Samuel Gompers

(1850–1924)

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Personal Life

Samuel Gompers was born on January 27, 1850 in London. He only had four years of schooling in a Jewish school before he was made an apprentice to a cigar maker. However, he did attend night classes in London and worked during the day. He and his family moved to New York City in 1863, where he became active in various fraternal orders, clubs, and labor unions. In 1864 he joined the Cigar Maker's International Union. Gompers founded Local 144 and was the president of this union in 1874.

Samuel Gompers met his wife, Sophia Julian, when her father asked him to lok after her while he was out of town.  They were both sixteen, and on Samuel's seventeeth birthday, they got married. Together they had a large family, and they had twelve or fourteen children. However, only five of these children lived to be adults, and only four survived to the age of forty.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Samuel_Gompers_and_wife.jpg

Historical & Political Impact

Samuel's Labor Involvement:

When Gomper's started to work in David Hirsch's cigar factory, he started to learn a lot about the teachings of Marx and socialism. Hirsch would allow his employees to study and read.

During the 1870s many events helped Gompers to become a labor leader. He witnessed the strike of the Tenth Ward workers for shorter workdays. He realized that the strikes were not well planned and easily stopped by the government. He also noted that the cigar industry was becoming less personal with the invention of the cigar mold and how poorly workers were treated. Gompers was blacklisted when the Cigar Makers' Union tried to encourage laws that would prevent the occurance of sweatshops.

Gompers was invited to a meeting for the Knights of Labor in 1869. He was interested in the Knights, but he never really accepted it. The Knights organized a union for cigar makers to compete with the Cigar Makers' Union that Gompers was in, and Gompers only joined the Knights to get some of their cigar labels. In 1881 Gompers and some others started the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions didn't have much power. It's main focus was on skilled workers. In 1886 some iron workers went on striked against the International Harvester Company in Chicago. Police came to break up the strike, and a bomb killed one policeman and injured others. Some workers were killed at the demonstration. Shortly after the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions was replaced with the American Federation of Labor. Gompers was the president of the AFL. The AFL mainted more wages, more freedom, and shorter working hours.

During the first world war Samuel Gompers was appointed a member of the Advisory Committee to the Council of National Defense by President Woodrow Wilson.

Named In His Honor:

The USS Samuel Gompers is named after Samuel Gompers.

A housing development in New York is named after Samuel Gompers.

The Samuel Gompers Monument is also in honor of Samuel Gompers.

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Sources .

Worksheet:

Samuel Gompers.doc 

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Page created by: Rachael L.

Avon High School, Avon, Indiana

Date created: March 21, 2008

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