1. Labor historians who write on trade unionism focus almost exclusively on its limits. But see Melvyn Dubofsky, The State & Labor in Modern America (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1-60, and Christopher L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (Cambridge, 1985), for more complex interpretations of AFL policy and development, and David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor:The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 257-329, for a detailed view of the International Association of Machinists' experience. For an expression of Gompers' view see his report to the convention, AFL, Proceedings, 1909, p. 44.
2. See The Samuel Gompers Papers, vol. 5, pp. 486-88, and "Grit Your Teeth and Organize," American Federationist 4 (Nov. 1897): 212.
3. For the Labor Forward movement, see Elizabeth and Kenneth Fones-Wolf, "Trade-Union Evangelism: Religion and the AFL in the Labor Forward Movement, 1912-16," in Michael H. Frisch and Daniel J. Walkowitz, Working-Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society (Urbana, Ill., 1983), pp. 153-84; for biographies of Lewis, Foster, and Flynn, see Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (New York, 1977), Edward P. Johanningsmeier, Forging American Communism: The Life of William Z. Foster (Princeton, 1994), and Helen C. Camp, Iron in Her Soul. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left (Pullman, Wash., 1995); for the increasing role of women in the labor movement, see Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York, 1982), and Stephen H. Norwood, Labor's Flaming Youth: Telephone Operators and Worker Militancy, 1878-1923 (Urbana, Ill., 1990), pp. 3-20; for the strike of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, see Nancy Schrom Dye, As Equals and As Sisters: Feminism, the Labor Movement, and the Women's Trade Union League of New York (Columbia, Mo., 1980); for the Lawrence, Mass., strike, see William Cahn, Lawrence, 1912: The Bread and Roses Strike (New York, 1980), and Ardis Cameron, Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912 (Urbana, Ill., 1993); for AFL membership figures, see American Federation of Labor: History, Encyclopedia, [and] Reference Book (Washington, D.C., 1919), p. 63; for the IWW's early years, see Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago, 1969), pp. 105-19.
4. "Gompers Talks about Labor," Deseret Evening News, Aug. 23, 1911.
5. "To Alton Parker," Dec. 26, 1912, below.
6. Julie Greene, Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917 (Cambridge, 1998), is the most recent work to address the AFL's political activities in this period.
7. For the internal fight of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, see Grace Palladino, Dreams of Dignity, Workers of Vision: A History of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (Washington, D.C., 1991), pp. 47-96.
8. "To Alton Parker," Dec. 26, 1912, below.
9. "To the Executive Council of the AFL," June 4, 1913, below.