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.
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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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 lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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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You can’t do it unless you organize.
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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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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 are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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Do I believe in arbitration? I do. But not in arbitration between the lion and the lamb, in which the lamb is in the morning found inside the lion
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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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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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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 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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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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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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The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle . . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.
SAMUEL GOMPERS