Gompers, Samuel (1850–1924)

The American labor leader and president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), 1886 to 1895 and 1896 to 1924, Samuel Gompers was born in London, England, to a Jewish family of laborers. In 1863 after spending the first 13 years of his life on the tough London streets, he immigrated to the United States with his family. They settled in the tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and became cigar makers. In 1864 Gompers joined Local 144 of the United Cigar Makers Union. In 1866, he married Sophia Julian, also a Jewish émigré from London. The couple had more than a dozen children.

Gompers continued to roll cigars, but he increasingly devoted more time and energy in the capacity of union organizer. The cigar industry was thrown into disarray by the introduction of the cigar mold, which turned the skilled cigar makers into unskilled machine operators. In 1875, Gompers became president of Local 144. The following year he called a strike in New York City against companies who utilized the cigar mold. Initially, he was successful in gaining wage increases. Part of the reason for his success rested in his use of a benefit system for striking workers financed by union dues. However, independent cigar rollers who worked out of their tenement flats also went on strike and the companies took a harder line. Unable to control the situation, the strike fizzled [Page 629]out in early 1878. Gompers was blacklisted and had a difficult time finding decent work. These were hard times on his growing family. Disillusioned, Gompers resigned his position in Local 144 and moved his family to Brooklyn in order to gain a fresh start.

Two years later, he returned to the union movement and dedicated his life to the cause of improving the working and living conditions of laborers. In 1880 he was once again elected president of Local 144 and began a battle against the unskilled tenement rollers who, he believed, were damaging the livelihood of the skilled cigar makers who worked in the factories. The wretched pay and conditions of the tenement rollers degraded the condition of all labor. His aggressive lobbying led New York State to pass a law effectively abolishing tenement cigar manufacturing. The state supreme court, however, eviscerated the law. Later the legislature passed a revised bill that met the court's objections, but almost no municipality in the state enforced it.

Gompers learned four key lessons during these early years of union leadership. First was the limitation of political action. Instead of obtaining laws, he focused his efforts on improving the lives of workers by gaining concrete benefits from employers through collective bargaining. As an adjunct to his belief in the near futility of political action, he believed that the labor movement needed to avoid direct political affiliation. Labor, he argued, should not mingle with politics or form a separate workingman's party as the socialists professed. Gompers believed that political action should only occur after workers had first leveled the economic playing field. Moreover, the political crusades for causes outside of the workplace, such as the free coinage of silver, as advocated by the Knights of Labor, distracted from the central mission of improving the lives of the workers. When he did take a strong position on a political issue, such as support of Chinese exclusion, it related directly to the condition of labor. Second, his strategy required stronger unions with a benefits system to support strikers, centralized control over when a strike would be called, and a required consensus among union members approving a strike. Strikes, according to Gompers, should be planned, rational events, not spontaneous and emotional measures. Third, he bitterly opposed dual unionism. A fractured and divided labor movement created a gap that hostile business owners could exploit. Fourth, Gompers became convinced that trade unionism, focusing on the conditions of the skilled laborer, was the best way to lift all workers. In response to his four lessons, he proposed a federation of labor unions. The first attempt, begun in 1881, proved too weak and failed. He had better success in his second effort. In 1886 he organized the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and was elected president.

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