I have been reading, off and on, in a very spotty fashion, the autobiography that my great, great grandfather, Samuel Gompers wrote, back in 1923. I have now settled somewhat into a routine. I try to read something of a religious nature in the a.m. and something on my kindle at night (that way I don't have to put on the bedside light and bother Rick) and this book I keep in the car to read while I am waiting outside Becky's voice lesson or waiting for Sean to come out of his high school at 3:00 p.m.
I decided to do a running commentary on it, since I am finding it really fascinating. I'll do chapter summaries. I haven't gotten very far into the book at all because for a couple weeks there it got put to the side.
Chapter 1 - East Side London to East Side New York - this chapter is so interesting. You get an intimate account of what it was like to grow up in industrial London in the 1850s. He was born to Dutch Jewish parents and grew up in an area of London called Spitalfields across from a silk factory. His was a warm, loving and large family. They were pretty poor but he loved the freedom of playing in the streets with all the other children. He didn't have much schooling but what he had he enjoyed thoroughly and it was enough to set him on a lifelong love of learning. He was apprenticed to a cigar maker before they moved to New York in 1863. New York was a real cultural melting pot. He describes the passage over in wonderful detail. Their first home, though larger than the one in London was across from a slaughter house and the stench made it uninhabitable. They moved after a few month.
Chapter 2 tells the story of Gompers youth, growing up in New York City. Gompers is not shy or very modest in talking about himself. He was obviously a very intelligent, quick minded and extroverted sort of person. He was a good cigar maker, loved to read and very much alive to the cultural whirl of New York. In this chapter he meets and marries his wife when he is only 17 and she 16. They couldn't even afford to live together at first. While Gompers occasionally mentions his wife in a passing remark or about one of his numerous children who came along, you get the distinct impression he did not spend much time at home. He was very involved in all sorts of fraternal organizations and meetings and rallies having to do with the working man's rights. I found myself feeling a little sorry for Sophia, his wife.
Chapter 3 - As an Onlooker is a really interesting chapter because it details all of Gompers impressions of the Communist/Socialists/Workers Rights movements going on in all sort of turmoil and vivacity in New York at this time. It was like a bubbling stew. All these former radicals from the European 1848 and later revolutions, found their way to New York. Gompers witnessed all this with avid interest. Let me just say, I wish I had inherited his memory for detail. He must have kept really detailed records of everything. He related first and last names of so many people, addresses, dates, with incredible detail. It is a bit overwhelming and maybe could have been edited a bit to save the book from being verbose. Gompers is a man of supreme confidence though, and he is not afraid to tell you either. It was during this time of exploring Marxist ideas and rubbing elbows with revolutionaries that leads to the title of the next chapter.
Chapter 4 - I Learn the Weakness of Radical Tactics - here Gompers both admires and recoils from the radicals that seem to want to hijack any true reforms for worker's rights. Gompers is a practical man and he really doesn't have time for intellectual posturing or ideologies and emotionally symbolic acts that have little practical results for bettering the poor man's lot in life. He witnesses the violence and extremism of both the radicals and the authorities and he doesn't like the way the former engenders an reaction on the part of the police and the owners instead of promoting genuine dialogue. One bizarre thing that happens in this chapter is that someone named John Brophy attacks Gompers when he is giving a speech. My jaw dropped when I read that! The dates were all wrong but there was my grandfather's name (also a labor leader but about 2 decades later than this). I had to ask my Aunt Jackie about this. It turns out it was a different John Brophy and no one knows anything about him except he showed up in this little recounting of an incident in Gompers' early years in the labor movement.
Chapter 5 - Building the American Trade Union - Gompers never had trouble getting work and he begins to focus his enormous energy on trying to form a stable union for local cigar makers. The unions were not very organized, there was a lot of political upheaval and. for example. strikes would be called on impulse. Someone would get mad at some appalling condition they had to work under, angrily they'd announce they'd had enough and go on strike. Gompers helped form No 144 and tried to steady the men by getting them to agree to proper methods of organizing and striking so that they'd stand a better chance of getting their demands met. It was hard going. The early union had trouble with so many things. The men were undisciplined. For instance, they were all so poor and not used to having cash around, but whoever was union secretary collected dues and had to do something with the money. No one was used to keeping money in a bank, so they'd keep it at home where their wives and children, who were constantly in need (these were all poor tenement workers) would be tempted by the money. It took a lot of hard battles to get the men to understand how things needed to work and to see the big picture. But slow and steady wins the race. After ten years the union was so organized and had grown in esteem in the eyes of other trade unions that Gompers was able to help start the first federation of trade unions.
To be continued. . . .
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