David Levering Lewis Quotes

The labor movement was a reaction to capitalism.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

I want to see the writers strike because the writers, god bless them, are the only true commies we have in Hollywood.

When the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century brought a rapid increase in wealth, the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth they were creating was conceded only after riots and strikes.

The strongest form of fight against the capitalist class is the strike. Strikes are necessary, ever again, against the capitalists’ tendency to increase their profits by lowering wages and increase the hours or the intensity of work.

The strikebreaker is the hero of American industry.

The strike is the weapon of the industrial jungle.

The number of men out on strike exceeds that of any other industrial contest in the history of our country.

We have reached the point where we must advise the miners … to either continue working under these unjust and tyrannical conditions or counsel a strike.

Thank God we have a system of labor where there can be a strike.

Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth. Financiers are behind the unions and their object is to kill competition so as to reduce the income of the workers and eventually bring on war. We will never recognize the United Auto Workers Union.

I wouldn't have supported invoking Taft-Hartley to help George Bush end a strike.

While unions did not play a part in my family life when I was being brought up, my early years were most certainly spent in a working-class community.

I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.

When the unions were fighting me 45 years ago, they could never beat me.

I'm prepared to fight as hard as I can against unions entering the University on behalf of our students.

The clash between capital and labour, between those seeking to maximise profit and those with only their toil to sell, was the driving force for the creation of the trade unions in the 19th century.

The late development of mass industrial organization in the United States has both stimulated and retarded the political development of the American working class.

After I had been working as a cap maker for three years it began to dawn on me that we girls needed an organization. The men had organized already, and had gained some advantages, but the bosses had lost nothing, as they took it out on us.

The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.

Without Socialism the working class is a heterogeneous mixture of different categories, some of which have independent, varying interests, sometimes opposed to each other.

I want to make a film about a factory worker.

I was anxious to save the great coal operators and all of the class of big propertied men, of which they were members, from the dreadful punishment which their own folly would have brought on them if I had not acted.

Labor cannot on any terms surrender the right to strike.

Labor Unions are revolutionary and anarchistic and a menace to the entire social and industrial system of the United States.