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Samuel Gompers

1850–1924 · 74 years Tier II

He learned his politics rolling cigars beside German socialists

Portrait of Samuel Gompers — Harris &amp — Ewing Collection — 1905 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Solomon Gumpertz made cigars in Spitalfields, and his son left school three months past his tenth birthday and went into the same trade. The family sailed for New York in 1863 and settled on the Lower East Side, where father and son rolled cigars at home for a year and a half. He joined the cigar makers' union at 14 and married a 16-year-old coworker, Sophia Julian, the day after his 17th birthday. Of their many children, six lived past infancy. The turn came in 1873, when he moved to David Hirsch and Company, a union shop full of German émigrés who argued theory across the benches. One of them, Karl Laurrell, told him to attend the socialists' meetings and never join the party.

He and Adolph Strasser rebuilt Local 144 on high dues and sick, death and out-of-work benefits, which is the machinery everything after depended on. He helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881, and when it reorganized as the American Federation of Labor in 1886 he took the presidency and held it every year but 1895. Wilson put him on the Council of National Defense during the war. BriefHistory has the federation and what it won. This page is about the ledger — who he kept outside it, and what the office took out of him.

He bragged that his federation was the first national organization in the country to demand the exclusion of Chinese laborers. The AFL backed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, published a pamphlet in 1901 titled Meat vs. Rice. American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism. Which shall survive?, and pushed the quota laws of 1921 and 1924 through Congress. He supported Mexican workers joining unions and fought the Industrial Workers of the World as a wrecking crew. He led the anti-socialist faction inside the AFL and by 1920 had reduced it to almost nothing. A federal judge nearly jailed him over a boycott list he published with John Mitchell, and the Supreme Court set the sentence aside.

By 1919 he knew he was going blind, as his father had, and told nobody — he gave up editing The American Federationist and kept an aide beside him to murmur the names of people he could not see. He died at San Antonio on December 11, 1924, and lies at Sleepy Hollow a few yards from Andrew Carnegie. The Post Office issued a three-cent stamp on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Chicago put up its first statue of a labor leader in 2007, and it was him. The federation he built later merged with the industrial unions he would not organize, and the AFL still stands at the front of its name.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Samuel Gompers's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions company
The coalition that became the AFL five years later 1881
American Federation of Labor company
He was its president for all but one year of its first 38 1886
The American Federationist article
The AFL magazine, which he edited until his sight failed 1894
Commission on International Labour Legislation other
He chaired it at the Paris Peace Conference 1919
Seventy Years of Life and Labor book
His autobiography, published the year after he died 1925

Life in brief

with age at each point

January 27, 1850 aged 0 Born in Spitalfields to a cigar maker named Solomon Gumpertz
1863 aged ~13 The family emigrates and settles on the Lower East Side Father and son made cigars at home for the first 18 months.
1864 aged ~14 Joins Cigar Makers Local Union No. 15 at 14
January 28, 1867 aged 17 Marries Sophia Julian the day after his 17th birthday She was 16 and worked beside him. Six of their children survived infancy.
1875 aged ~25 Elected president of Cigar Makers' International Union Local 144 He and Adolph Strasser rebuilt it on high dues and benefit funds.
1886 aged ~36 The American Federation of Labor forms and elects him president
1894 aged ~44 Loses the AFL presidency to John McBride and sits out 1895 It was the only year of his adult life he did not hold the office.
1919 aged ~69 Chairs the labour commission at the Paris Peace Conference Its recommendations fed into the Treaty of Versailles.
December 11, 1924 aged 74 Dies at San Antonio after collapsing in Mexico City He had asked to be got back across the border first.