Samuel Gompers

“The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.”

“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 better natures.”

“Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country that has no liberty.”

“So long as there is one man who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of labor are too long.”

“To be a good trade unionist is to be a good citizen.”

“Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people.”

“The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers have.”

“All labor has a dignity and a value, and if it is not compensated both in the wages and in the conditions of labor, that dignity is gone.”

“The working people are the cornerstone of every nation.”

“Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.”

“The aim of the labor movement is to improve the material and spiritual well-being of all labor.”

“The greatest force for the uplift of the downtrodden is the organized labor movement.”