saw him as having given dignity and coherence to its irregular
components--saw him as having led incomparably its massive
drives for the eight-hour day, against the dreaded labor injunc-
tion, against government intervention in labor-capital duels on the
side of capital. "Conservative" labor certainly saw Gompers in that
light. Among many articulate reformers, humanitarians, and
radicals, Gompers' reputation was less flattering. They deplored
his unwillingness to project long-range social programs, his lack
of sympathy for cooperative ideals. Although he voiced and
recorded numerous idealistic sentiments, these seemed a species
of hypocrisy to critics who noted his firm endorsement of routine
labor functionaries--even racketeers--at the expense of ardent
organizers, self-sacrificing fighters for the rights of unemployed
workers, Chinese workers, Negro workers, and others whose
sufferings under industrial exploitation were compounded by their
race or other special conditions. Gompers' notorious dictum--
that labor had no ultimate goals, except to get more and more of
what it had--seemed a model of crassness, of expediency, and of
asocial thinking.

A special word needs to be said about Gompers' services to
the United States during World War I, because this momentous
crisis--from which all our modern problems and attitudes stem--
has been persistently avoided by students and theoreticians who
presume to tell us who we are and what we ought to think. In
the 1920's, there was no problem in coping with World War I.
The famous "disillusionment" of, the time sank national reputa-
tions, sometimes without trace. Newton D. Baker, George Creel,
James T. Shotwell--who were they? Students do not always recog-
nize the name of "Black Jack" Pershing, certainly with warmth
and affection. The 1930's continued the tradition of scorn and
contempt for the Great War as a capitalistic monstrosity. Yet
Gompers had believed that his wholehearted effort to hold labor
in line for the war effort--abroad, as well as at home, and his
ruthless proscription of pacifist labor and anti-capitalist militants,
was the crowning triumph of his career. For this, he was not so
much remembered by radicals and anti-militarists as he was for-
gotten. Their main target of criticism continued to be his pre-
sumed failures as a labor leader who should have dedicated his

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