Samuel Gompers

As founder and 37-year president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Samuel Gompers is credited with winning unprecedented rights and protections for the American worker. Never wavering in his belief that power for the worker lay in collective action and honest negotiation, Gompers experienced unequaled success in organizing millions of laborers into a single national organization.

"In his long life of effort for the working people of this country, he was bitterly abused and vilified by the forces of special privilege. But he found out, in the end, that this country will always honor a man who dedicates his life to helping others."

Born January 27, 1850 London, England
Died December 13, 1924 San Antonio, Texas

Samuel Gompers was one of the founders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and is regarded as the single most influential individual in the history of the American labor movement.

As president of the AFL for thirty-seven years, Gompers is credited with organizing millions of laborers with membership in various labor unions into a single national organization that was able to win unprecedented rights and protections for the American worker. The fruits of Gompers' efforts are enjoyed today in the reforms he advocated for and brought into being, including the eight-hour workday, worker's compensation, child labor laws and the national Labor Day holiday.

Gompers was a self-educated, natural leader who understood the struggle of the wage-worker firsthand. He combined his personal experience as a wageworker with his talent for leadership and organization and sought justice for oppressed American laborers. Men, women and children, recent immigrant or second generation American, Italian or German, black or white--Gompers worked for them all.

Samuel Gompers was born January 27, 1850 in London, England, the eldest of six children of Solomon and Sarah Gompers. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Amsterdam who had come to England shortly after their marriage. Gompers' father was a cigarmaker by trade and his mother a homemaker. They lived in a small apartment in the silk-weaving district of London where the young Gompers witnessed his first of many examples of the difficulties that characterized the life of the industrial worker.

Most silk weavers were French immigrants who wove by hand, but after the introduction of a mechanized form of weaving in the early 1850s, many of the weavers suddenly found themselves unemployed. Young Gompers recalled watching the jobless men as they walked the streets crying out in despair, no longer able to feed their families. Their suffering moved Gompers deeply. Throughout his life he would experience those same feelings of injustice and outrage whenever he was confronted with the unfair treatment of disenfranchised wageworkers, especially children.

At the age of six, Gompers began attending the Jewish Free School in London. He was a quick learner and excelled at his studies, but after four years, he was forced to quit the school and work to help support his growing family.

He was only ten years old when he started his first apprenticeship with a shoemaker. After two months of training, Gompers began work at a salary of six cents a week. He did not care for his work in the noisy shoe shop, however, and quickly accepted an offer from his father to apprentice as a cigarmaker. Still only ten years old, Gompers finished his second apprenticeship and was legally indentured for two years as a cigarmaker at a wage of twelve cents a week.

Despite the additional wages Gompers contributed, the family continued having trouble making ends meet. Faced with few options for solving their financial difficulties, they decided to seek better opportunities in the New World.

At the time, Gompers' father was a member of the Cigar Maker's Society of London, an English labor organization, which had a program to help pay a portion of the family's passage to America. The relocation program was designed to reduce the numbers of cigarmakers in England and demonstrated to young Gompers the power of unions.

In June of 1863, the Gompers family boarded a ship and arrived seven weeks later in lower Manhattan. They moved into a small apartment in the brewery and slaughterhouse district of New York City where the impressionable Gompers was surrounded with daily reminders of the difficult life led by the wageworker.

Gompers, now thirteen, continued working as a cigarmaker with his father, at first working out of the family apartment. Although he later found work in the better cigar shops, steady work was hard to come by and Gompers was often forced to look for new work and accept whatever wages were offered him.

Gompers was highly skilled in his work. His employers valued his cigar-making skill and recognized his keen intellect, and his fellow workers were drawn to his leadership and outspokenness. Those abilities served him well in his lifelong career as the representative of American labor.

In 1864 Gompers joined the Cigar Makers' National Union Local 15, and, although only fourteen, was eager to begin working for change. He enjoyed attending the lectures sponsored by the various labor organizations active in New York and learned a great deal at the meetings. The European immigrants pouring into New York brought valuable knowledge from their experience with the European labor movement, which had a substantial history by that time. Gompers enjoyed learning what he could from the more experienced Europeans, but he felt that their aims were not practical enough to offer any immediate relief to workers in the United States. He was careful not to get caught up in their idealistic and often political goals.

