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Samuel Gompers was a British-born American labor leader who founded and served as the first president of the American Federation of Labor, holding that position for nearly four decades. A cigar maker by trade who taught himself economics and labor theory while rolling tobacco, he became the most influential advocate for workers’ rights in American history. He believed in practical, incremental wins — better wages, safer conditions, shorter hours — over utopian revolution. The eight-hour workday that most workers take for granted today is, in no small part, his legacy.

Worker protections didn’t happen by accident. They came from people organizing, speaking up, and pushing for better conditions. The eight-hour day — a reform so basic it seems obvious now — was once a radical demand that cost people their jobs, their freedom, and in some cases their lives to win. Gompers said these words with the certainty of someone who had watched the arc of history and understood which direction it was bending. May Day exists so that we don’t forget what it cost to bend it.