Talk:Samuel Gompers

Intro

The beginning of the article could be rewritten. Frozenfood 22:48, 19 January 2007

good point--I expanded it. Rjensen 04:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

"All but one year" is confusing. Perhaps it can be reworded, or simply excluded altogether. Is it so important to include such information in the intro? This fact is stated later in the article anyhow. If you want to keep it, though, a suggestion might be "he was president from year x to y, except for z,..." and so on. I hope this is helpful for you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.211.222.27 (talk) 22:34, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

i fixed that and upgraded the lede to explain his important roles, including politics, spokesman for labor, and minimizing jurisdictional conflicts among unions.Rjensen (talk) 20:55, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi accidentally made text bold. How undo? Bigchrisskelton (talk) 20:49, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Source

"...[t]he superior whites had to exclude the inferior Asiatics, by law, or, if necessary, by force of arms." Can anyone source this? Marskell 20:28, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

at the bottom of the page, someone should just fix it... it leads to someone named william green but it doesn't go to the correct page, so could someone just fix that? i don't really know how to edit that correctly

Beginning of second paragraph: "In 1877 the union had collapsed and Gompers and his friend Adolph Hitler" contains an error. Per Wikipedia's own entry, Adolph Hitler was not born until 1889, so the chances of him doing anything with Gompers in 1877 are pretty slim.

Quotes

I read the WSJ article that contains Gompers' quote about "Colored workmen", and I'm not arguing about accuracy - I'm just concerned that a naked quote doesn't inform us about much. It is especially worrisome that the reference says Gomphers was quoted in The Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2007. Odd, as he was dead for 83 years at the time. The quote was, of course, requoted in the WSJ article of that date, but this miswording highlights the danger of context - or lack there of.--Bookandcoffee 21:14, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, actually it probably doesn't - it just irritated me. :) I do think we need to find some context for this quote, as there are many more quotes, both good and bad I'm sure, that could as easily stand in its place.--Bookandcoffee 21:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

boston police strike?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge#Boston_Police_Strike —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.184.238.224 (talk) 22:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Middle name

He's often referred to as "Samuel L. Gompers". What does the L stand for? Google hasn't helped me with this. -- JackofOz (talk) 05:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Update: I raised this @ Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Samuel L. Gompers' middle name, and it seems I was mistaken. He had no middle name, although many people seem to think he did, and that it started with L. I'm making a note in the article about this. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:14, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems that someone made one of the "references" a note about Gompers' lack of middle name, perhaps a footnote or equivalent would serve better in this instance

-5donuts (talk) 01:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Vandalism?

It seems someone called godlovesfootie has changed a number of s-es to sh's. Samuel Gompers --> Shamuel Gompersh. While of course hilarious (cough) it's incorrect. Can someone perhaps revert to a correct previous version? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.0.115.139 (talk) 22:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Corrected inaccurate information and cleaned up poorly-worded sentences in dedications section

I made a few small changes to the schools paragraph under the dedication section of the article. The page mistakenly listed an elementary school in Watts as being named after Samuel Gompers, when in fact the school in Watts is a middle school, while the elementary school named after Gompers is in Lakewood, California. The Lakewood school was not listed in the article so I added it. In addition, the schools paragraph of the dedications section was confusingly worded and didn't consist of actual sentences, so I added a few words in order to make it more coherent. ColoradoCNC (talk) 20:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Needs less trivia and more work

I beat the hell out of this page, getting it into some sort of skeletal shape for somebody to get serious writing. Samuel Gompers is one of the most important figures of his era and what we have here is a compendium of trivia. The quote section needs to be totally annihilated and the story needs to be told CHRONOLOGICALLY in a biographical manner, not with short hits of topical trivia splayed around willy nilly like it was written by Kurt Vonnegut's junior high school nephew after hitting his daddy's liquor cabinet. Sorry if that's harsh, but things were terrible here and I wielded the chainsaw pretty mercilessly (but still not as much as I needed to). So who is up for the challenge? Carrite (talk) 03:07, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Legacy

