Samuel Gompers - Young Worker at The Bench

Young Worker At The Bench

Owing to dire financial straits, the Gompers family immigrated to the United States in 1863, settling on Manhattan's Lower East Side in New York City. Gompers' father was engaged in the manufacture of cigars at home, assisted for the first year and half by Samuel. In his free time, the young teenager formed a debate club with his friends, an activity which provided practical experience in public speaking and parliamentary procedure. The club drew Gompers into contact with other upwardly mobile young men of the city, including a young Irish-American named Peter J. McGuire who would later play a large role in the AFL.

In 1864, at the age of 14, Gompers joined and became involved in the activities of Cigarmakers' Local Union No. 15, the English-speaking union of cigar makers in New York City. Gompers later recounted his days as a cigar maker at the bench in detail, emphasizing the place of craftsmanship in the production process:

"Any kind of an old loft served as a cigar shop. If there were enough windows, we had sufficient light for our work; if not, it was apparently no concern of the management.... Cigar shops were always dusty from the tobacco stems and powdered leaves. Benches and work tables were not designed to enable the workmen to adjust bodies and arms comfortably to work surface. Each workman supplied his own cutting board of lignum vitae and knife blade.

"The tobacco leaf was prepared by strippers who drew the leaves from the heavy stem and put them into pads of about fifty. The leaves had to be handled carefully to prevent tearing. The craftsmanship of the cigarmaker was shown in his ability to utilize wrappers to the best advantage to shave off the unusable to a hairbreadth, to roll so as to cover holes in the leaf and to use both hands so as to make a perfectly shaped and rolled product. These things a good cigarmaker learned to do more or less mechanically, which left us free to think, talk, listen, or sing. I loved the freedom of that work, for I had earned the mind-freedom that accompanied skill as a craftsman. I was eager to learn from discussion and reading or to pour out my feelings in song."

The day after his 17th birthday, he married his co-worker, 16-year-old Sophia Julian. They had a series of children in rapid succession, with six surviving infancy.

In 1873, Gompers moved to the cigarmaker David Hirsch & Company, a "high-class shop where only the most skilled workmen were employed." Gompers later called this change of employers "one of the most important changes in my life", for at Hirsch's – a union shop operated by an émigré German socialist – Gompers came into contact with an array of German-speaking cigarmakers — "men of keener mentality and wider thought than any I had met before," he recalled. Gompers learned German and absorbed many of the ideas of his shopmates, developing a particular admiration for the ideas of the former secretary of the International Workingmen's Association, Karl Laurrell. Laurrell took Gompers under his wing, challenging his more simplistic ideas and urging Gompers to put his faith in the organized economic movement of trade unionism rather than the socialist political movement.

Gompers later recalled:

"I remember asking Laurrell whether in his opinion I ought to keep in touch with the Socialist movement. He replied, 'Go to their meetings by all means, listen to what they have to say and understand them, but do not join the Party.' I never did, though it was my habit to attend their Saturday evening meetings. There were often good speakers present and the discussions were stimulating. * * *

"Time and again, under the lure of new ideas, I went to Laurrell with glowing enthusiasm. Laurrel would gently say, 'Study your union card, Sam, and if the idea doesn't square with that, it ain't true.' My trade union card came to be my standard in all new problems."

Gompers complained that the socialist movement had been captured by Lassallean advocates of "political party action" rather than the "militant economic program of Marx." He warned delegates to the 1900 annual convention that when men became enthusiastic about socialism, "they usually lost interest in their union."