John Mitchell (1870–1919) was one of the most respected American labor leaders in the early years of the twentieth century. A miner himself, he was one of the earliest members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) upon its founding in 1890; by 1898, due to his knowledge of law, he had become its president at the age of twenty-eight. Between 1900 and 1902 he led two strikes of coal miners in Pennsylvania; at the time, coal was the main way people heated their houses, so the fact that miners were not producing coal affected all Americans. In 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt intervened in the strike, an unprecedented act on the part of the American government, which had previously always sided with management if they intervened at all. Roosevelt worked to settle the strike largely in support of Mitchell’s moderate methods of leadership. Mitchell was polite and a skillful negotiator, and his empathetic leadership inspired the miners, many of whom were immigrants who spoke little English. Roosevelt’s action catapulted Mitchell into the nation’s consciousness.