Gompers, Samuel, 1850-1924

Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) was President of the American Federation of Labor and a member of the President's First Industrial Conference in 1919. He was a member of the President's Unemployment Conference in 1921.

<p>Gompers was born Samuel Gumpertz on January 27, 1850, in Spitalfields, a working class area of the East End of London into a Jewish family that originally hailed from Amsterdam. He was the son of Sarah (Root) and Solomon Gumpertz, a cigar maker. When he was six, Samuel was sent to the Jewish Free School, where he received a basic education. His elementary school career was brief, however, since a mere three months after his tenth birthday Gompers was removed from school and sent to work as an apprentice cigar maker to help earn money for his impoverished family.</p>

<p>Gompers was able to continue his studies in night school, however, during which time he learned Hebrew and studied the Talmud, a process that he long later recalled was akin to studying law.</p>

<p>Owing to dire financial straits, the Gompers family immigrated to the United States in 1863, settling in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Gompers' father was engaged in the manufacture of cigars at home, assisted for the first year and half by Samuel. In his free time, the young teenager formed a debate club with his friends, an activity that provided practical experience in public speaking and parliamentary procedure. The club drew Gompers into contact with other upwardly mobile young men of the city, including a young Irish-American named Peter J. McGuire, who later would play a large role in the AFL.</p>

<p>Gompers was elected president of Cigar Makers' International Union Local 144 in 1875.</p>

<p>As was the case with other unions of the day, the Cigar Maker's Union nearly collapsed in the financial crisis of 1877, 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 144 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.</p>
<p>Gompers told the workers they needed to organize because wage reductions were almost a daily occurrence. The capitalists were only interested in profits, "and the time has come when 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 ... One of the main objects of the organization", he concluded, "is the elevation of the lowest paid worker to the standard of the highest, and in time we may secure for every person in the trade an existence worthy of human beings."</p>

<p>He was elected second vice president of the Cigar Makers' International Union in 1886, and first vice president in 1896. Despite the commitment of time and energy entailed by his place as head of the American Federation of Labor, Gompers remained first vice president of the Cigar Makers until his death in December 1924.</p>

<p>Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881 as a coalition of like-minded unions. In 1886 it was reorganized into the American Federation of Labor, with Gompers as its president. With the exception of one year, 1895, he would remain president of the organization until his death.</p>

<p>Under Gompers's tutelage, the AFL coalition gradually gained strength, undermining the position previously held by the Knights of Labor, which as a result, had almost vanished by 1900. He was nearly jailed in 1911 for publishing, with John Mitchell, a boycott list, but the Supreme Court overturned the sentence in Gompers v. Buck's Stove and Range Co.</p>

<p>Gompers was a leading Freemason, reaching the 32º in the Scottish Rite Valley of Washington D.C. in 1906. In 1920 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."</p>