O N T H E G O A L S O F T R A D E

U N I O N S

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–––––––––––––––––––––– Samuel Gompers ––––––––––––––––––––––

…The reduction of the hours of labor reaches the very root of society. It gives

the workingman better conditions and better opportunities, and makes of him

what has been too long neglected—a consumer instead of a mere producer.…

The general reduction of the hours of labor to eight per day would reach

further than any other reformatory measure; it would be of more lasting

benefit; it would create a greater spirit in the working man; it would make him a

better citizen, a better father, a better husband, a better man in general.…

…Strikes ought to be, and in well-organized trade unions they are, the last

means which workingmen resort to to protect themselves against the almost

never satisfied greed of the employers. Besides this, the strike is, in many

instances, the only remedy within our reach as long as legislation is entirely

indifferent to the interests of labor.…

…[T]he organizations of labor are the conservators of the public peace; for

when strikes occur among men who are unorganized, often acting upon illyconsidered

plans, hastily adopted, acting upon passion, and sometimes not

knowing what they have gone on strike for, except possibly some fancied

grievance, and hardly knowing by what means they can or may remedy their

grievances, each acts upon his own account without the restraint of

organization, and feels that he serves the cause of the strike best when he does

something that just occurs to him; while the man who belongs to a trades union

that is of some years’ standing is, by the very fact of his membership of the

organization and his experience there, taught to abide by the decision of the

majority.… Trades unions are not barbarous, nor are they the outgrowth of

barbarism. On the contrary they are only possible where civilization exists.

Trades unions cannot exist in China; they cannot exist in Russia; and in all those

semi-barbarous countries they can hardly exist, if indeed they can exist at all.

But they have been formed successfully in this country, in Germany, in

England, and they are gradually gaining strength in France. In Great Britain they

are very strong; they have been forming there for fifty years, and they are still

forming, and I think there is a great future for them yet in America. Wherever

trades unions have organized and are most firmly organized, there are the

right[s] of the people most respected. A people may be educated, but to me it

appears that the greatest amount of intelligence exists in that country or that

State where the people are best able to defend their rights, and their liberties as

against those who are desirous of undermining them. Trades unions are

organizations that instill into men a higher motive-power and give them a higher

goal to look to.…

The trades unions are by no means an outgrowth of socialistic or

communistic ideas or principles, but the socialistic and communistic notions are

evolved from some of the trades unions’ movements.…

I believe that the existence of the trades-union movement, more especially

where the unionists are better organized, has evoked a spirit and a demand for

reform, but has held in check the more radical elements in society.

Source: Testimony before U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor by

Samuel Gompers, August 16, 1883, in Relations Between Labor and Capital,

Report and Testimony, 48th Congress. (Washington: Government Printing

Office, 1885), pp. 1, 293–295, 299, 367–368, 373–375.