The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
SAMUEL GOMPERSDoing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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 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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Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
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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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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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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 lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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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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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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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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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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
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Workingmen are at the foundation of society.
SAMUEL GOMPERS