In 1867 at the age of seventeen, Gompers met and married Sophia Julian, a tobacco stripper in a cigar factory, and the first of their nine children was born one year later. Only six of the children survived infancy, and illness tragically claimed two more of them as young adults. The Gompers were married for fifty-three years until Sophia's death in 1920.

The year of 1872 proved an important one for Gompers. He became an American citizen and met Adolph Strasser, a European immigrant who was also a cigarmaker and a long-standing union activist in the European tradition. Strasser helped Gompers lead his fellow workers into a practical program of action that eventually led to their co-founding of the American Federation of Labor. Together Strasser and Gompers organized the cigarmakers of New York City into a new labor union that was less restrictive in its admission requirements than previous unions had been. They realized that if the wage-workers were going to achieve any positive changes, workers needed to unite regardless of skill level, ethnicity or trade. In 1875, twenty-five year old Gompers became the first president of the Cigar Makers' International Union Local 144 in New York City.

At that time, workers who joined labor unions were openly despised and discriminated against by their employers and had little recourse to remedy the situation. As a union leader and labor activist, Gompers was singled out and handed some of the harshest discrimination. In 1877 he led a strike of the New York City cigarmakers in protest of pay cuts and factory rules designed to keep the workers from organizing. The strike failed, and Gompers was blacklisted and unable to find work for four months.

The period of unemployment was extremely difficult for Gompers and his family (which now included four children and a fifth on the way). The hardships, however, did not deter his commitment to his mission.

After organizing the New York City cigarmakers trade union, which became the model for other trade unions, Gompers and Strasser began working on a national plan. In 1881 the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), a national organization, held its first convention in Pittsburgh and called for the enactment of employer liability, child labor and compulsory education laws.

In 1886 FOTLU was reorganized as the American Federation of Labor (AFL), an umbrella organization for trade unions across the United States. Gompers was elected the first president of the new organization, and held the office (with the exception of one year) until his death in 1924. The AFL was an achievement that was fourteen years in the making, but in many ways it was just the beginning of Gompers' greatest accomplishments.

Under Gompers leadership the AFL became a powerful force in the continuing struggle for workers' rights. A tireless activist, he continued his work by writing and publishing countless articles, delivering speeches nationwide and around the world, testifying before Congress, consulting to the President, and negotiating on labor's behalf in disputes across the country. He worked with and at times against labor, industry and government.

In addition to the opposition that Gompers faced from outside the labor movement was the equally difficult opposition he faced from within it. The Socialist faction of the movement criticized Gompers for being too conservative in his approach to solving labor's problems and for setting what they thought were only modest goals for achievement.

Gompers preferred negotiation to striking, and practical gains to philosophical or political ones. His strongest disagreement with the Socialists hinged on their insistence that workers own the means of production. He believed threatening the ownership of the means of production led employers to distrust unions and greatly diminished any chance of serious negotiation over more fundamental issues like wages and working conditions. He never wavered in his belief that true power for the workers lay in collective action and honest negotiation. Gompers struggled with the Socialists for years as a result of these fundamental differences.

Gompers' thirty-seven year term as AFL president was filled with notable events. He was charged with contempt by the U.S. Supreme Court, nominated to the state Senate of New York, and appointed as the U.S. delegate to various international labor conferences, including the Paris Peace Conference.

In December 1924, while attending the Pan American Federation of Labor meeting in Mexico City, Gompers became ill and was rushed back to San Antonio, Texas where he died. The progress he made in securing the rights of the American worker, rights many take for granted today, is without equal.

President Truman characterized his unflinching spirit and commitment to the movement: "In his long life of effort for the working people of this country, he was bitterly abused and vilified by the forces of special privilege. But he found out, in the end, that this country will always honor a man who dedicates his life to helping others."


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