Leland Stanford Quotes

Only with the tools of production in their own hands could the workers ever hope to control their own lives and receive the fruits of their labor.

Labor can and will become its own employer through co-operative association.

And I think we understand we cannot make social change for all workers until we have enough strength, membership strength, and at the same time having membership strength and only making change for a limited group of workers is not what our country really needs for people that work.

The employer class is less indispensable in the modern organization of industries because the laboring men themselves possess sufficient intelligence to organize into co-operative relation and enjoy the entire benefits of their own labor.

I will never apologize for standing up for my fellow Teamsters and all American workers.

The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations.

The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

And if you are going to truly stand with workers, it also means embracing solidarity, not attempting through lame talking points to pit union workers against non-union workers.

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.

I came from a family where joining a union was the expected thing to do. I've always believed that the relationship between an employer and an individual worker is fundamentally unequal.

In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.

Unions are about the collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital.

Trade unions are a force for good - a force for a more equal society.

Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.

That co-operation and peace rather than industrial strife and strikes will best promote the prosperity of the employees the company and all of the people and even strengthen the nation.

I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

When those who do the work own the machines, when those who toil control the invention, then, and not till then, can the world be civilized or free, When these forces shall do the bidding of the individual, when they become the property of the mechanic instead of the monopoly, when they belong to labor instead of what is called capital, when these great powers are as free to the individual laborer as the air and light are now free to all, then, and not until then, the individual will be restored and all forms of slavery will disappear

The labor question is the same the world over, and laborers of the world should clasp hands for their common wealth.

I am always on the side of labor when there is any compromise to be made.

What labor is demanding all over the world today is not a few material things like more dollars and fewer hours of work, but the right to a voice in the conduct of industry.

I will only stop defending the rights of workers when I die.

No strike is a loss or failure to the workers, even if the point sought is not gained for the time being. If naught else they teach the capitalists that they are expensive luxuries.

It is gratifying that societies of this kind [labor unions], composed either of workers alone or of workers and employers together, are being formed everywhere, and it is truly to be desired that they grow in number and in active vigor.

The labor movement has lifted more people out of poverty than all the programs in the country.

With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.