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 GOMPERSAll 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.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
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 -
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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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.
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
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.
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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.
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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You can’t do it unless you organize.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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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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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The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle . . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.
SAMUEL GOMPERS