Samuel Gompers labored to more than half a century for the advancement of men who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. Few men have devoted themselves so completely or effectively to the service of others. He began when the ideas he sponsored were unpopular among those for whom he labored. He started as an English Jew making cigars in New York City, but possessed of the idea that working men should stand by working men in a common effort to get more money, shorter hours and better working conditions. He lived to become the leader of millions of wage earners organized into one hundred and ten national labor unions.

His inspirations had the merit of service to those who needed courage and leadership.

dent almost without interruption for a period which approaches half a century. No other labor union in the world so completely absorbs and dominates the labor movement of any country. No other union leader has been so continuously honored by receiving the office of chief executive from so many people for so many years. The railroad brotherhoods, representing 500,000 workers continue out of the Federation, vital movements under able leadership have created so-called outlaw organizations in the needle trades, and the I. W. W.s, which are outbursts of discontent rather than organizations, have at times occupied the headlines of the press; but, on the whole, the Federation, a conservative force among the workers, has been the spokesman of the labor movement

His efforts had the merit of being successful.

The sine qua non of a labor union is to make men organize and stay organized. To this central idea Mr. Gompers devoted himself. His natural gifts as an organizer, rare talents as an orator, his effectiveness as an evangelist in arousing and organizing emotional forces go far to explain his successes and his failures, his virtues and his faults. His intolerance of every idea or influence which seemed to him to conflict or retard the growth and power of unions was so intense that it often brought him into a position of intellectual embarrassment and crass partizanship and it grew as opposition to unrestrained trade union power grew.

Trade unionism is not the first great social movement that intolerance has promoted. But in the case of the American trade union movement it had the bad result of openly resenting and repelling suggestions or guidance from intellectual groups. Again and again Mr. Gompers vehemently informed intellectuals that trade unionism could take care of itself and it was this same attitude which led him to withdraw from the American Association of Labor Legislation which he felt professed to know more about the best interests of the workers than the unions themselves. The contrast with Great Britain in this respect was remarkable. Such a close alliance as existed between the British union movement and the Fabyian Society and men like Sidney Webb was incompatible with the Gomperian point of view.

Mr. Gompers' career as a leader began when the Knights of Labor, struck by the repercussion of the Haymarket bombings, staggered into disintegration. Only a few Only a few remnants of the labor movement formed the nucleus upon which he had to build. Today his monument is the American Federation of Labor, of which he has been the presi

giving support to dissenting or rival movements.

From the outset, Mr. Gompers disapproved the industrial form of organization upon which the Knights of Labor was built, and looked to the craft union as the only cohesive basis to carry out the purposes to which he was devoted. The craft union served his purposes because it was less class conscious and less radical in its aims. It did not seek a social revolution, with class reared against class, but the economic bargain between the organized workers and their employers in each particular industry. It was more cohesive because it bottomed solidarity on natural economic groupings, where people of a particular craft, having their own special problems, were thrown together for the consideration of those things which they understood and in which they had daily and intimate interest. Autonomy of each craft, free from interference on the part of the Federation, was the basic idea often expressed. Yet this idea was occasionally abandoned in the face of hard facts. On several occasions the Federation confronted an affiliated union with the alternative of merging with some other affiliated union, or forfeiting its charter and being attacked as nonunion. Some unions with distinguished traditions were roughly handled this way in the interest of militaristic conformity, but on the whole the principle of craft autonomy was upheld.

Above all things Mr. Gompers sincerely feared any form of governmental regulation which would qualify the individual or collective liberties of the working classes. In 1915 the State of Colorado, having just experienced a labor conflict that reached the dignity of civil war, determined to avoid a repetition of such a calamity by the establishment of an Industrial Commission, with power to make compulsory investigations of industrial disputes, pending which strikes and lockouts were forbidden. In August, 1915, the Barbers' Union, of Pueblo, objected

because O. B. Forshey, the proprietor of a barber shop, installed an improved razor sharpening machine and advertised that he would sharpen razors for the public at prices lower than those fixed by the union by-laws. Both parties appealed to the newly-created Commission which stated that it would not attempt to bind either, but suggested that the union withhold action for a few days. The delay led to the barber's surrender. The sole issue was whether the public should get the benefit of this new invention, and the public lost. Mr. Gompers objected because the Commission "usurped" powers and he published an editorial under the caption of "Invasion by Commission," saying:

"Such regulating power exercised by any political agency, *** would sap the militant spirit and the resourcefulness and independence that have made the trade union organizations of America the most powerful and most effective organizations that are to be found any where."

