Samuel Gompers Quotes
Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.
Gompers, Samuel. "Labor Day - What It Portends." The American Federationist, vol. 5, no. 7, Sept. 1898, p. 139.
An avowed Klansman and white supremacist, Duke was elected to the Louisiana House in 1989 as a Republican, to the chagrin of leading national, state, and local Republicans who disavowed him and refused to support his candidacy. Upon taking the oath of office Duke said:
Having endured centuries of near slavery and discrimination, 70,000 Irish people signed this petition urging American-Irish immigrants to understand the similar plight of African-Americans and to join together with abolitionists. Irish immigrants were nevertheless reluctant to join the abolition movement because the movement was often tied to anti-Catholicism and many feared that the emancipation of Blacks would increase competition for the low-paying jobs immigrants held.
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.
