- Person
- Samuel Gompers
- Lived
- 1850–1924
- Field
- Labour movement
- From
- British-born American
The story
The Panic of 1893 set off one of the worst depressions in American history. Railways, banks and thousands of businesses failed, and in some states a quarter or more of the workforce was left without a job. Soup kitchens opened to feed the destitute, and labour unrest reached a peak.
In Chicago the situation was especially tense. In August 1893 the city's mayor, Carter Harrison, warned that the mass of unemployed people would lead to riots that would "shake the country" unless Congress stepped in.
Samuel Gompers had led the American Federation of Labor since its founding in 1886. In late August 1893 he addressed about 25,000 unemployed workers gathered on the shore of Lake Michigan. As reported by the Chicago Tribune on August 31, he asked why the country's wealth should be stored in banks and grain elevators while idle workmen wandered homeless through the streets, and he condemned those who looked down on the peaceful meetings of the jobless and called them riots.
Gompers also made an economic argument that went beyond the crisis of the moment. Workers were consumers too, he said, and when their wages were cut, "they necessarily use less, consume less, because of their reduced purchasing power". Lower wages therefore hurt not only working families but the whole economy. Only those who believed business could prosper by cutting wages, he wrote, had yet to learn the lesson of industrial progress.
The idea that workers' spending power helps keep the economy running became a familiar argument in later debates over wages and recessions. For Gompers it supported the cause he pursued for the rest of his life: higher wages, shorter hours and the right of working people to organise. His speech gave the unemployed a public voice at a time when many in power saw them only as a threat to order.
Why it matters
Gompers gave the unemployed a voice during a national crisis and helped popularise the idea that decent wages sustain the whole economy, an argument still made in debates over pay today.
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 backed amnesty for political prisonersAlthough he strongly supported the First World War, Samuel Gompers later backed amnesty for people imprisoned under wartime emergency laws for their opinions.
- 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
- Panic of 1893 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.