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MITCHELL, JOHN

In 1870 John Mitchell (1870–1919) was born in Braidwood, Illinois, a coal-mining village. Orphaned at age six, Mitchell had a difficult childhood. Frustrated and largely penniless, he spent his teenage years laboring as a miner in Colorado and Wyoming. Through this experience, Mitchell came to believe that coal miners, and all working people, could obtain a better and more secure life by organizing labor unions to address their concerns with employers. Mitchell grew up to become one of the most respected yet controversial labor leaders in the United States in the early twentieth century.

In 1890 he was one of the founders of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Later, in 1898, Mitchell won public acclaim as UMWA president. He pursued the organization of labor by using a moderate approach to relations between workers and employers. His conservative style rejected confrontation and class conflict as counterproductive. In his two books, Organized Labor (1903), and The Wage Earner (1913), Mitchell wrote that the prosperity of workers and employers were inseparably linked together, and harmonious relations between these two groups were best for both.

As more Americans joined labor unions in America, open conflict between unions and employers became more common. Mitchell's theories of harmony between business and labor began to seem naive and unrealistic. American labor was headed in the direction of greater militancy and Mitchell's ongoing associations with businessmen caused a decline in his popularity. He was seen as a pawn of business and a conservative manipulator of union growth. In 1908, despite his reputation as an effective union organizer, the union he founded asked him to step down as president.

Mitchell later tried to pursue his theory of "business-labor harmony" by serving as head of the National Civic Federation (NCF) Trade Agreement Department. (The NCF was an organization comprised mainly of employers and business owners.) But, by 1915, the UMWA insisted he leave the NCF. The UMWA continued to see Mitchell as a collaborator with business and as an unreliable representative of union causes. In 1915 Mitchell became chairman of the New York State Industrial Commission, where he mediated labor issues until his death in 1919.

Arguably, the unions were correct about Mitchell's growing conservatism. He died a millionaire, having grown wealthy through investments in coal mining, the railroad industry, and the steel industry. Many unions came to despise him as a betrayer of union principles, but coal miners remained loyal because of the help he gave them as a labor organizer in the early days of his career. John Mitchell was an inspiration to the early labor movement in the United States, and his policies of mediation and cooperation have, in the long run, triumphed.

See also: Labor Movement, Labor Unionism, United Mine Workers

FURTHER READING

Gluck, Elsie. John Mitchell, Miner: Labor's Bargain with the Gilded Age. New York: The John Day Co., 1929.

Green, Marguerite. The National Civic Federation and the American Labor Movement 1900–1925. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973.

Greene, Victor. The Slavic Community on Strike. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968.

Mitchell, John. Organized Labor: Its Problems, Purposes, and Ideals and the Present and Future of American Wage Earners. Clifton: A. M. Kelley, 1973.

Phelan, Craig. Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.