Samuel Gompers Quotes
To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work.
Gompers, Samuel. Labor and the Employer. Compiled by Hayes Robbins, E. P. Dutton & Company, 1920, p. 272.
McCain had lost the 2008 Presidential Race and was not going to run again. At this time he was trying to counterbalance the views of some of his party’s new presidential nomination candidates—all men—who wanted to reverse a woman’s Constitutional right to abortion and favored policies that would diminish women’s access to affordable birth control. Some people observed that his logic applied equally well to abortion, but he was at that time not in favor of abortion on demand but did support the right of a woman to choose an abortion in cases of rape, incest or medical conditions where childbirth would endanger the life of the mother.
Wickes was asked if workers did not have a right to form a union. Earlier, many industrialists took the position that there was not even a right to form a union. This evolved to the more politically palatable position stated by Wickes. The result was the same however—no unions because very few—perhaps no—company would recognize a union if it was not required by law, and this is the way the law evolved—to require a company to recognize a union if it is voted upon by a majority of the workers.
After being castigated by Pope Gregory XVI, Lameddais broke with the Church and concentrated on publishing and politics.
He was the first of the modern Western poets and is often referred to as the Father of the Humanities
The Kandahar region of Afghanistan was occupied by the Persians under Gurgin Khan. The Persians at the time were Shiite Muslims while the Afghans were Sunnis. Gurgin Khan forced all the Sunnis to convert to become Shia under threat of death. Mirwais Hotak led a force of freedom fighters, and defeated the Persians, killing Gurgin Khan in the process. There were some Afghan people who by collaborating with the Persians had done very well for themselves. They were anxious about their liberator and some were thinking about sneaking away and joining up with the Persians. He then made this speech, remarkable for any time, and especially so at the early 18th century. Notice, that unlike most other peoples of the Middle East, the Afghan’s placed a high value on freedom, and were willing to fight for it. In that sense, Afghanistan was culturally and politically different from the rest of the Islamic world.
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.
