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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSYou can’t do it unless you organize.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
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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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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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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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One fact stands out in bold relief in the history of man’s attempts for betterment. That is that when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused, and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to man’s reason can a movement succeed.
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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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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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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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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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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS