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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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Samuel Gompers
Age: 74 †
Born: 1850
Born: January 27
Died: 1924
Died: December 13
Labor Union Leader
Trade Unionist
London
England
Choice
Conditions
Choices
Free
Hands
Right
Retain
Must
Determine
Work
Workers

More quotes by Samuel Gompers

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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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.
Samuel Gompers
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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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So long as there is one [person] who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.
Samuel Gompers
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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
Samuel Gompers
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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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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Workingmen are at the foundation of society. Show me that product of human endeavor in the making of which the workingman has had no share, and I will show you something that society can well dispense with.
Samuel Gompers
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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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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.
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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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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What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails more books and less arsenals more learning and less vice more leisure and less greed more justice and less revenge in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
Samuel Gompers
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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
Samuel Gompers
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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.
Samuel Gompers
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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
Samuel Gompers
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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.
Samuel Gompers
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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.
Samuel Gompers