Samuel Gompers Quotes
In all ages wherever a tyrant has shown himself he has always found some willing judge to clothe that tyranny in the robes of legality.
At the time, it was relatively easy to find some sympathetic judge who saw labor unions as a menace, to issue an injunction forbidding a strike. It would take weeks, months and often years in those days to get to higher courts for appeals so this was a common strike breaking technique. That was the immediate stimulus for the statement. However it has been true generally. Almost all tyrannies operate under the cloak and authority of a judiciary and legal system which they control or is intimidated. 25 years after this quotation the world would see the worst example when the German judiciary supported and found legal all the Nazi excesses including the holocaust.
Samuel Gompers, 1850-1924, President, American Federation of Labor, Letter on labor in industrial society to Judge Peter Grosscup, September 1894
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
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Samuel Gompers was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted through organization and collective bargaining, to secure shorter hours and higher wages, the first essential steps, he believed, to emancipating labor. He also encouraged the AFL to take political action to "elect their friends" and "defeat their enemies". He mostly supported Democrats, but sometimes Republicans. He strongly opposed Socialists. During World War I, Gompers and the AFL openly supported the war effort, attempting to avert strikes and boost morale while raising wage rates and expanding membership.
