03.03.08
Help
Something’s bugging me. Maybe one of my erudite readers can help.
I’m trying to remember a story where a union leader was asked what his members wanted when they were striking and he said “More”.
Anyone know if its a true story and who said it? Needless to say a Google search of “union leader more” is useless. A person with retained knowledge would be useful at this point….
Elizabeth said,
March 4, 2008 at 12:06 am
Are you thinking of Samuel Gompers, first president of the American Foundation of Labour? There are a couple of well known quotations from him which fit the bill (which admittedly I had to google to get the exact wording):-
“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright”.
Alternatively:-
“We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor”.
Sarah said,
March 4, 2008 at 12:29 am
Elizabeth, for a long time I have considered you the finest contributor to this site. Yet again, you impress. Thanks
Elizabeth said,
March 4, 2008 at 12:35 am
My pleasure! Enjoy the sunshine – sleet and hail here.
Ciaran Buckley said,
March 4, 2008 at 3:33 pm
The way it was initially phrased sounds like it was an invented attribution, a slur on the international labour movement (“the people who brought you the weekend”).
There is a famous scene in Key Largo where the greedy vicious mobster Rocco (Edward Robinson) is asked what — exactly — he wants. Humphrey Bogart — playing an embittered idealistic veteran just back from fighting in WWII, although in the original stage production he was just back from fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish War — said sarcastically “You don’t know what you want Rocco. You only know that you want more.”