United labor bulletin., 1911-11-23
GOMPERS' REPORT
is OPTIMISTIC
Federation Head Says Reforms
Must Be Won Through Ev0lu-
ton, Not by Revolution.

After the preliminaries were COM
pIeted the thirty-first annual convention
of the American Federation of Labor
listened to President Gompers' report,
the striking introductory passages of
which are herewith presented: "The
groundwork principle of Americas labor
movement has been to recognize that
first things must come first The primary
essential in our mission has been the
protection of the wage-worker, now; to
increase his wages, to cut hours off the
long workday, which was killing him; to
improve the safety and the sanitary con-
dtions of the workshop; to free him
from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise,
which served to make his existence
slavery. These, in the nature of things,
repeat, were and are the primary OBJ
jects of trade unionism.
Our great Federation has uniformly
refused to surrender this conviction and
to rush to the support of any one of the
numerous society-saving or society-de-
stroying schemes which decade by de-
cade have been sprung upon this
country. score of such schemes, hav-
ing national scope. and being for the
passing day subject to popular discus
sion, have gone down behind the horizon
and are now but ancient history. But
while our Federation has thus been con-
servative, it has ever had its face turned
toward whatever reforms, in politics or
economies, could be of direct and OBJ
vious benefit to the working classes. 1t
has never given up its birthright for a
mess of pottage. 1t has pursued its
avowed policy with the conviction that
if the lesser and immediate demands of
labor could not be obtained now from
society as it is, ii would be mere dream
ing to preach and pursue that willo-the-
wisp, a new society constructed from
| .-r-
on which even the dreamers themselves
have never agreed. - 1t matters
little whether any party, whatever its
ayowals and intentions, succeeds in one
place or another, now and again, in this
state or that. The things desirable, in
contrast TO party organization, methods.
war cries and promesises, are those re
sulting in permanency of efficient meth
ods. in possibilities of advancing one by
one the propositions favorable to the
wage-workers. and in the opportunities
for the full play of the powers of all the
individuals of the community capable of
promoting through legislation the vel
fare OF the country and especially of the
masses. This condition is being rapidly
established, as We have said, through
the energy and activity and coneentra-
ton of aim of the American Federation
of Labor. No other scheme of proceed
ure for the advancement of the interests
and well being of the working classes
measures up with the policy of our Fed
Grafton in the slightest degree. The his
tory of the working class movement of
Europe in recent years is one of reces-
sion from cloud-land utopias and of ap-
proach toward the policy of our Fedora
ton Revolution is 10 come by way OF
reform, and not by social cataclysm. The
human conscience is to be society's
guide. The social struggle is to be good
and right against evil and wrong. The
attainment of the maximum of liberty
for every individual, the abolition of
poverty, the best order in the produc-
tion and equitable distribution of wealth
in word the establishment of the
conditions for the highest possible
earthly happiness for mankind-all this
must come through taking the best that
civilization has given us and looping of.
one by one. its imperfect growths and its
baneful eNcrescences."