used to designate the affiliation of the unions of a city. The city
centrals are smaller replicas of the state federations and are made
up of delegates elected by the individual unions. They meet at stated
intervals and freely discuss questions relating to the welfare of
organized labor in general as well as to local labor conditions in
every trade. Indeed, vigilance seems to be the watchword of the Central.
Organization, wages, trade agreements, and the attitude of public
officials and city councils which even remotely might affect labor
rarely escape their scrutiny. This oldest of all the groups of labor
organizations remains the most vital part of the Federation. The success
of the American Federation of Labor is due in large measure to the
crafty generalship of its President, Samuel Gompers, one of the most
astute labor leaders developed by American economic conditions. He
helped organize the Federation, carefully nursed it through its tender
years, and boldly and unhesitatingly used its great power in the days of
its maturity. In fact, in a very real sense the Federation is Gompers,
and Gompers is the Federation. Born in London of Dutch-Jewish lineage,
on January 27, 1850, the son of a cigarmaker, Samuel Gompers was early
apprenticed to that craft. At the age of thirteen he went to New York
City, where in the following year he joined the first cigar-makers'
union organized in that city. He enlisted all his boyish ardor in the
cause of the trade union and, after he arrived at maturity, was elected
successively secretary and president of his union. The local unions
were, at that time, gingerly feeling their way towards state and
national organization, and in these early attempts young Gompers was
active. In 1887, he was one of the delegates to a national meeting which
constituted the nucleus of what is now the Cigar-makers' International
Union.

The local cigar-makers' union in which Gompers received his necessary
preliminary training was one of the most enlightened and compactly
organized groups of American labor. It was one of the first American
Unions to adopt in an efficient manner the British system of benefits
in the case of sickness, death, or unemployment. It is one of the few
American unions that persistently encourages skill in its craft and
intelligence in its membership. It has been a pioneer in collective
bargaining and in arbitration. It has been conservatively and yet
enthusiastically led and has gene