From that time on the Federation, having scented danger, declared for a governmental policy of "hands off,"

so far as the activities of unions were concerned.

When the Adamson Act, passed by Congress under threat of a railroad strike, raised the wages of railroad employes, and the Supreme Court sustained its constitutionality on the theory that Congress had the right to fix wages or provide for compulsory arbitration in railroad disputes, he declared the court had opened the way for "the establishment of industrial slavery and a fugitive slave law." Afterwards when the Transportation Act of 1920 was passed with the provision for a Railroad Labor Board with power to make its findings public, but without legal sanction to enforce its findings, Mr. Gompers again scented danger even in this modicum of public intervention, and declared "my advice to the railroad union was to refuse to appoint representatives to the Board. This would have made it impossible for the Board to function." In his cross-examination by Samuel Untermyer, when the Building Trades Investigation was being conducted in New York City, he admitted that many evils and mischief grow out of the activities of labor unions, and that in organized trades the expulsion of a man from the union practically meant "capital punishment." But he declared that even so the courts should not be allowed to intervene to correct any of these wrongs, and that those wrongdoers should be left to the processes of self-cure.

At one time The New York World publicly addressed certain questions to Mr. Gompers asking why labor rejected compulsory arbitration and what guarantees the public would have that labor would keep its de

mands within the bounds of reason if nationwide unionization and strikes in basic industries were sanctioned. To the first question, Mr. Gompers replied that compulsory arbitration meant involuntary servitude. To the second question, he declared his distrust in the fairness of the public by stating: "The employer is always right, the employe always wrong in the eyes of a misinformed public. *** The worker is always ready to meet his employer half way. The employer refuses to go that far in adjusting disputes unless faced by a strike." A third question by The World asked if there was any way of differentiating between the methods of averting strikes where the public is directly affected, and Mr. Gompers replied: "The difference between a strike where the public is not inconvenienced and where it is should have no bearing on the justice of the dispute." He did not believe the worker should "submit his case to the general! public for a decision when he knows the general public is exceedingly apprehensive of the slightest inconvenience.”

Of course, Mr. Gompers bitterly opposed the Kansas Industrial Court. This opposition lead to a debate between him and Governor Allen of Kansas in May, 1920, where the most significant feature was the question propounded by Governor Allen as to whether the public has any rights in the case of a strike which cuts off the necessaries of life and threatens public peace and public health. To this, Mr. Gompers was unable to make reply. He himself, realizing in what an unsatisfactory position he was placed, issued a statement two days later in further explanation of his position, in which he failed to concede any right on the part of the neutral public to protect itself. Perhaps his position is best summed up by his conclusion that "general welfare cannot be served by denying fundamental liberties to the useful members of society."

Mr. Gompers' attitude on the courts placed him in the most unfortunate position before the public, and grew out of the same line of philosophy which lead him to fear any encroachments on the part of government. He felt that in both the Danbury Hatters' case and the Buck Stove and Range Co. case that the courts were interfering with the legitimate liberties of organized labor.

