Labor movement

Quotes about the Labor movement or labour movement.

Quotes

• Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.
  • Eugene V. Debs, "An Ideal Labor Press," The Metal Worker (May 1904).

• To speak for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of love.
  • Eugene V. Debs, "The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech" in The Call (16 June 1918)

• Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those -- regardless of their political party -- who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech to the American Federation of Labor, New York City, September 17, 1952 [1].

• [T]he Nazi years had already accustomed Germans to an all-encompassing labor organization through the Labor Front, which had enjoyed considerable appeal among workers, not least because of its insistence on broad inclusiveness and equality between ‘workers of the hand and the mind.
  • David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weitz, editors, Between Reform and Revolution German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990, Berghahn Books, Chapter 16, Diethelm Prowe (1998) p. 402

• History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them
  • Martin Luther King Jr.,Speaking to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) on Dec. 11, 1961 Source: Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition. Booklet prepared by the Southern Labor Institute under the auspices of the Labor Subcommittee of the King Holiday Commission, designed by the AFT and printed by AFSCME. January 1986.

• I only acknowledge one nobility—that of labour.
  • Adolf Hitler, as quoted in The 12-year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945, Richard Grunberger, Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1971] p. 47.

• The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government.
  • John L. Lewis, Speech to United Mine Workers of America members, September 8, 1937 [2].

• The quality of his being one with his people, of having no artificial or natural barriers between him and them, made it possible for him to be a leader without ever being or thinking of being a dictator.
  • Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (1946), ch. 17.

See also

• General strike
• Labor unions
• Strike action
• Work