eaders amongst labor
             unions. These men were intelligent and used their heads to get
             the job done and in this sense, they shared many things in
             "Samuel Gompers was one of the founders of the American
             Federation of Labor in 1886. He was elected president, a
             position which he held, except for one year, until his death 38
             years later. Under his leadership, the organization grew from a
             handful of struggling labor unions to become the dominant
             organization within the Labor Movement in the United States and
             Gompers was born in London, England, on January 26, 1850.
             His parents were poor immigrant Jews from Holland. He
             apprenticed and became a cigar maker, a trade he brought with
             him to New York when his family emigrated to America in 1863.
             Life was far from easy in the crowded slums of New York where
             Gompers spent the rest of his childhood. There were a few
             relatively large cigar making shops, perhaps, with as many as
             seventy-five employees; but much of the work was done in a
             thousand or more sweatshops, often the same crowded apartments
             where the workers lived. Thousands of little children worked in
             New York sweatshops and factories, as they helped their parents
             ...