- Person
- Samuel Gompers
- Lived
- 1850–1924
- Field
- Labour movement
- From
- British-born American
The story
During the First World War Samuel Gompers was one of the most prominent supporters of the American war effort. President Woodrow Wilson appointed him to the Council of National Defense, where he chaired its Labor Advisory Board, and he and the American Federation of Labor worked to avert strikes and boost morale while raising wages and expanding union membership.
The war years also brought harsh laws against dissent. Many Americans who opposed the war, including socialists, anarchists and labour radicals, were convicted under wartime emergency laws for their speeches and writings. The best known was the Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, convicted in 1918 for an anti-war speech and given a ten-year prison sentence. When the fighting ended, many of these prisoners were still behind bars.
In 1919 the activist Lucy Robins Lang, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine who had once worked in a Chicago cigar factory, approached Gompers and asked him to support amnesty for them. Despite his own strong support for the war and his long hostility to radical groups, he agreed. Lang became executive secretary of the AFL's amnesty committee, and the two became friends.
The first attempt to pass an amnesty resolution at the AFL's national convention failed, but Lang drafted a new one with the help of the socialist lawyer Morris Hillquit, and by 1920 the federation had endorsed amnesty for political prisoners. The backing of the country's largest labour organisation was a major lift for the campaign, and Lang worked as a go-between linking the unions and officials in Washington. In 1921 the campaign focused on Debs, whose sentence President Warren G. Harding commuted in December of that year.
Gompers had shown this kind of independence before. When the government's treatment of the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners seemed too egregious, he offered them assistance even though he opposed their radical politics. His stand on amnesty showed a labour leader willing to defend people he disagreed with once he believed the state had gone too far.
Why it matters
By putting the AFL behind amnesty, Gompers helped build public support for releasing people jailed for their wartime beliefs, a stand for free expression after a period of repression.
About Samuel Gompers
London-born Jewish cigar maker who founded and led the American Federation of Labor for nearly four decades, making collective bargaining a fixture of American working life.
More about Samuel Gompers
- Samuel Gompers spoke for 25,000 jobless workers in 1893During the 1893 depression, Samuel Gompers addressed 25,000 unemployed workers in Chicago and argued that cutting wages hurt not only workers but the whole economy.
- Samuel Gompers championed collective bargainingSamuel Gompers built the AFL around collective bargaining for higher wages, shorter hours and safe working conditions, procedures between labour and management still used today.
- Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of LaborSamuel Gompers helped found the American Federation of Labor in 1886 and led it as president, except for one year, until his death in 1924.
- Samuel Gompers helped build Canada's union movementIn the 1890s and 1900s Samuel Gompers helped Canada's Trades and Labour Congress with money and organisers as part of his vision for an international federation of labour.
- Samuel Gompers chaired the 1919 labour commissionAt the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Samuel Gompers chaired the Commission on International Labour Legislation, whose workers' rights charter was written into the Treaty of Versailles.
- Samuel Gompers gave union members sick and jobless benefitsAfter the cigar makers' union nearly collapsed in the 1870s, Samuel Gompers rebuilt it with sickness, accident, unemployment and death benefits that other unions copied.
Sources
- Samuel Gompers Wikipedia
- Lucy Robins Lang Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.