“The teacher told father that it was wrong to rob me of an education, particularly as I showed ability. But father could not do otherwise. Though I left school at an early age to help earn a living, I did not then realize the wrong society had done me.”

"My father found it extremely difficult to support a family of six children on his scanty wages earned at the cigarmaking trade, so at the age of ten years and three months I was placed to learn the trade of shoemaking.”

Shoemaking did not suit him, so Gompers moved into his father's trade, cigar-making. He was legally indentured to David Schwab, a cigarmaker at Bishopsgate St., and “a most eccentric individual," as Gompers recalled:

"Schwab lived on the floor above the shop. Not infrequently would he appear downstairs in his nightie or underwear – scolding or giving directions about some matter that had just occurred to his mind."

Just because he was now working, Gompers was still a boy at heart:

"If I worked until the close of the work-day, it was too late for me to enjoy my favorite diversion – the theater. Henry and Simon [his brother and his very young uncle] occasionally came to my rescue. One or the other would gravely come to the shop and tell the boss that my mother was very ill and I must go home. Only thus could I secure the opportunity for pleasure.”

But young or not, he recognized injustice when he saw it:

“Every night the work force was lined up at the door and the foreman ran his hands expertly over the body of each to make sure that no cigars were being carried away. It was a treatment no one could endure with dignity.”

There were some unexpected benefits to working in the cigar trade:

"About this time we began to hear more and about the United States. The great struggle against human slavery which was convulsing America was of vital interest to wage-earners who were everywhere struggling for industrial opportunity and freedom. My work in the cigar factory gave me a chance to hear the men discuss this issue. Youngster that I was, I was absorbed in listening to this talk . . . .”

At the time Gompers was earning 1 shilling (about 12 cents) a week; after a year he earned 2 shillings, but his small contribution was not enough to keep the large family going. So in 1863 the Gompers family immigrated to United States and settled in New York City. Now 13 years old, Gompers worked at home with his father, rolling cigars. In 1864 he joined the Cigar Makers International Union, but not because he was he was interested in the labor movement:

"All my life I had been accustomed to the labor movement and accepted as a matter of course that every wage-earner should belong to the union of his trade. I did not yet have a conscious appreciation of the labor movement. My awakening was to come later.”

Work or not, Gompers did manage to carve out some time for himself. At age 14 he and his friends enjoyed what were called judge and jury clubs. They formed the Arion Base Ball and Social Club:

"We tried various kinds of athletics without a tutor. We seriously and ardently debated all the mooted public questions of the day. We held court, trying out our members for all manner of fictitious crimes.”

By age 16, Gompers was ready to go out on his own and take a job in a cigar shop:

“There was much unrest in the shop. The men were discontented. They asked me to present to the employer their grievances and the new conditions they wanted. When I did so, Mr. Stachelberg told me that I, a mere boy, out to be ashamed to be representing men old enough to be my father and that I ought to be at home where my mother could ‘dry me one behind the ear.’ I told him that the men were entitled to have whoever they chose. When Stachelberg found that I could not be intimidated, he tried to bribe me. He sought me out in conversation, offered to treat me to a beer, and to do everything to alienate me from the men. However, I stuck by the men and finally succeeded in winning the case. . . . Though but a boy in years, I was living the absorbing eager life of a young man . . . At the drop of a hat, I was ready to fight physically or mentally for anything to which I had given adherence."

He was also ready to get married, which he did at age 17:

"On my birthday, January 27, 1867, we discussed how best to celebrate the day and someone suggested that we get married. Sophia did not show any disposition to oppose.” So the next day “without consultation or announcement of plans, we simply went to the Justice of the Peace at the City Hall of Brooklyn and were married. Jack and Mary stood up for us as witnesses and we stood up for them, and so both couples were married.”

After celebrating with "a bite to eat" and then an evening at the theater, Gompers “took my new wife to her home and I went over to my home. I was seventeen years and one day old when I married Sophia Julian and she was sixteen years and six months. When the marriage license was published, there was a sort of a hullabaloo about it and then it was simply all right and my wife came over to our house and lived with us. She was working and so was I. We paid board and saved whatever we could until finally we concluded to put up our own little nest and bought some furniture for which we paid cash – not on time – and made our home in which we then gathered our children, one after another.” Their son, Samuel Julian Gompers, was born Sept. 4 1868.

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