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OMPERS, SAMUEL, son of a cigarmaker in London, England, came to the United States in 1863, where he was one of the first registered members of the Cigar Makers' International Union, organized in 1864, and its first vice-president subsequently. He has been president of the New York State Federation of Labor and of the American Federation of Labor for twenty-one years; and is the father of the eight-hour law for government work, the ten-hour law for employees of street railroads, and of Labor Day as the workingman's legal holiday. He was born in London, England, January 27, 1850. His father, Saul Gompers, was a cigarmaker, an industrious workman, a kind father, and a man of remarkable memory. His mother, Sarah (Root) Gompers, was a woman of excellent antecedents, her parents being highly educated; and through her influence on his intellectual and moral life he was led to study, and to seek to benefit his fellow men. His grandfather, Samuel Gompers, was a man of philosophical turn of mind, of extraordinary courage and fearlessness, and well informed through knowledge acquired by wide travel in Europe.

As a boy, Samuel was anxious to learn and he often neglected or forgot to eat, in his eagerness to master the lessons he had set himself as a task. He attended school from his sixth to his tenth year, then was apprenticed to a shoemaker, but disliking the business he learned the trade of his father, and while working as a cigarmaker attended evening school for four years. Being the eldest child of a family of eight, he began to aid his father in their support as soon as he could earn wages. He continued to work at his trade until he was thirty-seven years old, and during all this time he was a student, an organizer, the spokesman and advocate of the rights to which in his view the working people were entitled. He came to the United States when thirteen years old, settled in New York city, and the next year (1864) helped to organize the Cigar Makers' International Union, of which he was among the first registered members, and he served the union as secretary and president for six years, and it grew