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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.

Samuel Gompers

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Samuel Gompers
Age: 74 †
Born: 1850
Born: January 27
Died: 1924
Died: December 13
Labor Union Leader
Trade Unionist
London
England
Compulsion
Lasting
Gain
Gains
Ever
Come

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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . . There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.
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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
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One fact stands out in bold relief in the history of man's attempts for betterment. That is that when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused, and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to man's reason can a movement succeed.
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[The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves.
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Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better men, time to become better women, time to become better and more independent citizens.
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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
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So long as there is one [person] who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.
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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 for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Dayis devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.
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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
Samuel Gompers
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The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle . . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.
Samuel Gompers
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You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
Samuel Gompers
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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.
Samuel Gompers
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There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.
Samuel Gompers
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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
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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 him to improve the safety and the sanitary conditions of the workshop to free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
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Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
Samuel Gompers