Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) devoted his life to improving the conditions of American workers through better wages, shorter workdays, and safer workplaces, achieved through common effort, democratic organization, and practical action. His objective was betterment, or, as he often said, "more." His moral vision was grounded in a commitment to social justice and a passion for service. A cigar maker by trade, he became the American Federation of Labor's first president in 1886 and, except for one year, remained its president until his death, guiding it through prosperity and recession, war and peacetime. By the time Gompers died, the AFL was a major force on the national scene and had claimed over four million members. Gompers was a tireless writer and impassioned speaker, and he left behind an immense archive of articles and editorials, addresses and testimony before a variety of audiences, and extensive correspondence with allies and adversaries alike. His correspondents included trade unionists and political leaders, reformers and radicals, captains of industry defending their positions, and workers asking for help or advice. The twelve volumes of The Samuel Gompers Papers, edited by Stuart B. Kaufman, Peter J. Albert, and Grace Palladino, for the first time make Gompers' wide-ranging and complex documentary legacy accessible to scholars, students, historians, and serious readers in the labor movement and among the public at large. This invaluable comprehensive index provides a key to the Gompers volumes. It not only allows quick reference to individual documents but permits scholars to see at a glance the contours and emphases in subject matter and locate the substantive annotations of key individuals and unions, strikes and lockouts, conferences and meetings, and legislation and key concepts in the history of the Gompers era.

Excerpt from Labor and the Employer Since the first volume of this compilation was prepared the industrial situation in the United States has grown more acute and the essential labor issues more sharply defined. During the war, workingmen and employers gave to the Government a loyal and united service, in shop and mine no less than on the field, which promised to lay broad foundations for an era of good-will and cooperation during the reconstruction and in peace-time relations for years to come. But in the period since the end of hostilities three factors especially have conspired to disappoint or at least postpone these hopes. There has been a continuing pressure of high living costs, where relief was anticipated; an unwillingness of various employing interests to extend to labor in industrial dealings the recognition accorded, at least tacitly, in the many plans and programs jointly undertaken and worked out during the war, and, on the other side, a renewed, widespread and determined effort of radical elements to capitalize the ideas and emotions of the war upheaval for revolutionary propaganda. All three of these factors have affected the mood of labor in many quarters, and lent new force for the time being to the "boring from within" tactics of socialist and syndicalist factions in the trade-union movement. In such a situation, the views of the chief authoritative exponent of American trade-unionism on the outstanding topics discussed in the present volume are at this moment directly to the point. The issues are literally those around which industrial unrest for the most part centers. Thereby the volume adds an immediate practical interest to the permanent educational value which thoughtful students of the unfolding movements of the time will readily see in it. The first volume, Labor and the Common Welfare, embodies Mr. Gompers' interpretation of labor's relation to the well-being of the whole community. The present volume goes to the heart of the ever-present concrete problems of employment relations. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.