The Fulford File, By James Fulford

Labor Day Lament: Where Have You Gone, Samuel Gompers, Dennis Kearney, Cesar Chavez, A. Philip Randolph?
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The AFL-CIO is suing the Justice Department on behalf of illegal aliens. It has succeeded in getting a Clinton-appointed judge to put a stop to a recent attempt to prevent employers from hiring illegals with fraudulent social security numbers. [Judge puts hold on immigration penalty letters to employers, AP, August 31, 2007]

Why is the AFL-CIO doing this? you might ask. After all, whoever the employer hires will be a new union member, and the majority of AFL-CIO members are Americans.

But around the year 2000, the AFL-CIO reversed its position on mass immigration, in favor of embracing, not the American worker, but any worker in America as a potential new member.

Labor leaders of the past have regularly opposed mass immigration. You may be familiar with a class of ethnic joke, which I believe is now capable of getting you fired from your job, that would start something like this: "An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman," but might also include a Mexican and a Jew.

Well, today's history lesson includes four labor leaders—Samuel Gompers, Dennis Kearney, Cesar Chavez, and A. Philip Randolph—who might, if they went into a bar together, feature in that kind of joke.

They were drawn from several different American communities. But they all objected to the idea that the American working man was replaceable by cheap foreign labor.

Samuel Gompers, an "immigrant himself"…from England

Gompers supported Chinese Exclusion. He considered that mass immigration from China was dangerous to American workers. Nowadays, this is generally portrayed as an instance of Early American Racism. But in fact there were serious problems for American workers caused by mass immigration from China. As always, numbers matter.

Here are some of the facts Gompers mentioned in 1910:

“…The ladies’ furnishing and undergarment trade is almost under the control of the Chinese. Their stores are scattered everywhere throughout San Francisco, and the American manufacturers have been gradually driven out. One or two who may still remain employ [native-born white] girls at most scanty wages.

“The cigar, boot and shoe, broom-making, and pork industries were for many years entirely in the hands of the Chinese, depriving many thousands of Americans of their means of livelihood. As their power grew they became independent, and in the pork industry they had secured so strong a hold that no white butcher dared kill a hog for fear of incurring the displeasure of the Chinese. This state of affairs became so obnoxious and unbearable that the retail butchers and the citizens generally finally succeeded in wresting the monopoly from the hands of their Chinese oppressors.

“In factories owned by white employers the Chinese employees refused to work together with white men, and upon one occasion at least positively struck against them, refusing to work unless the white help was discharged. This instance so aroused the State of California that an anti-Chinese convention was called and held at the city of Sacramento March 10, 1886, in which the most representative citizens of California took part…â€