JAMES PAUL MITCHELL, SECRETARY OF LABOR

Early Years: Born Nov. 12, 1900, in Elizabeth, N.J. His father, Peter J. Mitchell, was editor of a funeral directors' trade journal. His mother, Anna Driscoll Mitchell, now 74, is still living in Elizabeth. Cinemactor Thomas (High Noon) Mitchell is his uncle. Graduated from Elizabeth's Battin High School in 1917, could not afford to go to college, got a job in a grocery store.

Career: After two years as a grocery clerk, Mitchell opened his own butter and egg store, went bankrupt four years later. In 1929 he went to work as a clerk in the Western Electric Co. plant at Kearny, N.J., lost the job in a 1932 Depression layoff. The Depression brought him his first public job, as director of the Emergency Relief Administration in New Jersey's Union County. In 1936 he returned to Western Electric as a clerk, but soon moved on to personnel training. Two years later Lieut. Colonel Brehon Somervell, then New York administrator of the Works Progress Administration, hired him as labor-relations adviser. He managed to keep the New York WPA going despite the trouble caused by strike-happy, left-wing factions among WPA workers. Somervell took him to Washington in 1941, put him in charge of labor relations for the Army's construction program. Mitchell soon became director of the War Department's industrial personnel division, with responsibility for the labor and manpower problems involving nearly a million war-production workers. One of his Washington associates was John O'Gara, then vice president of Macy's New York City store, who said he would top any offer to get Mitchell for Macy's. In 1945 Mitchell became Macy's labor-relations expert, was soon promoted to director of personnel and industrial relations. He moved to Bloomingdale's in 1947, became vice president in charge of personnel and service at a salary of about $50,000 a year. His success as a labor-relations expert attracted the attention of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, whose forces pushed hard to make him Secretary of Labor.

Family: In 1923 he married Isabelle Nulton of Roselle Park. N.J. They have a daughter Elizabeth, 13. The family home is in Spring Lake, N.J.

Personality & Point of View: A quiet, practical, genial Irish Catholic with deep-set blue eyes, a massive, laugh-crinkled face, huge shoulders and bristling hair. A Republican, he has never been active in politics. An expert in getting opposing forces together, he is considered shrewd by management and fair by labor. Bloomingdale employees honored him by waiving a no-executive rule to permit him to join their deep-sea fishing club. Never a labor-union member, he has never stated his views on the Taft-Hartley law in public. He once told an employer organization: "Unions can become our partners in this search for increased productivity and improved morale."

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