ies, and in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where labor riots took place for
the enforcement of the Union demands, he was arrested for conspiracy but
acquitted by the trial jury.

When the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers lost their
strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892, the union was thought to be
dead. It was quietly regalvanized into activity, however, by Theodore
Schaffer, who has displayed adroitness in managing its affairs in the
face of tremendous opposition from the great steel manufacturers who
refuse to permit their shops to be unionized.

The International Typographical Union, composed of an unusually
intelligent body of men, owes its singular success in collective
contracting largely to James M. Lynch, its national president. The great
newspapers did not give in to the demands of the union without a series
of struggles in which Lynch manipulated his forces with skill and tact.
Today this is one of the most powerful unions in the country.

Entirely different was the material out of which D.J. Keefe formed his
Union of Longshoremen, Marine and Transport Workers. His was a mass of
unskilled workers, composed of many nationalities accustomed to
rough conditions, and not easily led. Keefe, as president of their
International Union, has had more difficulty in restraining his men and
in teaching them the obligations of a contract than any other leader.
At least on one occasion he employed non-union men to carry out the
agreement which his recalcitrant following had made and broken.

The evolution of an American labor leader is shown at its best in the
career of John Mitchell, easily the most influential trade unionist of
this generation. He was born on February 4, 1870, on an Illinois farm,
but at two years of age he lost his mother and at four his father. With
other lads of his neighborhood he shared the meager privileges of the
school terms that did not interfere with farm work. At thirteen he was
in the coal mines in Braidwood, Illinois, and at sixteen he was the
outer doorkeeper in the local lodge of the Knights of Labor. Eager to
see the world, he now began a period of wandering, working his way from
State to State. So he traversed the Far West and the Southwest, alert
in observing social conditions and coming in contact with many types of
men. These wanderings stood him in lieu of an academic course, and when
he returned to the coal fields of Illinois he was ready to settle down.
From his Irish p