Samuel Gompers, the storied leader of the American Federation of Labor, worried about "globalization" almost 100 years ago. Concerned about how "free trade" created "slave labor" conditions in the colonial world, he helped create the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1919 in order to establish world labor standards. The ILO was conceived by "responsible labor leaders" as an antidote to revolutionary forces, and thus served to divide the workers' world on political grounds. In any case, the organization made no impact on U.S. workers.