Seventy years of life and labor : an autobiography / Samuel Gompers ; edited and with an introduction by Nick Salvatore.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-225) and index..

Introduction by Nick Salvatore -- 1. A young worker: 1850-70 -- From East Side London to East Side New York -- As an onlooker-- Finding the labor movement -- I learn the weakness of radical tactics --

2. In the union cause: 1870-84 -- Building the American trade union -- The great strike -- Building an international trade union -- Learning something of legislation --

3. A national Organization in the making 1880-1900 -- A fight to the finish -- Federation -- Eight hours -- Henry George's campaign -- A rope of sand -- Denver defeat and my sabbatical year --

4. Opinions and politics 1890-1910 -- Socialists as I know them -- Efforts to disrupt the Federation -- Women's work -- My economic philosophy -- Foreign friends -- Politics --

5. The national organization established 1900-1915 -- Compulsion -- Immigration -- Injunctions I have encountered -- National politics -- Labor's Magna Charta

6. The war years 1914-1923 -- I abandon pacifism -- Labor to the fore -- Stockholm -- Peace -- Problems after Armageddon

"Samuel Gompers remains a central figure in American history during the society's most intense capital development. The choices he made from the possibilities he perceived were of great importance at the time and still influence the organization he founded. Despite his many achievements, however, the larger aspects of the qualities of his leadership remained weak. In his search for acceptance, he jettisoned the vision of working class unity that had motivated him in the 1870s and 1880s. The K of L slogan, that 'an injury to one is the concern of all,' Gompers dismissed, a casualty of the polemics of the 1880s. But he might have listened to the words of a personal hero, Abraham Lincoln, who once commented that 'the strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds.' Had Samuel Gompers been able to discover the power and vitality of that American tradition, and joined to it his exemplary abilities as an organizer and administrator, his achievements and his legacy to succeeding generations might have been even more impressive." -- from Nick Salvatore's Introduction.

"Nick Salvatore's fine-tuned abridgement of the Gompers autobiography places a manageable version of this vital book within reach of the general reader. It is a compellingly personal account oft he roots of the modern American labor movement, a story whose stage is set by Salvatore's provocative, interpretive introductory essay." -- Stuart B. Kaufman, Editor of the Samuel Gompers Papers, University of Maryland -- from the back cover.