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Gompers and Business Unionism, 1873–90

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Bernard Mandel
Bernard Mandel
Affiliation:
Lecturer in History at Fenn College
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Abstract

The development of the administration of business firms has been studied by many scholars in the last 25 years. By comparison, the history of the administration of trade unions is an untouched field; most historians of the American labor movement have dealt only summarily with administrative changes. But efficient internal organization was crucial, in the years after 1873, to trade union survival and growth. Under the prodding of Samuel Gompers, the Cigarmakers' International Union pioneered several improvements. Its major innovations were: centralized control, especially of strikes; benefit payments for sickness, unemployment, and death; high dues and high initiation fees.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1954 , pp. 264 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954

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References

1 Commons, John R. and others, History of Labour in the United States, 4 vols. (New York, 1918–1935), II, 71–74.Google Scholar

2 Cigar Makers' Official Journal, I (Feb., 1876). Hereafter referred to as the Journal.

3 Gompers, Samuel, Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 2 vols. (New York, 1925), I, 110–5.Google Scholar

4 M. D. Plate to George Hurst, in Journal, I (Nov., 1875), 2–3; Gompers, Life and Labor, I, 116–8.

5 Journal, III (Oct., 1877), 3–4.

6 Ibid., I (Sept., 1876), 1.

7 Interview reported in the Iowa State Register (Des Moines ), 3 May 1899; Gompers, Annual Report, Proceedings of the 13th Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor, 1893, p. 12.

8 Journal, XIII (Sept., 1888), 7–8.

9 Gompers, Life and Labor, I, 167.

10 Journal, IV (Aug., 1879), 2; ibid., V (Oct., 1879), 2–3.

11 Ibid., VI (Oct., 1880), 5–7.

12 Ibid., VI (Dec., 1880), 1.

13 Ibid., VII (Sept., 1881), 5.

14 Ibid., XIII (July, 1888), 7–8.

15 Proceedings, 18th Session, Cigarmakers' International Union, 16 Sept. 1889, p. 17 (in archives of Cigarmakers' International Union); Journal, XIV (Nov., 1888), 11; ibid., XV (Oct., 1889), 9; ibid., XV (Dec., 1889), 11.

16 See Gompers, Annual Report, Proceedings of the 3rd [8th] Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor, 1888, p. 12.

17 Gompers, Annual Report, Proceedings of the 21st Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor, 1901, pp. 14–15.

18 Journal, VIII (Aug., 1883), 6.

19 Ibid., IV (April, 1879), 2; ibid., IV (May, 1879), 1.

20 Ibid., VI (Oct., 1880), 8.

21 Ibid., VII (Oct., 1881), 3 ff.

22 Ibid., VIII (Sept., 1883), Supplement.

23 Proceedings of Cigarmakers' International Union, 20 Sept. 1883, in ibid., VIII (Sept., 1883).

24 Proceedings of Cigarmakers' International Union, September, 1885, in ibid., XI (Oct., 1885).

25 Gompers to the Editor of the Journal, 30 Oct. 1895, in ibid., XXI (Nov., 1895), 4.

26 Ibid., V (Oct., 1879), 2–3.

27 Gompers, Address to convention of United Textile Workers, Washington, D.C., 18 Nov. 1901, in American Federationist, VIII (Dec., 1901), 546.

28 Gompers, “High Dues are Necessary to Success,” ibid., III (Sept., 1896), 141–2.

29 Journal, I (Sept., 1876), 1.

30 Ibid., VII (Nov., 1881), 5.

31 Gompers to the Editor of the Journal, I (Feb., 1877), 4.

32 Gompers, Life and Labor, I, 144.

33 American Federationist, XI (Oct., 1904), reprinted in Gompers, Labor and the Common Welfare (New York, 1919), 154–5.