John Purroy Mitchel

• John Purroy Mitchel
• Born: July 19, 1879
• Died: July 6, 1918

Reform mayor of New York City, was born and raised in the Fordham area of the Bronx, New York City, the son of James Mitchel, who had served in the Confederate Army before moving to New York and becoming a fire marshal, and Mary (Purroy) Mitchel, who claimed descent from Spanish nobility. After study with private tutors, young Mitchel had a classical education in the preparatory department of St. John’s College, where he wrote for the literary magazine. He was graduated in 1899 from Columbia College, where he debated, and, with honors, from New York Law School in 1901. It may be significant that throughout his schooling he was at once noted as being shy and as given to asserting himself in such publicly demanding roles as debater.

After a brief legal partnership with George V. Mullan, in 1906 he was appointed assistant corporation counsel of New York City to investigate, as special prosecutor, the office of the Borough President of Manhattan, John F. Ahearn. Mitchel had now started his career as reform politician in that era of nationwide progressive ferment that helped to bring about municipal change. Tom Johnson of Cleveland was an outstanding reform muncipal politician and Lincoln Steffens was a literary spokesman for the movement; each seemed to convey both a concern for integrity and a compassion for the disadvantaged, as did such leaders of the larger progressive movement as Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. In one respect Mitchel’s reputation was similar to that of the established reform leaders: the “Young Torquemada” was known for his integrity and for placing principle before loyalty.

Mitchel’s work impressed Governor Charles Evans Hughes, who removed both Ahearn and Borough President Louis Haffen of the Bronx, another Mitchel target. Somewhat reluctantly, Mitchel was thrust into political prominence and was drafted in 1909 to run for president of the Board of Aldermen. Supported by Republicans and independent Democrats, and by citizens concerned with good government, he was elected as the Fusion candidate. In his new position he fought the influence of Tammany Hall, the Democratic party organization, on city politics; called for municipal ownership of new rapid transit subway lines; and investigated gambling establishments and brothels.

By 1912 Mitchel had won the attention of Woodrow Wilson, the newly elected president. Wilson (with his aide Col. Edward M. House) wanted to have some role in cleaning up New York City politics, so he named Mitchel collector of the Port of New York in May 1913. But the same anti-Tammany forces that had elected Mitchel in 1909 now wanted him to run for mayor of the city. He was nominated as the Fusion candidate despite opposition that focused on his support of public ownership of the subways and on the strong backing for him of William Randolph Hearst, the publisher. Mitchel ran a campaign with Wilson’s support strictly around the issues of fighting Tammany Hall and corruption and won by the then remarkable plurality of 121,000.

As mayor, Mitchel fought for reforms in the police department, tax relief for city residents, and control of the city debt. He was criticized because of the police department’s tapping of private telephone wires and because of his attempt to implement a program for vocational training in the schools—a program initiated in Gary, Indiana, that workers and poorer constituents felt to be insulting. He was hurt also by his zeal for military preparedness once the European war had begun but before the United States entered it; in 1915 he even enlisted in the army as a trainee while still mayor. Possibly equally damaging was the resentment among religious groups against city investigations into alleged mismanagement of Catholic and Protestant charities; Mitchel’s own Catholicism did not save him from reaction against this inquiry.

But it was his political personality, beginning with his lifelong shyness—interpreted as a kind of indifference toward real social problems in the city—that hurt him the most. He seemed remote from human difficulty; one observer noted the “administrative faculty of his mind,” full of “facts and figures and charts and tables.” And Mitchel himself talked of a city government “administered solely with a view of achieving continuous efficiency.” He also gave an impression of “elegance,” which, added to his shyness and stress on efficiency, made him seem “too much Fifth Avenue, too little First Avenue.” Despite the fact that he created an unemployment relief fund and reacted with impartiality during labor disputes, he did not suggest the human compassion of La Follette.

In his reelection campaign in 1917, Mitchel lost the Republican nomination to W. M. Bennett by 244 votes. Then he campaigned against John Hylan, the Democrat; Bennett; and the Socialist Morris Hillquit; he stressed the war and implied that his opponents were unpatriotic. Hylan, he said, possessed a “yellow streak.” This hurt Mitchel in a city with many ethnic groups—including Jews, German-Americans, and Irish-Americans—that had ambiguous attitudes about the war; these groups were also more in tune with types of progressive reform that differed from those advocated by Mitchel. He was hurt, too, by the degree to which his support seemed to come from the wealthy and well-born such as Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Evans Hughes, who spoke for him. Mitchel lost, receiving less than half of his 1913 total vote.

Shortly thereafter, Mitchel joined the aviation corps. He suffered a fatal fall, on July 6, 1918, from a single-seater scout plane. Investigations suggested that his safety belt had been unfastened. He was thirty-eight at the time of his death and was survived by his wife, Olive (Child) Mitchel, whom he had married on April 3, 1909. Mitchel Field on Long Island was named for him.

The John Purroy Mitchel Mayoralty Papers are in the Municipal Archives, New York City. The John Purroy Mitchel Papers are at the Library of Congress. For a full-scale biography, see E. R. Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel, the Boy Mayor of New York (1965). See also R. Dick, “John P. Mitchel as Mayor and Candidate for Reelection,” Master’s thesis, New York University (1953); J. Street, “New York’s Fighting Mayor,” Collier’s, August 25, 1917; H. L. McBain “John Purroy Mitchel,” National Municipal Review, September 1918; “John Purroy Mitchel: His Chief Contribution to City Government,” Survey, August 3, 1918; and The Dictionary of American Biography (1934).