“He’s not here yet,” I was informed on my arrival; “but come in and
wait. When he comes, anybody will point out Sam to you.” The room
filled rapidly, and at length there appeared in the doorway a small
man with a great head, covered with a luxuriant growth of very black
hair. His short, robust figure, his high forehead, deep-set eyes, heavy
mustache and short imperial made him look strikingly like some of the
portraits of Edwin Forrest. He came in alone and attracted no special
attention, but I knew intuitively that it was Samuel Gompers. With such
easy and cordial salutations as “Hello, Jack!” “How are you, Herman?”
and “Glad to see you, Mac!” he began to greet his old friends, and
they responded in the same spirit, almost invariably addressing him
as “Sam.” This did not imply a lack of dignity on his part, for these
were his old shopmates,—men who had for years worked with him at the
same benches. They recognized each other as fellow-workmen, with no
difference between them, and, indeed, the only difference was that Sam
Gompers had thought much and seen much in his mental vision as he sat
at the mechanical work of cutting and rolling tobacco leaves, while the
others had seen only their own environment and machine-like toil. But
this difference has made one a leading citizen of the Republic, while
his mates have remained humble cigarmakers, looking to Mr. Gompers as
their champion and friend.
“It was just at such meetings as you see here to-night,” Mr. Gompers
said to me later in the evening, “that I began to try to do something
in behalf of the workingmen. Even when a small boy in London, and
working pretty hard for the child I was, I used to attend some of
the gatherings of workingmen, and I remember how I was stirred by
the excitement and enthusiasm when the question of recognizing the
Confederate States was before the government and there were great
meetings of the working classes to show the feeling of British workmen
against slavery of any sort. I had already vaguely begun to feel that
there was more than one kind of slavery, and that the workingmen who
had protested so vigorously against slaves in America could hardly call
themselves free men. I knew little of the matter; I only knew that my
own life was hard, while that of many other children was easy.”