one year) until his death in 1924, Samuel Gompers believed that separate unions of skilled craftsmen should be organized by their occupations under a national umbrella. He thought these should be governed as independent trade unions with their own officers, constitutions and rules to deal with employers, in the same way federal government presided over states. This was different from Powderly’s plan of one single union for skilled and unskilled workers. Unskilled workers, blacks, and women were excluded from membership in the AF of L. The AF of L signed on half a million members its first year and, by 1902, had more than a million.
Gompers believed the main purpose of unions to be economic. He was a practical man, willing to compromise. In his opinion, progress for the labor movement would come gradually, by working within the system. He thought gains for labor should be won by collective bargaining. [negotiation of wages and other conditions of employment by an organized body of employees.] He worked with government and business to achieve AF of L aims and disassociated the organization from socialists and radicals.
The AF of L continually fought for higher wages, compulsory education laws, an end to child labor for all under fourteen, safety and health at the workplace, and legal protection against cheap foreign labor. Gompers believed all workers had earned the right to a decent standard of living.