It should be mentioned that he got a US Navy ship named after him USS Samuel Gompers (AD-37) He was a big supporter of forced sterilization of the "Unfit" eugenics Herogamer (talk) 15:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Find citations, add the info! The more info the better. - Tim1965 (talk) 22:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

It also should be noted that his views changed, in his youth he was pro-socialist, and as he grew up he became a proponent of pure and simple unionism. He also instilled his views regarding non-white workers in unions and in the labor movement and especially in the AFL. The proof is the lack of minorities in the AFL today. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.14.58.85 (talk) 16:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The point about Gompers' changing philosophy is certainly valid, and may be covered better in other Wikipedia articles, such as Labor federation competition in the United States. (I've added a couple of links.)

By "the AFL today" i assume you mean the AFL-CIO? After a rather abominable early history as the AFL regarding issues of nationality, ethnicity and sex, the AFL-CIO today has a fairly progressive policy on minorities. I just wish their policy was as liberal on the rights of non-affiliated unions to exist, the rights of low paid, temp, and part time workers to join, and the right of workers in other countries to organize freely. Richard Myers (talk) 03:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Problem quotation

The final quotation appears to be a composite of several speeches, and Gompers apparently was wont to use some of the phrases here in multiple speeches. For instance, he used the phrase "the most potent and the most direct social insurance" in at least two speeches I can find. However the entirety of that phrase I have thus far been only able to trace to an address to the National Civic Federation Annual Meeting in January 1917 (see here), and there it appears in a different context and is not preceded by the other quoted material. I have been unable to find another source that cites the quotation. I am inclined to take the quote directly from the referenced address and remove the current version unless someone can come up with a better citation (the WSJ page is gone and I doubt that all of this material came from it). Mangoe (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

• Well, a direct source of that quotation has been found. In fact, better sources for all the quotations has been found. This article is not about all the times Gompers may have used a phrase or sentence, and he is not alone in repeating himself. The question is: Can an authoritative source be found for the quote in question? Yes, and it's now cited properly inline. - Tim1965 (talk) 19:31, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for that, no thanks for the snark. I've expanded the ellipsis since it seems to me that the full quotation gives a better and fuller picture. Mangoe (talk) 21:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

• I don't believe in snarkiness, and wasn't being above, either. You pointed out how Gompers may have repeated himself many times; I pointed out that Gompers is not alone in doing this, and the goal should be to choose a quote and get it cited. There are articles about the history of phrases (like the article about Martin Niemoller's "First they came..." quotation), but it seems to me to be inappropriate to include that discussion in this article. - Tim1965 (talk) 19:35, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Possible Errors

Is there any particular reason why the word standing is in all caps in the Cigarmakers' International Union career section?

-5donuts (talk) 01:30, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Is there any particular reason why the AFL is referred to as the AF of L in the leading the AFL section?

-5donuts (talk) 01:33, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

One of the "references" is a note concerning the name of Samuel Gompers, perhaps a footnote or equivalent is more appropriate than a "reference" in this instance

-5donuts (talk) 01:51, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Tone issues

This page has various issues with tone and encyclopedic style, and needs some help. There are a few strange parentheticals with humor in them, and unclear writing. "He mostly supported Democrats, but sometimes Republicans", and "Many people were devastated by his death. Others were overjoyed that such a man was dead. It brought big political discussion if he should be honored or not. Surprise! He was honored" pop out to me as examples of this. bepvte (talk) 00:45, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Racism and sexism

There's almost no mention of his incredible racism. He believed that Black people were incapable of intelligence, and worked to keep them out of unions or to separate them. He hated Chinese people; didn'tevenwant them in the US, let alone unions. He wanted no women in unions. Why is there no section addressing this issue? This article makes him sound almost like a hero. He was not. Lisachocoholic (talk) 01:09, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

There is a lot wrong with the article. Recently, some people have been removing the negative parts of his history from the page. I've been reverting their changes, but the article needs a lot of rewriting from someone who is more knowledgeable about this subject. bepvte (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2022 (UTC)