The American Federation of Labor, the first successful national alliance of trade unions, was established in 1886 to strengthen ties between trade unionists and to organize the industrial work force. The direct descendent of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, the AFL concentrated on developing labor's economic power and then using that power to achieve shorter hours, higher wages, safe and sanitary working conditions, and labor's right to organize, strike, and bargain collectively with employers. Because these were basic issues that all workers could support, whether they were skilled or unskilled, immigrant or native born, socialist, Democrat, or Republican, the AFL's founders hoped the new organization would grow strong enough to survive employer hostility, cyclical economic depressions, and on-going fights with rival labor organizations.

Throughout its history, the AFL championed trade autonomy, which meant that the Federation did not interfere with national and international union affairs. Socialist critics like Daniel DeLeon believed such autonomy undermined class solidarity -- in fact DeLeon regularly mocked the AFL as the "American Separation of Labor." But longtime trade unionists like Samuel Gompers argued that solidarity could not be imposed from above: Experience demonstrated that strong international unions, like the Carpenters or the Plumbers, had their own ideas about how to protect their members, and they could not be compelled to join a general strike, or give up work to another union, or support a particular political party, for instance, no matter what AFL leaders thought best. "So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles," Gompers noted in 1924, when the AFL counted almost 3 million members, "we have made our labor movement something to be respected and accorded a place in the councils of our Republic. Where we have blundered into trying to force a policy or a decision, even though wise and right," he added, "we have impeded if not interrupted the realization of our own aims."

View documents related to the AFL's founding, its trade union philosophy, its political program, and its organizing efforts.