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

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

As World War I raged on European battlefields in 1916, Americans were divided over whether the United States should participate in the conflict. While the Socialist Party, under the leadership of Eugene Debs, believed that entering the war would benefit only munitions makers and bankers at the expense of the working class, the Wilson administration advocated a policy of national preparedness that would allow the nation to build its strength while yet enjoying peace. Employing a slogan about how he kept the nation out of the war, Wilson defeated the Republican Charles Evans Hughes in the 1916 election—but in April 1917 the United States indeed entered World War I.

Gompers spoke of labor's stance with respect to the war in an address to the National Civic Federation on January 18, 1916, in Washington, D.C. After ruing the horrors of the war, Gompers proclaims his identification with the preparedness policies of the Wilson administration while suggesting that in a period of national emergency it is essential that labor and business cooperate in pursuit of national goals. Gompers informs his audience that he once shared pacifist notions of international brotherhood but that the European conflict has demonstrated that men must be willing to fight for freedom and to combat injustice. Preparedness and the defense of the nation are, accordingly, the obligations of all citizens, he says, and labor is at this point in time more than willing to do its patriotic duty.

Gompers recognized that modern warfare required the mobilization of natural resources, industry, commerce, and labor along with the allowance of increased power to the state. While many Socialists and anarchists on the political left feared the power of the war state, Gompers here expresses the belief that the need for national defense offers an opportunity for labor to make its rightful contributions to national preparedness. Labor, he asserts, will play an important role in the defense sphere if government and businesses embrace the democratic principles of trade unionism. Thus, Gompers states his belief that laborers have earned the unquestioned right to assert their place as citizen-soldiers in the national preparedness state. In this instance Gompers is referring only to voluntary service, but in 1917 he supported conscription, which was opposed by Debs and the Socialist Party. As a result of this support, labor was included as a partner with business and government in the nation's democratic decision making with respect to the war. Asserting labor's preparedness to assume its role in the defense of the nation, Gompers perceives the bloodshed of World War I as offering an opportunity for labor to share in what Wilson would later call a war to make the world safe for democracy.