tecture and equipment this modest yet adequate and substantial
financial policy. American labor unions have not yet achieved the
opulence, ambitions, and splendors of the guilds of the Middle Ages and
do not yet direct their activities from splendid guild halls.

* Before 1899 the annual income of the Federation was less
than $25,000; in 1901 it reached the $100,000 mark; and
since 1905 it has exceeded $200,000.

In the third place, Gompers has always insisted upon the democratic
methods of debate and referendum in reaching important decisions.
However arbitrary and intolerant his impulses may have been, and however
dogmatic and narrow his conclusions in regard to the relation of labor
to society and towards the employer (and his Dutch inheritance gives him
great obstinacy), he has astutely refrained from too obviously bossing
his own organization.

With this sagacity of leadership Gompers has combined a fearlessness
that sometimes verges on brazenness. He has never hesitated to enter a
contest when it seemed prudent to him to do so. He crossed swords with
Theodore Roosevelt on more than one occasion and with President Eliot
of Harvard in a historic newspaper controversy over trade union
exclusiveness. He has not been daunted by conventions, commissions,
courts, congresses, or public opinion. During the long term of his
Federation presidency, which is unparalleled in labor history and alone
is conclusive evidence of his executive skill, scarcely a year has
passed without some dramatic incident to cast the searchlight of
publicity upon him--a court decision, a congressional inquiry, a grand
jury inquisition, a great strike, a nation-wide boycott, a debate
with noted public men, a political maneuver, or a foreign pilgrimage.
Whenever a constituent union in the Federation has been the object of
attack, he has jumped into the fray and has rarely emerged humiliated
from the encounter. This is the more surprising when one recalls that
he possesses the limitations of the zealot and the dogmatism of the
partisan.

One of the most important functions of Gompers has been that of national
lobbyist for the Federation. He was one of the earliest champions of
the eight-hour day and the Saturday half-holiday. He has energetically
espoused Federal child labor legislation, the restriction of
immigration, alien contract labor laws, and employers' liability laws.
He advocated the creation of a Federal Department of La