Founder and leader of the American Federation of Labor, emblem of "pure and simple" trade unionism
British-born American cigar maker and labour leader. Born into a Jewish family in London, he emigrated to the United States in 1863. He founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886 and was its president, except for 1895, until his death. Pursuing shorter hours and higher wages through collective bargaining rather than party politics, he led the anti-socialist faction in the AFL. He supported the First World War and chaired the Commission on International Labour Legislation at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
Also known as: Samuel Gumpertz
Activities and affiliations
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1886–1924
Trade unionsPresident of the American Federation of LaborMain
Social movements and organizing -
1917–1918
United States state institutionsChairman of the Labor Advisory Board, Council of National Defense
Government and administration -
1919
United States state institutionsChairman of the Commission on International Labour Legislation
Diplomacy and international organization
Career Timeline
- 1863Emigrated to the United States with his family.
- 1864Joined Cigar Makers Local Union No. 15.
- 1875President of Cigar Makers' International Union Local 144.
- 1881Helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions.
- 1886President of the American Federation of Labor.
- 1919Chairman of the Commission on International Labour Legislation in Paris.
- 1924.12.11Died in San Antonio.
"Study your union card": the union instead of the party
Gompers was apprenticed as a cigar maker at ten, emigrated with his family to New York in 1863, and the next year, at fourteen, joined the cigar makers' union. In 1873 he moved to a shop for skilled workmen run by a German socialist émigré, a change he called "one of the most important changes in my life". There he learned German and came under the guidance of Karl Laurrell, a former secretary of the International Workingmen's Association, who urged him to put his faith in the organised economic movement of trade unionism rather than the socialist political movement, and to attend the socialists' meetings but not join the party. "Study your union card, Sam, and if the idea doesn't square with that, it ain't true." From then on Gompers made his union card the standard for every new problem.
He complained that the socialist movement had been captured by Lassallean advocates of "political party action" rather than the "militant economic program of Marx", and warned the 1900 convention that when men became enthusiastic about socialism "they usually lost interest in their union". He helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881, which was reorganised in 1886 as the American Federation of Labor with Gompers as president. He led the anti-socialist faction in the AFL, losing to the socialists only once, in 1894, and by 1920 had confined socialist influence to a few unions such as the coal miners and the needle trades. He strongly opposed Asian immigration and supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
When Bill Haywood and others of the Western Federation of Miners founded the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905 to organise the whole working class and replace capitalism, Gompers and the AFL fought them as a dual union more intent on destroying capitalism than helping workers. In the First World War he energetically supported the war effort, cooperated with the government's mass arrests of IWW leaders for their opposition to the war, and said that "the IWW's ... are exactly what the Bolsheviki are in Russia".