He has served
as one of the vice-presidents of the American Federation of Labor
since 1898, was for some years chairman of the Trade Agreement
Department of the National Civic Federation and has held the
position of Chairman of the New York State Industrial Commission.
When he rose to the leadership of the United Mine Workers, this
union had only 48,000 members, confined almost exclusively to the
bituminous regions of the West.* Within the decade of his
presidency he brought virtually all the miners of the United
States under his leadership. Wherever his union went, there
followed sooner or later the eight-hour day, raises in wages of
from thirteen to twenty-five per cent, periodical joint
conventions with the operators for settling wage scales and other
points in dispute, and a spirit of prosperity that theretofore
was unknown among the miners.
* Less than 10,000 out of 140,000 anthracite miners were members
of the union.
In unionizing the anthracite miners, Mitchell had his historic
fight with the group of powerful corporations that owned the
mines and the railways which fed them. This great strike, one of
the most significant in our history, attracted universal
attention because of the issues involved, because a coal shortage
threatened many Eastern cities, and because of the direct
intervention of President Roosevelt. The central figure of this
gigantic struggle was the miners' young leader, barely thirty
years old, with the features of a scholar and the demeanor of an
ascetic, marshaling his forces with the strategic skill of a
veteran general.
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