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 GOMPERSThe working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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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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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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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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The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease.
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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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Show me the country that has no strikes and I’ll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
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The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.
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All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Dayis devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.
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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
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No human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest.
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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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Show me that product of human endeavor in the making of which the workingman has had no share, and I will show you something that society can well dispense with.
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There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.
SAMUEL GOMPERS