[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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSWe 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.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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Workingmen are at the foundation of society.
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To make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
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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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So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service.
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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 lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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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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To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
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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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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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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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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 GOMPERS