318 FAMOUS LIVING AMEEICANS early years, was to hold him to certain definite theories of con- duct. Other men in the ranks of labor might forget that the laborer was a citizen, but not John Mitchell. For him there could be no successful labor struggle that did not also result in advantage to society, to all citizens of his country. Between the ages of six and ten years the boy attended the common schools of Braidwood. Shortly before he was ten his stepmother married again. The stepfather was from the first opposed to the boy, found fault with his going to school, found fault with him about the house. As a result John Mitchell left this, his only semblance of a home, when he was ten years old, and secured a job with a farmer of the neighborhood. He was to carry water to the men and do small chores. In return he was to receive a dollar a month, his board and room. The next year he was doing almost a man's work on the farm, and was receiving ten dollars a month. At twelve years of age, at the suggestion of his stepfather, he returned home and began work in the mines, securing a place as breaker boy. Living with his stepparents was not satisfactory, however, and late in the year he ran away from home, going by slow stages to the mines in Colorado. Here he nearly starved. The mining conditions were bad, worse even than in Illinois. The miners lived in the midst of con- tinuous hardship and privation; but Mitchell found, or thought he found, them to be unusual men. Gradually there was forced upon him the belief that the hardship these men and their families suffered was not inevitable. It began to appear to him that the conditions of their lives were unneces- sarily severe, and, boy though he was, he began to plan schemes of general help for miners and their families. From the very first the Union Labor movement seemed to him to hold the promise of the things that he believed ought to be. He became not only a member of the union, but a most careful student of labor problems, proposed reforms, and general economic conditions. From the very first he realized that the labor problem was an economic problem. The solu- tion of the labor problem he felt depended as much or more
