The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1919-08-29
SAMUEL COMPERS
Pragmatist, Worker, Foe of
Fine-spun Theories, Build
er of Practical Things for
TOilers of World.
By A. Nj. SIMONS
Of the American Alliance 70, Labor
and Democracy.

and Democracy.
Samuel Gompers went to Paris to
fight theoretical, pacifst information
alism. He returned head of IT,, labor
section of League of Nations 1t
IS typical of his entire caree, He
is the paradoxical pragmatist OF the
labor world He is suspicious of
theories. He is all for facts He al
ways asks, "Will it work" II he is
doing it, it usually works.
He will have nothing to do vita the
philosophy that talks of abolishing the
wage system. He has given his whole
life to the work of increasing wages
and shortening hours. He has done
so much in this direction chat some
hope and others fear that his ACTIVITY
threatens to abolish the wage system
When pre-war Germans pointed
with pride to their great Social Deno.
cratic party, to their palatial la'or
temples with shelves fielled with the
literature of scientific, theoretical re-
volt, to their insurance systems and
social legislation, Samuel Gonpe,s
asked, What are your wages How
long do you work? What do you eat
and wear? What sort of homes have
you?" BY comparison on these points
he asks that the American labor
movement and his work with that
movement be judged.
He ridicules talk of class struggle.
But he lives on the fighting edge of
the class conflict. He sneers at theo-
ries of "class consciousness" But he
has held his place at the head of the
American labor movement for forty
years because he has so keen an in
stinct of working class wishes and
interests.
He has been rebuked for "wining
and dining with plutocrats. But he
supped with long spoon and returned
with gains for organized labor.
He opposes state social insurance.
But he helped to build within his own
union system that is the model of
trade union insurance throughout the
world. He has helped to extend that
system to other unions. If ever com
pulsory death, health and unemploy
ment insurance comes, it viii be mod
eled upon the systems of these unions.
He denounced the grandiloquent
phrases of German internationalism
when it boasted of its power to stop
war. When war came and those Ger
man nternationalists joined with
Prussian imperialists it was Gompers
who made the only big move to unite
labor for effective action in protec-
ton of working-class interest during
the war. 1t was Karl Legien, head
of the German-d dominated Internation-
al, who, granting the disirability of
the objects sought, sneered at Com
pers' proposal as impracticable. Then,
in the midst of the war, in spite of
the hostility of international theorists,
Gompers built a new international of
labor, more powerful because more
pragmatic and more truly a union of
national labor, than the old one.
While his critics were at Berne try
ing to build labor international with
phrases in the thin air, Gompers was
at Paris laying the solid institution
of real international, While these
critics charged that he had been duped
into completely in creating new and
reactionary "holy Alliance he was
helping to write the constitution of
the League of Nations the first clauses
of great progressive international
labor charter.
OF course his work is imperfect. All
human work is Only dreams are per
feet. Of course he compromises. He
who works with the granite of facts
yields to the limitations of his ma
terial. Only he who uses the less re-
fractory material of visions can re-
fuse all compromise.
But Gompers is pragmatic. He