Samuel Gompers

A London-born cigar maker, Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor in 1886 and led it for all but one year until 1924. His "pure and simple" unionism, organising skilled craft workers for wages, hours and conditions and avoiding a labour party, gave American unions their durable shape, and the AFL survives today in the AFL-CIO. The cost was exclusion: unskilled, Black, immigrant and women workers were often left out, which is why the CIO later broke away.