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Updated: June 12, 2025
Gompers in his presidential report at the convention of 1899, following the long depression, said: "It is noteworthy, that while in every previous industrial crisis the trade unions were literally mowed down and swept out of existence, the unions now in existence have manifested, not only the power of resistance, but of stability and permanency," and he assigned as the most prominent cause the system of high dues and benefits which had come into vogue in a large number of trade unions.
We quote at such length because this document gives the quintessence of the wise labor statesmanship which this crisis brought so clearly to light. Turning away from the pacifism of the Socialist party, Samuel Gompers and his associates believed that victory over world militarism as well as over the forces of reaction at home depended on labor's unequivocal support of the government.
In referring to the last regular meeting of the County Suffrage Association held that winter in Cooper Union, she says: "The meeting was addressed by Samuel Gompers, President of the Federation of Labor, by Dr. Peters, an Episcopal clergyman, by Father Ducey, the Catholic priest, Dr. Saunders, a Baptist minister, and Henry George, the advocate of single tax."
He don't have to pay dues to any labor union, he don't have to worry about strikes or strike benefits, he don't give a whoop what Gompers or anybody else says about Gary, and he don't care a darn whether the working man gets his beer or whether the revenue officers get it. He " "Wait a second, please. Just as a matter of curiosity, Cassius, I'd like to know what your views are on prohibition."
President Gompers, however, issued a warning to all affiliated unions to keep out of partisan politics. Notwithstanding this Secretary McGraith, at the next convention of the Federation, charged President Gompers with acting in collusion with the Democratic headquarters throughout the campaign in aid of Bryan's candidacy.
That has been the matter about which I have taken pleasure in conferring from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers; and if I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my admiration of his patriotic courage, his large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done. I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in harness.
Secondly, Gompers has always advocated frugality in money matters. His Federation is powerful but not rich.
The right of private judgment, claimed always by Protestant Christianity, has divided the clergy on all questions; and "a clergyman, a priest, and a minister" were as free to believe, and to speak what they believed, on suffrage, as were Samuel Gompers, who lately offended the Labor organization by inviting two anarchists to address it, and Henry George, whose single-tax theories have lately turned law and order upside down in Delaware.
There were at the time two factions among the cigar makers, one upholding the International Cigar Makers' Union with Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers as leaders, the other calling itself the Progressive Union, which was more socialistic in nature and composed of more recent immigrants and less skilled workers.
Gompers is an orthodox trade unionist of the British School. Bolshevism is to him a synonym for social ruin. He believes that capital and labor should cooperate but that capital should cease to be the predominant factor in the equation.
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