The United States Economic System
and the Well-being of Workers

Samuel Gompers

[Excerpts from testimony given before the Commitee on Education and Labor, the United States Senate hearings on "Social and Industrial Conditions in the United States", 1919]

The one thing upon which there is general agreement among, men and women who feel for their fellows is that there must come within the very near future in our country, as well as in the other countries of the world, a new concept of the relations between man and man, a new concept of the relations between nations and nations. These concepts must be founded upon the spirit and the purpose of justice and right and give to man an opportunity for the unfolding of his character and his being and for the development of the best that is in him and his; that is, the wife and the children.

I know that there are many panaceas offered for all the ills of the human family, and that not all of them are applicable or practicable. Of one thing we ought to rid ourselves, and that is speculative theories, and indulge ourselves in the effort to solve the practical problems which are confronting us, and to build upon that ... for extension.

It has been said that it is easier to criticize and destroy than it is to advocate a constructive policy. I think that the work in which the men and the women of labor have been engaged for the last 30 years or more has been of a constructive character. When wages have been increased and hours of labor reduced, working conditions, safety, sanitation, have been improved and brought light into the life of the workers. When the morale of the worker has improved, when the years of life, the longevity of the workers has been increased, when their value as producers has been enhanced, and when the understanding and the activities of and in civic pride and duty count for something in the constructive work of the American labor movement, surely something has been accomplished.

And yet we have had many obstacles to meet and to overcome, and some of them have been the result of the best intentions.

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I hope I make myself clear. If a wage earner has some savings or may have acquired money through inheritance or anything of that character, why, then, the situation is changed. But I am speaking of the great mass of the workers of America who must depend upon the wages received by them for the services performed. Their only hope for improvement of the conditions of themselves and their dependents, and to aspire to some really high standard of life, comes through their wages. Any attempt on the part of the Government to fetter the work or to curb that aspiration is so much of an obstacle in the way of progress and uplift and civilization.

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And because in the labor movement in America we have not gone after false gods. In the labor movemtot in America we have not allowed the political parties, no matter how altruistic they may proclaim themselves to be, to dominate or influence our movement, not any Republican Party, not any Democratic Party, not any Socialist Party, or any Prohibition Party, or any Labor Party. We have stood as a movement of Americans workers, believing that under the institutions of our Republic we have the lawful right to organize, to strive for a better life, to work out our own salvation to the last opportunity, otherwise that we could quit work and try to impose justice into the consideration of the mind of the employer.

*****

Give a court or give a government jurisdiction over anything and they will exercise it when the opportunity comes, and exercise it even in a broader manner than was contemplated by the lawmakers.

I know something of the meaning of govermnent, and I say this as one who has the highest and most exalted opinion of the Government and the institutions of the Republic of the United States; but government in itself is a matter of force, a matter of power, and that is dangerous, and I would think twice or more times before I would place absolute power in the hands of the Government over the actions of the people.

*****

Well, when a man has thousands of tons of copper, or hundreds of tons of gold, or hundreds of tons of clothing, and all that, all these things are in concrete form, and counted in dollars and cents. It is the human being who is disregarded. The Department of Labor deals with the human equation of the people of our country. You can not measure that up in dollars and cents. In too many instances the value of human life, the value of human effort, is not counted. We are constantly appealing to Congress to do this, to conserve human life. The most valuable thing on earth is the human. What matters wealth in the bowels of the earth or flying above, or in the waters, if it is not for the human, or if the human is neglected? Where is the necessity of conserving anything else?

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Here we are a nation of a hundred millions of people, with wealth untold, and there is at this moment threatening the people of the United States a state of affairs that no one knows to what it is going to lead. In the coming days and weeks and months of this winter, only just broken upon us, the transition from production on a war footing to a peace basis will be made. There may be thousands and thousands and thousands of men and women unemployed. Thousands will come back wounded and maimed from the battle field. Thousands have remained here. Those who have given service over there, those who have served here, are not going to take it kindly if they are again compelled to stand in the bread line to get a morsel of bread and a cup of coffee or something to sustain life; they are not going to take kindly to it.

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The American labor movement is a constructive movement, because its men and its women believe that in the line in which we are conducting our work, there is hope for protection, for improvement in the conditions and standards of life of the American working people. But if the toilers find they can not secure that improvement and that protection in their sta'ndards of living, if they are to be made the victims through manipulation or mistakes or blunders, be that as it may, they are going to hold that they are willing to work, that the means oi livelihood is there at hand, and they are not going to stand and parley when it comes to a question of bread on the one hand, or starvation on the other.