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  • Every advance in this half-century--Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another--came with the support and leadership of American Labor.


  • Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed; those who are cold and are not clothed.
  • We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
  • The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few (born) to ride them.
  • A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.
  • A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.
  • There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve alone.
  • Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition — in having put forth the best within you.
  • The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America.
  • Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
  • Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
  • If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
  • Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
  • One man can make a difference, and every man should try.
  • And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each of us, recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state, our success or failure, in whatever office we hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage... Second, were we truly men of judgment... Third, were we truly men of integrity... Finally, were we truly men of dedication?
  • The skills and productivity of American Workers, not to mention the taxes they pay, are the greatest economic resource our country has.
  • If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.
  • Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
  • All that harms labor is treason to America.
  • Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
  • Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.
  • I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails under which laborers can strike when they want to.
  • That we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
  • There are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
  • You know very well that whether you are on page one or page thirty depends on whether they fear you. It's as simple as that.
  • If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself and I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.
  • It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.
  • If it looks like duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it just may be a duck.
  • If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union
  • No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level --I mean the wages of decent living.
  • Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce.
  • It is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of working conditions, because the best customer of American industry is the well-paid worker.
  • The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
  • Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy, forget in time that men have died to win them.
  • This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.
  • It is time that all Americans realized that the place of labor is side by side with the businessman and with the farmer, and not one-degree lower.
  • If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
  • It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
  • While we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free.

Labor Hall of Fame Honorees

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9

  • 911 Rescue Workers

A

  • Mary Anderson (labor leader)

B

  • Joseph A. Beirne
  • Peter J. Brennan
  • Adolphus Busch

C

  • James E. Casey
  • César Chávez
    • ¡Sí se puede!
  • Cyrus S. Ching
  • John R. Commons

D

  • Arthur Davidson (Harley-Davidson founder)
  • Walter Davidson, Sr.
  • William A. Davidson
  • Eugene V. Debs
    • 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.
      • "An Ideal Labor Press," The Metal Worker (May 1904)
  • David Dubinsky

G

  • Arthur Goldberg
  • Samuel Gompers
    • We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
  • William Green (labor leader)

H

  • Paul Hall (labor leader)
  • William S. Harley
  • Milton S. Hershey
  • Sidney Hillman

J

  • Robert Wood Johnson II
  • Mary Harris Jones
    • Get it straight, I'm not a humanitarian, I'ma hell-raiser.

K

  • Henry J. Kaiser
    • Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition — in having put forth the best within you.
  • Lane Kirkland
    • The skills and productivity of American Workers, not to mention the taxes they pay, are the greatest economic resource our country has.

L

  • John L. Lewis
    • 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.

M

  • Peter J. McGuire
  • J. Willard Marriott
  • George Meany
  • James P. Mitchell
  • David A. Morse
  • Philip Murray

P

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

R

  • A. Philip Randolph
  • Walter Reuther
    • If it looks like duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it just may be a duck.

S

  • Al Smith

T

  • George W. Taylor (professor)

W

  • Robert F. Wagner
  • Charles Rudolph Walgreen
  • William Bauchop Wilson
  • Leonard F. Woodcock

Y

  • Steve Young (law enforcement)
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