While there is plenty of racism to find in the early days of the AFL (including from Gompers who e.g. described the Japanese as "evil" in the same issue of the American Federationist that your quote is from), that quote is out of context. It is from the September 1905 issue of American Federationist, where the full paragraph says:
> [Gompers] declared he was always ready to assert his patriotism on behalf of the colored man, saying " 'Tis true that some white men have been angered at the introduction of black strike breakers. I have stood as a champion of the colored man and have sacrificed self and much of the movement that the colored man should get a chance. But the Caucasians are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by negroes, Chinamen, Japs or any others.
The statement fell in a discussion of black workers being pulled in as strike breakers in Chicago (the issue is returned to in a later section in the same article, warning that continued strike breaking would trigger race hate), not in the context of any discussion of minimum wage.
Curiously it is almost always quoted the way you do, with the "..." which do not appear in the original source (nor is any text cut from the quote at that point), and out of context, and is generally used to prop up modern attacks on the minimum wage.
Finding examples of racist then is easy - many unions still did not admit non-white members, and Gompers himself e.g. argued strongly for continued strict restriction on Asian immigration to the US and used racist language to do it.
But that quote is a curious choice both to use as a demonstration of Gompers or AFL racism given the context, and to quote in dicussions about minimum wage given that it's not what the quote is about.
> [Gompers] declared he was always ready to assert his patriotism on behalf of the colored man, saying " 'Tis true that some white men have been angered at the introduction of black strike breakers. I have stood as a champion of the colored man and have sacrificed self and much of the movement that the colored man should get a chance. But the Caucasians are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by negroes, Chinamen, Japs or any others.
The statement fell in a discussion of black workers being pulled in as strike breakers in Chicago (the issue is returned to in a later section in the same article, warning that continued strike breaking would trigger race hate), not in the context of any discussion of minimum wage.
Curiously it is almost always quoted the way you do, with the "..." which do not appear in the original source (nor is any text cut from the quote at that point), and out of context, and is generally used to prop up modern attacks on the minimum wage.
Finding examples of racist then is easy - many unions still did not admit non-white members, and Gompers himself e.g. argued strongly for continued strict restriction on Asian immigration to the US and used racist language to do it.
But that quote is a curious choice both to use as a demonstration of Gompers or AFL racism given the context, and to quote in dicussions about minimum wage given that it's not what the quote is about.