Title: American Federation of Labor
Content:   The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was organized as an association of trade unions in 1886. The organization emerged from a dispute with the Knights of Labor (K of L) organization, in which the leadership of that organization solicited locals of various craft unions to withdraw from their International organizations and to affiliate with the K of L directly, an action which would have taken funds from the various unions and enriched the K of L's coffers. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions also merged into what would become the American Federation of Labor. One of the organizations embroiled in this controversy was the Cigar Makers' International Union (CMIU), a group subject 
Title: American Federation of Labor
Content:  The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States founded in Columbus, Ohio, in December 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor union. Samuel Gompers was elected the full-time president at its founding convention and reelected every year, except one, until his death in 1924. He became the major spokesperson for the union movement. The AFL was the largest union grouping in the United States for the first half of the 20th century, even after the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) by unions which were expelled by the AFL in 1935. The Federation was founded and dominated by craft unions throughout its first fifty years, after which many craft union affiliates turned to organizing on an industrial union basis to meet the challenge from the CIO in the 1940s. In 1955, the AFL merged with the CIO to create the AFL-CIO, which has comprised the longest lasting and most influential labor federation in the United States to this day.
Title: Pan-American Federation of Labor
Content:  Pan-American Federation of Labor (Confederación Obrera Panamericana) was an international trade union organization, promoted by the American Federation of Labor. The organization was founded at a conference in Laredo, Texas, United States in December 1918. At the conference, 72 delegates took part, 46 from USA, 21 from Mexico (representing CROM) and five from Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Colombia. The conference elected Samuel Gompers as the president of the organization. The organization was later joined by reformist labor movements from Cuba, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua and Bolivia. AFL and CROM were, however, the only national trade union federations that joined the organization. The PAFL was seen by many labor leaders as an 
Title: Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions
Content:  The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (FOTLU) was a federation of labor unions created on November 15, 1881, at Turner Hall in Pittsburgh. It changed its name to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) on December 8, 1886.
Title: History of the socialist movement in the United States
Content:  American unions of the time included the American Federation of Labor, the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In 1869, Uriah S. Stephens founded the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, employing secrecy and fostering a semireligious aura to "create a sense of solidarity". The Knights comprised in essence "one big union of all workers". In 1886, a convention of delegates from twenty separate unions formed the American Federation of Labor, with Samuel Gompers as its head. It peaked at 4 million members. In 1905, the IWW (or "Wobblies") formed along the same lines as the Knights to become one big union. The 
Title: American Federation of Labor
Content:  the AFL founded in 1881. Forty-three invitations were mailed, which drew the attendance of 20 delegates and letters of approval from 12 other unions. At this preliminary gathering, held in Donaldson Hall on the corner of Broad and Filbert Streets, the K of L was charged with conspiring with anti-union bosses to provide labor at below going union rates and with making use of individuals who had crossed picket lines or defaulted on payment of union dues. The body authored a "treaty" to be presented to the forthcoming May 24, 1886, convention of the Knights of Labor, which demanded that the K of L cease attempting to organize members of International Unions into 
Title: American Federation of Labor
Content:   Convinced that no accommodation with the leadership of the Knights of Labor was possible, the heads of the five labor organizations which issued the call for the April 1886 conference issued a new call for a convention to be held December 8, 1886, in Columbus, Ohio, in order to construct "an American federation of alliance of all national and international trade unions." Forty-two delegates representing 13 national unions and various other local labor organizations responded to the call, agreeing to form themselves into an American Federation of Labor. Revenue for the new organization was to be raised on the basis of a 
Title: American Federation of Labor
Content:  Some unions within the AFL helped form and participated in the National Civic Federation. The National Civic Federation was formed by several progressive employers who sought to avoid labor disputes by fostering collective bargaining and "responsible" unionism. Labor's participation in this federation, at first tentative, created internal division within the AFL Socialists, who believed the only way to help workers was to remove large industry from private ownership, denounced labor's efforts at cooperation with the capitalists in the National Civic Federation. The AFL nonetheless continued its association with the group, which declined in importance as the decade of the 1910s drew to a close.
Title: United Public Workers of America
Content:  of Labor (AFL) acted to bring the various local unions together to form a single national union, the National Federation of Federal Employees, in September 1917. In December 1931, NFFE disaffiliated from the AFL, its national trade union center. The break occurred over the AFL's refusal to abandon its support for craft unionism and cease its attacks on industrial unions. The AFL responded by chartering a new federal employees union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), in October 1932 from several units of the NFFE which did not wish to leave the labor federation. In 1936, the AFL chartered the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to represent non-federal government workers 
Title: American Federation of Government Employees
Content:  AFGE was founded on October 17, 1932, by local unions loyal to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and left the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) when that union became independent of the AFL (NFFE in 1998 became part of the IAMAW, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO). AFGE is a federation of local unions, with each local maintaining autonomy through operating under local constitutions that comply with the AFGE National constitution ratified originally during its founding in 1932. Federal employees' right to organize and bargain binding labor contracts was established in law by the Civil Service Reform Act 

Question: who formed the american federation of labor?
Answer: Samuel Gompers.