By the mid-nineteenth century, immigrant and native-born workers began to form unions to protect themselves. In the 1870s, the Knights of Labor united old-stock skilled workers and early emigrants from Ireland, Great Britain, and Germany in a movement to maintain autonomy and wages. Samuel Gompers, a Jewish immigrant from the United Kingdom whose family settled in New York City, had an immense impact on the burgeoning labor union movement. Gompers continued his father’s trade as a cigar maker—becoming involved in local unions and rising up through the ranks before founding the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL, like many unions at the time, favored restrictions on new immigrants as a means to keep wages higher.
Exclusive AFL-affiliated unions of skilled German, Irish, British, and American workers routinely barred female, Black, or Southern and Eastern immigrant workers from membership, viewing them as “wage depressors.” Regardless of their membership composition, union leaders sought to reform capitalism and restrict corporate power through collective bargaining or by exerting political pressure on the legislators who courted immigrant votes. For union members, these rather lofty goals more immediately translated into fulfilling their demands for fair wages and hours and improved working conditions.