arentage he inherited a genial personality and a gift
of speech. These traits, combined with his continual reading on economic
and sociological subjects, soon lifted him into local leadership. He
became president of the village school board and of the local lodge of
the Knights of Labor. He joined the United Mine Workers of America upon
its organization in 1890. He rose rapidly in its ranks, was a delegate
to the district and sub-district conventions, secretary-treasurer of
the Illinois district, chairman of the Illinois legislative committee,
member of the executive board, and national organizer. In January, 1898,
he was elected national vice-president, and in the following autumn,
upon the resignation of the president, he became acting president. The
national convention in 1899 chose him as president, a position which he
held for ten years. 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.

At the beg