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 worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
The right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong.
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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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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
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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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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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 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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
W.Z. Foster {head of the American Communist Party}, who had no money, went to Moscow and came back and announced that he was building a great secret machine to undermine the American labor movement and turn it over to the Red International, owned by Lenin.
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Let social busybodies and professional “public morals experts” in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
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Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better men, time to become better women, time to become better and more independent citizens.
SAMUEL GOMPERS