ABSTRACT
In writing about Jefferson and Saint-Just, I tried to describe the spirit of the American political revolution, with its inherent sense of compromise which set itself limited and practicable objectives without ever retreating from them, as opposed to the essentially Utopian and totalitarian spirit of the Jacobins. An equally striking antithesis between two different spirits and methods of revolution can be seen in the American labor movement on the one hand and the socialist revolution on the other. Once again, rather than define abstract principles, I prefer to make use of two concrete figures who seem to me to exemplify these diametrically opposite points of view. Nikolai Lenin, better than anyone else, represents the spirit and methods of socialist revolution, while the American labor movement could hardly be more fittingly represented than by Samuel Gompers, whom George Meany has called “the leading figure of the industrial revolution in America.” I myself would be inclined to qualify Meany’s statement, for, as I have pointed out, it seems to me that the principles of the American type of social revolution were first laid down by Henry Charles Carey, and that a vital role was also played in the industrial revolution by Henry Ford. However, the fact remains that Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), 222founder of the American Federation of Labor, has been for more than a century a major source of inspiration to the American labor movement.
