Quote#Politics & Power
In many instances the conduct of colored workmen, and those who have…
Quote bySamuel Gompers · 1850–1924
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Gompers, Samuel. The Samuel Gompers Papers: The American Federation of Labor and the Great War, 1917-18. Stuart Bruce Kaufman, Peter J. Albert, and Grace Palladino, eds. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006, p. 348..
English (original)
In many instances the conduct of colored workmen, and those who have spoken for them, has not been in asking or demanding that equal rights be accorded to them as to white workmen, but somehow conveying the idea that they are to be petted and coddled and given special consideration and special privilege. Of course that can't be done.
— Samuel Gompers
More from Samuel Gompers
The Soviet scheme of compulsory labor is being applied on such a broad scale and is so boldly presented as a ‘proletarian’ scheme that it constitutes the gravest danger that has confronted labor for centuries.
As far as is possible under the ruthless tyranny the organized labor of [Soviet] Russia is everywhere in a state of full revolt.
What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our …
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, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, …
The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand dollars a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his …
[The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves...