In 1839, a 21-year-old Scottish immigrant arrived at Milwaukee, then a bustling village of about a thousand souls, and, with heroic courage and steadily-cumulating success, engaged in the struggle with his more experienced and sometimes unscrupulous competitors for a part of the potential wealth of the new territory. By the time the Civil War had ended, this untried immigrant had outstripped all his contenders in his chosen fields--finance and railroad building, and had carved out a position and name for himself that to this day ranks him among the ten greatest men of Wisconsin. (See I. P. Alexander, “Chats with the Editor,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, 27:257-60.) This bold and towering figure was Alexander Mitchell, the evidence of whose genius and energy is still apparent in a powerful financial institution and two railroad systems extending from the Midwest to the Pacific.
Not only did Alexander Mitchell transmit the products of his ability and daring, but he passed on these very precious endowments themselves to his son, John L. Mitchell. John L. Mitchell was an idealist--perhaps, a dreamer--the exact opposite of his realistic and hard-headed father. He was the family poet who could envision such unheard of phenomena as a “United States of Europe,” an un-imperialistic world, the banishment of poverty, and a world of leisure and culture. And he could fight for some of his ideals, as his work in the House and Senate attest.
John L. Mitchell was also an independent in his politics and thinking. Despite his banker and businessman background, he was not deterred from backing Bryan for President in 1896, denouncing the protective tariff, and supporting the income tax movement. The pursuit of culture and learning, however, drew the larger part of his interest; and, despite the demand politics and business made on his time, he managed to acquire an education that ranked him as a scholar in the fields of language, literature, and history. In fact, so powerful was his desire for learning that when nearly sixty he took a long dreamed of respite from the affairs of the world and distinguished himself as a student of French language and literature at the University of Grenoble in France.
