The Connecticut labor press. (New Haven, Conn.) 191?-1921, 1919-05-10
ENGLISH VIEW OF SAMUEL
GOMPERS JUST IMPORTED
Complimentary Sketch Of Federation President Printed in
"UncensOred Celebrities" and Written
by {. 7. Raymond.

The Connecticut Labor Press has re-
ceived "Uncensored Celebrities" Just
published in England and imported to
this country bv Henry Holt & Co. 1t is
by E. T. Raymond, a London journalist,
and most of the sketches were first pub
lished in "Everyman" Of Arthur Hen
derson, one of the English labor lead
ers the book says the present emergency
demands a very extraordinary man, and
Mr.. Henderson is rather quite ordin-
airy man in very extraordinary situa-
ton. The sketch of Mr.. Gompers is as
follows:
"I am an internationalist, but my
doctrine is an addition and not a sub
traction. | must be citizen of America
before can be a citizen of the world !"
These are the words of Mr. Samuel
Gompers, president and to great extent
creator of that powerful organization,
the American Federation of Labour.
They are the more remarkable when we
bear in mind the sort of man Mr. Gem
pers is. Specifically he should have all
the markings of citizen of the world,
and it is not so obvious why he should
be first and foremost an American
patriot. He is of Jewish race. He is of
Dutch and French ancestry. He was
not even American born. Like Mr..
Hughes, of Australia, he first saw the
light as it is dulled down by the eternal
murk of poorer London. It was in the
East End that he lived till he was thir-
teen-a typical child of the London
ghetto, understood, over-nerved, sharp
and avid as the sparrow of the cutters.
His father worked in the cigar trade :;
there was no better opening for the boy,
and when the paternal Gompers went to
New York young Samuel followed the
family occupation. He was soon expert
as a cigar-roller, and even now, after
the lapse of more than half century,
his fingers have not forgotten their cun-
ming:
There is one advantage-if it can be
reckoned such-in manual work of this
type. It takes little demand on the
brain. One can think as one works.
Ones mind is free if ones hand is a
slave. In the cigar shop-it was hardly
a factory-where Young Gompers was
employed, the workers whi1ed away the
tedious hours by reading to one another.
Gompers, who had even in those days
an emphatic and distinct delivery, was
generally employed as reader. 1t was
determined the future of Charles Dick
ems. The boys literary taste rapidly
developed; and the desultory acquire
ments of the shop were an1plihed by a
more systematic attack on the classics
during scanty hours of leisure. Com
pers devoured the English novelists.
Then, firing of fiction, he turned his
attention to John Stuart Mill and the
professors Of the dismal science gen.
orally. 1t was perhaps lucky that he
started with the individualists the Ger
man Socialists and Henry George had
less effect on his mind wher he reached
ho h0E
whether he would in any circumstances
have rendered an unquesnoning homage
to that school. For he was from the
frsl ii wholly practical turn, and far
more interested in the world, and espe-
cially that part of the world in which he
found himself, than in any Utopia.
"It is unnecessary for the present
purpose to follow the career of Mr..
Gompers in detail, or to trace step
step the process by which he built up,
from quite small beginnings, the organ
ization which now yields gigantic pow
er in every part of the United States
of three million men. But it is import
ant to understand what is roughly the
basis of his authority. Mr.. Gompers
has done many things which-would be
considered advanced even by our own
Syndicalists. But the Federation is in
no sense a revolutionary organization.
1t does not exist. for promoting class
war or social unrest; it is a machine
contrived to attain most definite and
concrete ends. Mr.. Gompers himself
regards strike as evidence of failure.
He believes in negotiation, and in hav-
ing case so strong as to compel agree
ment on the part of the opposing party.
He is about as far removed from the
usual conception of an agitator as can
well be in1agined-a man of singularly
orderly mind, almost painfully correct
in his diction, as cool as RockefelleT or
any of the Big Five, pliable as to indif-
ferent matters, inhexible on essentials.
In its methods the American Federation
of Labor, in fact strikingly resembles
the great financial corporation it has to
deal with. 1t is thoroughly business
like institution, and its president is as
see the opposing point of view and to
deal without reference to any social or
political prejudice.
"Such is the man-shrewd, hard
headed, practical. His work has pre-
sented special difficulties of kind not
easy to be grasped on this side of the
Atlantic There is a wide difference
between British and American labor
conditions. Here after all, labor is
manly British; foreign 1nnItrauOn al
fects only a few large towns, and even
in the capital does not materially modify
the character of the population. In
America, on the other hand, the Anglo
Saxon workman-even if we include
the Irishman-is something of rarity.
An enormous amount of the hard work
of the great Republic is done by miscel-
1aneous foreigners even Germans are a
minority among the great crowd re-
cruited from every backward monarchy
in Europe. Among these men general
education is defective, and they speak
verv poor English. The more intelligent
of them bear grudge against civil'Za-
ton, and have no special reason to be
attached to the institutions of the United
States. The control of body which
includes great masses of men of this
class should, one would imagine, be far
moro difficult than the task of British
labor leaders, and when war come to
inRame racial and national differences it
seemed a bold thing on Mr.. Gompers'
part to answer for the solidarity OF
American organized labor.
THAT the claim was no idle one,
however, has been proved by events.
There have been troubles between en-
poyer and EMPLOYED but, on the whole,
astonishing1y few, and those which
have occurred have been settled with
extraordinary facility through machin-
| cry of Mr.. Gompers' own devising.. He
| has worked with the President as Mar
shall Haig with Marshal Foch: The debt
4