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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSNo human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers.
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The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
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The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers… It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.
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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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To make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
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We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
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To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work.
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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle . . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.
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So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service.
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What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.
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So long as there is one [person] who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.
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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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[The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves.
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Do I believe in arbitration? I do. But not in arbitration between the lion and the lamb, in which the lamb is in the morning found inside the lion
SAMUEL GOMPERS






