The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish. — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
Our mission has been the protection of the wage-worker, now; to increase his wages; to cut hours off the long workday, which was killing… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service, we have sustained… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . . There is not a right too… — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle . . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization. — Samuel Gompers Copy Share Image
