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Therefore, Mr. Gompers, quite logically, does not see any necessity for an aggressive attitude. "Labor unions," says Mr. John Mitchell, who takes a similar view, "are for workmen, but against no one. They are not hostile to employers, not inimical to the interests of the general public.
When Mr. Gompers and the labor people with tragic and solemn dignity, as if they were making history and as if a thousand years were looking on, walked out of the room, I do not claim that if they had met Oliver Herford or Mr.
Gompers and his Labor Children like so many dear little girls said they would not play any more, took their dollies and their dishes and went home stuck their heads up and majestically walked from the room if Mr. Dooley and Hennessy could have been present and got in a small deep lighthearted human word, all in one half minute the President's Conference might have been saved.
This union has been the kindergarten and preparatory school of Samuel Gompers, who, during all the years of his wide activities as the head of the Federation of Labor, has retained his membership in his old local and has acted as first vice-president of the Cigar-makers' International. These early experiences, precedents, and enthusiasms Gompers carried with him into the Federation of Labor.
Gompers, in an intimate and moving speech, told a group of labor leaders gathered in New York on December 9, 1918, that "the organization of a political party would simply mean the dividing of the activities and allegiance of the men and women of labor between two bodies, such as would often come in conflict."
It was agreed that a general strike of shirt-waist makers ought to be declared. But the union was weak, there were no funds, and most of the shirt-waist makers were women and unused to the idea of solidarity in action. Could they stand together in an industrial struggle which promised to be long and bitter? President Gompers was plainly fearful that they could not.
Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor, has complained that the injunction of their so-called "unfair list" is an interference with the freedom of the press, and I presume would claim that an injunction against urging, or combining to urge, by oral argument, the members of the various unions throughout the country to boycott a certain person, would be an interference with the right of freedom of speech, and that therefore if the courts did not so decide, the laws should be changed by statute.
In November, 1894, the Federationist gave a list of more than 300 union members candidates for some elective office. Only a half dozen of these, however, were elected. It was mainly to these local failures that Gompers pointed in his presidential address at the convention of 1894 as an argument against the adoption of the political program by the Federation.
I reinstated him. Mr. Gompers, the President of the American Federation of Labor, with various members of the executive council of that body, called upon me to protest on September 29, 1903, and I answered them as follows: "I thank you and your committee for your courtesy, and I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you.
Unlike Samuel Gompers, who came to supplant him about 1890, he was foreign to that spirit of combative unionism which accepts the wage system but concentrates on a struggle to wrest concessions from the employers.
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