Samuel Gompers: Address to the Annual Meeting of the National Civic Federation

After flirting with Marxism in his youth, Samuel Gompers played a leading role in developing craft trade unionism, serving as president of the American Federation of Labor for all but one year from its founding in 1886 until his death in 1924. An opponent of Socialism, Gompers advocated in his speeches and writings for the AFL a faith in voluntarism—a philosophy by which craft unions enjoyed considerable local autonomy. He also believed that better conditions for workers could be obtained through collective bargaining rather than legislative action. The nonpartisanship of Gompers and the AFL, however, was abandoned in 1912 with the endorsement of Woodrow Wilson for president. Labor’s alliance with Wilson’s Democratic administration, as well as cooperation with the National Civic Federation, provided Gompers with considerable influence on the national stage, although Gompers and labor played less of a role in the Republican administrations of the 1920s.

Although he was not a fiery orator, Gompers was an effective speaker and writer who worked tirelessly on behalf of labor during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, establishing the AFL as an important national organization. Gompers was at the zenith of his political influence on the national stage when he gave his 1916 Address to the Annual Meeting of the National Civic Federation, in which he embraced national preparedness for war while criticizing those on the political left advocating pacifism. The cooperative approach urged in this speech led Gompers and the AFL into participation with the National War Labor Board, but the alliance with business failed during the postwar period, as AFL membership declined.