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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSIt is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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You can’t weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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Workingmen are at the foundation of society.
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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 worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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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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To make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
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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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You can’t do it unless you organize.
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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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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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There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.
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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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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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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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Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.
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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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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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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
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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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To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
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Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS