Samuel gompers biography aflac

Gompers was born in a London tenement on January 27,to poor immigrant Jews from Holland.

Samuel gompers biography aflac

His formal education ended at the age of 10, when he became an apprentice shoemaker. When it was reorganized in as the American Federation of Labor, he was elected its first president. He retained that position until his death in except forwhen he took a "sabbatical. The foremost national labor organization prior to the A. That organization held a more inclusive view and offered membership to nearly everyone who worked: skilled or unskilled, manager or laborer.

Gompers held a more restrictive organizational view. Under his leadership, the AFL actually reversed its position on race, disallowing black members, despite explicitly pledging to welcome them at its founding. Under his leadership, the AFL became the largest and most influential labor federation in the world. It grew from a marginal association of 50, in to an established organization of nearly 3 million in that had won a permanent place in American society.

In a society renowned for its individualism and the power of its employer class, he forged a self-confident workers' organization dedicated to the principles of solidarity and mutual aid. Born in into a Jewish family in London, Gompers began making cigars alongside his father at the age of Inthe entire family immigrated to New York City. Settling into a tenement apartment on Houston Street, Gompers continued rolling cigars at home with his father until he found work in one of the local shops.

Inhe joined Local 15 of the United Cigar Makers; two years later, he married Sophia Julian, with whom he would have 12 children. He then served as second vice president of the CMIU from towhen he was elevated to first vice presidency. In the s, Gompers was also instrumental in establishing the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, which he served as vice president from to I was eager to learn from discussion and reading or to pour out my feelings in song.

The day after his seventeenth birthday he married his co-worker, sixteen-year-old Sophia Julian. I remember asking Laurrell whether in his opinion I ought to keep in touch with the Socialist movement. He replied, 'Go to their meetings by all means, listen to what they have to say and understand them, but do not join the Party. There were often good speakers present and the discussions were stimulating.

Time and again, under the lure of new ideas, I went to Laurrell with glowing enthusiasm. Laurrell would gently say, 'Study your union card, Sam, and if the idea doesn't square with that, it ain't true. Gompers complained that the socialist movement had been captured by Lassallean advocates of "political party action" rather than the "militant economic program of Marx".

As was the case with other unions of the day, the Cigar Maker's Union nearly collapsed in the financial crisis of —77, in which unemployment skyrocketed and ready availability of desperate workers willing to labor for subsistence wages put pressure upon the gains in wages and the shortening of hours achieved in union shops. Gompers and his friend Adolph Strasser used Local as a base to rebuild the Cigar Makers' Union, introducing a high dues structure and implementing programs to pay out-of-work benefits, sick benefits, and death benefits for union members in good standing.

Gompers told the workers they needed to organize because wage reductions were almost a daily occurrence. He believed that the capitalists were only interested in profits, "and the time has come samuel gompers biography aflac we must assert our rights as workingmen. Every one present has the sad experience, that we are powerless in an isolated condition, while the capitalists are united; therefore, it is the duty of every Cigar Maker to join the organization".

He was elected second vice president of the Cigar Makers' International Union in when he was 36 and first vice president in Despite the commitment of time and energy entailed by his place as head of the American Federation of LaborGompers remained samuel gompers biography aflac vice president of the Cigar Makers until his death in December Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in as a coalition of like-minded unions.

In it reorganized into the American Federation of Laborwith Gompers as president. With the exception of the yearhe would remain president of the organization until his death. In he became editor of the Federation's publication, The American Federationist. Under Gompers's tutelage, the AFL coalition gradually gained strength, undermining the position previously held by the Knights of Laborwhich as a result, had almost vanished by He was nearly jailed in for publishing, with John Mitchella boycott list, but in the Supreme Court overturned the sentence in Gompers v.

Buck's Stove and Range Co. Gompers, who had ties with the Cuban cigar workers in the U. Mandel argues that his anti-imperialism was based on opportunistic fears of threats to labor's status from low-paid offshore workers and was founded on a sense of racial superiority to the peoples of the Philippines. By the s, Gompers was planning an international federation of labor, starting with the expansion of AFL affiliates in Canada, especially Ontario.

Gompers, like most labor leaders, opposed unrestricted immigration from Europe because of the fear that it might lower wages of domestic union workers. He strongly opposed all immigration from Asia because it lowered wages and, in his judgement, represented an alien culture that could not be assimilated easily into that of the U. Meat vs. American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism.

Which shall survive? At least one study concludes that the link between the AFL and the Democratic Party rested in large part on immigration issues, as the owners of large corporations wanted more immigration for cheaper labor and thus supported the Republican Party. As one reviewer argued in The Journal of American Historymajor Republican leaders, such as President William McKinley and Senator Mark Hannamade pro-labor statements, many unions supported their own independent labor parties or the Socialist Partyand unity within the AFL was never so extensive as claimed.

During World War I Gompers was a strong supporter of the war effort. He was also elected president of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, which was organized to suppress anti-war propaganda among workers. Despite his support for the war, he later supported amnesty for political prisoners who were convicted under Wartime Emergency Acts.

During a severe period of national economic recession in the early s, labor unrest was at its height. A volatile situation in Chicago in August caused the city's then mayor, Carter Henry Harrisonto warn that the preponderance of the unemployed would lead to riots that would "shake the country", unless Congress interceded. In late AugustGompers addressed 25, unemployed workers who had massed on the shore of Lake Michigan.

As reported in the Chicago Tribune on August 31, Gompers inveighed against the controllers of capital and the titans of industry and finance. Gompers began his labor career familiar with, and sympathetic to, Georgism [ 37 ] and the precepts of socialism, [ 38 ] but gradually adopted a more conservative approach to labor relations.

Although the AFL had once preached the inevitability of class conflict and the need to abolish ' wage slavery ', it slowly and almost imperceptibly began to proclaim the virtues of class harmony and the possibilities of a more benevolent Capitalism. The IWW's long-term goal was to supplant capitalism with a workers' commonwealth. He cooperated with widespread government arrests of union leaders for the IWW's militant opposition to the World War.

He said, "the IWW's He argued that socialists believed workers and unions could never co-exist with business interests and wanted to use the labor unions to advance their more radical political causes. By Gompers had largely marginalized Socialist influence to a few unions, notably coal miners and the needle trades. In he wrote, "In my Masonic life, I have visited lodges in many lands, and I have learned that Freemasonry in many countries, particularly in Latin countries, is the principal means whereby freedom of conscience, of thought, and expression is preserved.

Gompers's health went into serious decline starting in Februarywhen a serious bout of influenza sent him to the hospital, sidelining him from work for six weeks. It was recognized that his condition was critical and that he might not survive for long. His parents, who were Jews, had immigrated from the Netherlands. Until the age of 10, Samuel attended a Jewish school, but his family was in need, and he was forced to quit his studies and work as a shoemaker and later as a cigar maker.

At the age of 13, he moved with his family to the United States in search of a better life. In New York, Samuel found employment at a tobacco factory, but realizing that the working conditions in America were just as harsh as in England, he joined the National Cigar Makers' Union and became its vice president within five years. Inthe union disbanded, but Gompers continued to fight for better working conditions.

Starting inGompers, as a member of the National Civic Federation, worked towards stabilizing labor relations through collective bargaining and personal agreements between employers and union leaders.