ABSTRACT
In his autobiography, Seventy Years of Life and Labor, AFL head Samuel Gompers spoke of his trade and the labor movement as complementary aspects of his masculine identity. He was, at once, a son, a husband, a father, a skilled cigar maker, and a man. He was also a brother to those in his trade and to all men in the skilled trades, a category defined by kinship and racial and ethnic identity. Like fraternal twins, skilled craftsmen bore a family resemblance—whether they were coopers, butcher workmen, iron molders, or carpenters. They honored what they considered exclusively masculine—and white western European—traits of courage, self-reliance, and resilience. Their unions encouraged a strong work ethic, brotherly solidarity, craft autonomy, good citizenship and personal freedom. They saw the pursuit of happiness as a right embodied by family, home ownership, and the company of one’s fellows. The ideal craftsman, Gompers wrote, exhibited virility, “self-government, self-reliance, and self-control,” and “true patriotism.” “The object, and the result” of trade unions, he argued, is “the making, not of paupers, but men, strong men, in body, mind, and spirit.” 1
