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60               CURRENT BIOGRAPHY

[[image - photo of man sitting at desk]]
[[caption]] JAMES P. MITCHELL [[/caption]]

private industry and government service. He is on leave of absence as vice-present of Bloomingdale Brothers department store in New York City, where he has been in charge of labor relations and operations since 1947. His views toward labor organizations are considered "middle-of-the-road" (New York Times, January 4, 1954).
   
James Paul Mitchell was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on November 12, 1900, the son of Peter J. and Anna C. (Driscoll) Mitchell. His uncle, Thomas Mitchell, the actor, was brought up with him. James attended St. Patrick's Parochial School and in the evenings and on Saturdays ran errands for a grocery store.
   
After his graduation from Battin High School in 1917, he went to work for fifteen dollars a week in this store. Within a year he was promoted to manager. Leaving his employer, he opened his own store in Rahway, New Jersey and in 1921 set up a second store in Elizabeth. Both failed in 1923. Mitchell recalls: "I was young and inexperienced, and vastly overextended myself" (New York Post, November 8, 1953).
   
Following two years of employment as a truck driver and salesman, Mitchell in 1926 became an expediter in the Western Electric Company plant in Kearny, New Jersey, and was soon transferred to the personnel department. He secured a position in 1931 with the New Jersey relief administration to direct its program in Union county, and later returned to Western Electric.

Mitchell left that company in 1936 to take charge of labor relations in the New York City division of the Works Progress Administration, headed by the then Colonel Brehon Somervell. At a time when left-wing factions were attracting the unemployed, Mitchell found his task as "trouble shooter" difficult, and says: "I have a recollection . . . of always having to cross a picket line to go to work in the morning" (New York Post, November 8, 1953). 

When Somervell went to Washington, D.C., in 1940 to head the Army's construction program, he requested Mitchell to go with him as chief of the labor relations division. The next year, Mitchell became director of the civilian personnel division for the Services of Supply of the War Department. He was also a member of the National Building Trades Stabilization Board, an alternate for the Under Secretary of War on the War Manpower Commission and head of a program of special cooperation between the Army, War Manpower Commission and the War Production Board to supply workers where they were needed.

Mitchell supported preinduction training in the high schools ". . . to provide trained manpower that will not only produce the weapons for the Armed Forces, but provide them with men who know how to keep the weapons rolling and keep them fighting" (Science News Letter, November 14, 1942).

Returning to private industry in 1945, Mitchell became director of personnel and industrial relations for R. H. Macy and Company in New York City. The personnel expert helped to settle the strike at Macy's store in 1946, allowing full pay to employees who did not remain on the job and triple pay to those who did. 

Mitchell became vice-president in charge of labor relations and operation at Bloomingdale Brothers in 1947. He is credited with stabilizing the store's "chaotic labor situation" by putting supervisory methods on a basis of "consent" and "communication" rather than authoritarian procedures (New York Post, November 8, 1953). A unionist remarked that Mitchell "never took a mechanical view of a contract, but was able to realize that it concerned human beings and not just commodities" (New York World-Telegram and Sun, October 12, 1953). 

At the U.S. Army's request, Mitchell went to Germany in 1948 to study the military government's civilian employment program, and after the outbreak of the Korean War, he examined and reported on combat pay problems. After working on a research project for the Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report, the personnel manager headed a group of the Citizens Committee in 1951 to encourage public and Congressional recognition for the need of modernizing personnel policies.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated Mitchell in April 1953 as the Assistant Secretary of the Army, in charge of manpower and reserve forces affairs. On a leave of absence from Bloomingdale Brothers, Mitchell filled this position from May 4 until October 9, 1953. During this period he called the Administration's defense policy a "sensible long-range program" (New York Times, May 17, 1953).

Nominated as Secretary of Labor by President Eisenhower on October 8, 1953, Mitchell took office the following day. The President said his choice was based more upon Mitchell's "character and interest in other people than his broad experience in the labor relations field"