Hidden in Plain Sight
Certainly the only memorial to a cigar maker to be found in Washington, The Samuel Gompers Memorial is also the only one used as a hideout. In 1942, three runaway boys, who had discovered that the sculptural group was hollow, spent a week inside the large work of art. They supported themselves by thieving, which surely would have drawn the disapproval of this champion of the working man. Gompers headed the American Federation of Labor, central to the sustained effort in the late 19th and early 20th century for better working hours and conditions.
Gompers believed independent unions helped workers more than organizing politically as socialists. During the 1950s, agitation for better working conditions began to be associated with communism.
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