"To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice
they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what
conditions they will work"
Samuel Gompers was a
cigar-maker who, in 1886, became the first president of the newly-formed
American Federation of Labor. He established the pattern of labor's struggles
for improved working conditions. Often against the wishes of more radical
elements of the labor movement, Gompers favored indigenous approaches to
workers' problems, preferring to operate within American institutions rather
that in oppositions to them.
