42 Facts About Samuel Gompers

Samuel Gompers was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history.

Samuel Gompers promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles.

Samuel Gompers promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining in order to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labor.

Samuel Gompers encouraged AFL member unions to take political action to "elect their friends" and "defeat their enemies".

Samuel Gompers strongly opposed the antiwar labor groups, especially the Industrial Workers of the World.

Samuel Gompers was the son of Sarah and Solomon Gumpertz, a cigar maker.

At age six, Samuel Gompers was sent to the Jewish Free School to receive a basic education.

In 1864, at age 14, Samuel Gompers joined the Cigar Makers Local Union No 15, the English-speaking union of cigar makers in New York City.

Samuel Gompers later recounted his days as a cigar maker at the bench in detail, emphasizing the place of craftsmanship in the production process:.

Samuel Gompers learned German and absorbed many of the ideas of his shop mates, developing a particular admiration for the ideas of the former secretary of the International Workingmen's Association, Karl Laurrell.

Samuel Gompers replied, 'Go to their meetings by all means, listen to what they have to say and understand them, but do not join the Party.

Samuel Gompers complained that the socialist movement had been captured by Lassallean advocates of "political party action" rather than the "militant economic program of Marx".

Samuel Gompers warned delegates to the 1900 annual convention that when men became enthusiastic about socialism, "they usually lost interest in their union".

Samuel Gompers was elected president of Cigar Makers' International Union Local 144 in 1875.

Samuel Gompers told the workers they needed to organize because wage reductions were almost a daily occurrence.

Samuel Gompers was elected second vice president of the Cigar Makers' International Union in 1886 when he was 36 and first vice president in 1896.

Samuel Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881 as a coalition of like-minded unions.

Samuel Gompers was nearly jailed in 1911 for publishing, with John Mitchell, a boycott list, but in 1914 the Supreme Court overturned the sentence in Gompers v Buck's Stove and Range Co.

Samuel Gompers, who had ties with the Cuban cigar workers in the US, called for American intervention in Cuba; he supported the resulting war with Spain in 1898.

Samuel Gompers helped the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress with money and organizers, and by 1902, the AFL dominated the Canadian union movement.

Samuel Gompers strongly opposed all immigration from Asia because it lowered wages and, in his judgement, represented an alien culture that could not be assimilated easily into that of the US Gompers bragged that the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, later renamed the American Federation of Labor, "was the first national organization which demanded the exclusion of coolies from the United States".

Samuel Gompers was appointed by President Wilson to the Council of National Defense, where he chaired the Labor Advisory Board.

Samuel Gompers was elected president of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, which was organized to suppress anti-war propaganda among workers.

Samuel Gompers attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as an official advisor on labor issues.

Samuel Gompers was appointed chairman of the Commission on International Labour Legislation, whose recommendations for a workers' rights charter were incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles.

Samuel Gompers worked with Lucy Robins Lang, who became the executive secretary of the amnesty committee.

In late August 1893, Samuel Gompers addressed 25,000 unemployed workers who had massed on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Samuel Gompers began his labor career familiar with, and sympathetic to, Georgism and the precepts of socialism, but gradually adopted a more conservative approach to labor relations.

Samuel Gompers 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.

Nonetheless, when government abuses against the leaders of the WFM seemed too egregious, Samuel Gompers relented and offered assistance.

Samuel Gompers cooperated with widespread government arrests of union leaders for the IWW's militant opposition to the World War.

Samuel Gompers led the anti-Socialist faction inside the AFL, losing to Socialists only once, in 1894.

Samuel Gompers argued that socialists believed workers and unions could never co-exist with business interests and wanted to use the labor unions to advance their more radical political causes.

Samuel Gompers's health went into serious decline starting in February 1923, when a serious bout of influenza sent him to the hospital, sidelining him from work for six weeks.

Samuel Gompers collapsed in Mexico City on Saturday, December 6,1924, while attending a meeting of the Pan-American Federation of Labor.

Samuel Gompers expressed the desire to die on American soil and he was placed aboard a special train that sped toward the border.

Samuel Gompers was buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Samuel Gompers is buried only a few yards away from industrialist Andrew Carnegie, another important figure of industry in the Gilded Age.

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.

Samuel Gompers's belief led to the development of procedures for collective bargaining and contracts between labor and management that remain in use today.

Samuel Gompers is the subject of statuary in several major American cities.

Samuel Gompers enjoyed listening to the services of the Episcopal National Cathedral which memorialized him on a stained glass window.