For a long time the battle cloud grew darker until finally the whole nation became alarmed. So grave was the situation that Theodore Roosevelt, then president, was asked to help avert the crisis that seemed inevitable. At once the president left Washington for the scene of conflict. Day after day he sought among the sullen, half-crazed men for some solution of the difficulty, until finally he discovered a man big enough to bring order out of confusion. Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in speaking of this discovery, says: "From the inferno of the coal-strike dates the cementing of those ties of friendship and comradeship which have bound John Mitchell and Theodore Roosevelt. The president, plunging into the heart of the strike, sought and found the man whose hand held the pulse of events. He found him, haggard and white with the strain of a great exhaustion, upheld by the inspiration of a great purpose, and forthwith John Mitchell, coal-miner, son of a coal-miner, came into a place in the Roosevelt esteem which few men have equaled and no man surpassed. When at the White House conference of American governors, the president invited as guests of honor those five Americans who, in his judgment, ranked foremost in current progress, John Mitchell, the labor man, was high in the quintette." To have a plain coal-miner thus honored by the President of the United States is so exceptional that we cannot help wondering what there was about Mr. Mitchell that earned for him such distinction. To discover the source of his greatness it is necessary to study his life. John Mitchell was born in the cottage of a humble coal-miner at Braidwood, Illinois, in 1870. In those days Braidwood was a dreary, dirty mining town almost surrounded by broad stretches of swamp. When John was but three years of age his mother died. His stepmother, who no doubt meant well, was not affectionate; on the contrary she was very severe. As they were very poor she had to take in washings, and day after day it fell to John's lot to help his stepmother with the washings.