He believed in the boycott condemned by the courts "though it starve a man to death," or "spell ruin and bankruptcy to the boycotted." He contended for the right of labor to use its combined economic power in any way that it saw fit. He upheld the right to carry on boycotts, primary or secondary, and strikes, direct or sympathetic, regardless of the injury to the public or private individuals, and he assailed the courts whenever they, in any way, interfered with the fullest exercise of this right. This issue became so intense that he finally led the American Federation of Labor, representing several millions of

workers, to declare that any injunction offending this righteous principle, as he saw it, should be openly flouted by the workers "let the consequences be what they may." Formal resolutions to this effect were passed at successive conventions of the Federation-thus presenting the extraordinary spectacle of the representatives of millions of workers openly declaring their determination to resist the courts. When the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of the Duplex Printing Press Co., held, in effect, that the labor provisions of the Clayton Act were merely declarations of the common law as it had theretofore existed, Mr. Gompers, in a moment of exasperation, asserted again the natural rights of labor, and declared: "We cannot admit that the court has a right to define those rights." At all times, he opposed any method by which labor unions were brought within the reach of civil process. The decision of the Supreme Court holding that labor unions were suable as voluntary associations brought forth no expression of approval from him, although, in the particular case in question, damages had been awarded for violence, arson, and murder.

The new status thus given labor unions by the Supreme Court of the United States carried with it implications highly flattering to Mr. Gompers' work, which he failed to acknowledge. He saw in this decision only an opportunity for the enemies of labor to impede the activities of trade unions by legal process. Perhaps he saw, but did not care to admit, that the courts of the United States had given labor unions a standing and distinction such as the courts of no other country had ever given them. For generations, unions had been struggling against prohibitory laws, and had finally won from society an attitude of tolerance, but it was not until the decision of the Coronado Coal Co. case in 1922 that they were, in effect, given a corporate existence out of which inevitably will grow many responsibilities and privileges.

Mr. Gompers' financial honesty was beyond cavil. Contemptible efforts to trap him only insulted him, and failed as they should fail. Offers of a fortune to use his influence to prevent the production of munitions for the war were spurned, as any one who knew him could predict.

His intellectual processes, or at least insofar as they showed themselves in public utterances, often exhibited much sophistry. He was able to rise to great heights of oratory in championing the rights of union men to organize, and in condemning all discrimination against union men on the part of employers as an interference with the liberty of the worker. On the other hand he never acknowledged that the combined discrimination against nonunion men in organized trades often presented a far more effective and wide-spread interference with the liberty of

the worker than that usually practiced by the anti-union employer. When the Massachusetts' courts granted the application of the I. W. W. for an injunction restraining an affiliated union of the Federation from interfering with the employment of members of the I. W. W., Mr. Gompers wrote "Court Filches Labor's Rights."

He advocated various methods to destroy or qualify the power of the courts to declare laws unconstitutional. One measure introduced by Senator Owen provided that any judge who declared a law unconstitutional should ipso facto have his office vacated. Another device was to empower Congress to re-enact by a two-thirds vote any measure declared unconstitutional by the courts. More recent efforts found expression in the bill proposed by Senator Borah requiring the concurrence of seven judges out of nine before a bill should be declared unconstitutional. Mr. Gompers declared that the power exercised by the courts in this respect constituted "a blasphemy on the rights and claims of free men of America."

It was the economic rather than the political activities of labor in which Mr. Gompers placed his greatest faith. In the face of growing opposition among labor men, intellectuals, progressives, and social workers, he adhered to his conviction that there should be no labor political party, but that the unions should constitute a non-partisan political organization, seeking to throw the votes of labor to those office seekers, Democrats or Republicans, who espoused the cause of labor. "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, secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest, trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession." This program lead to active campaigns to defeat such distinguished public servants as Littlefield, Cannon, Gillett, Weeks, Gardner, Sherman, and others. It reached its high tide of success in 1913, when, at the instance of labor, Congress enacted and President Wilson signed a bill appropriating funds to enforce the Anti-Trust Law upon condition that no part of those funds should be used to enforce that law against organized labor—a bill which President Taft had vetoed. Mr. Gompers declared "that it constituted a decisive victory for the rights and protection of labor," and was only attained "after twentythree years of effort." Shortly afterward, the Clayton Act, with its labor provisions, heralded by the Federation as Labor's Magna Charta, was enacted, and Mr. Gompers declared: "After twenty-four years, the organizations of labor have freed themselves from this strange entanglement." This was the period when Labor sat in the galleries of the national legislature, as men did in the days of the French Revolution, and watched legislators record what they did not believe merely because labor demanded