A. Mitchell Palmer, of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, born 1872; graduated at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, 1891, with the highest honors of his class; was admitted to the bar in 1893 and has been actively engaged in the practice of the law in Pennsylvania and other states ever since. In 1908 he was elected to Congress from the 26th Pennsylvania District and served three terms. During his last two terms he was a member of the Committee on Ways and Means and framed the metal schedule in the Underwood Tariff Bill. He was the author of the original Federal Child Labor Law, which passed the House during his last term, but did not pass the Congress until the next term. In 1914 he was democratic nominee for United States Senate from Pennsylvania, but defeated by Senator Penrose. In 1915 he was appointed and commissioned by President Wilson a Judge of the United States Court of Claims, but declined the appointment. In 1917 he became Chairman of the 5th District Board of Pennsylvania under the Selective Service Act and organized that Board and directed its operations until October, 1917, when President Wilson appointed him Alien Property Custodian under the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act, which position he still holds. As Alien Property Custodian he has demanded and taken over all of the enemy property in the United States, amounting to approximately $700,000,000., and in the administration of the 33,000 trusts committed to his care has been called upon to solve many difficult and intricate problems. In the spring of 1918 he was offerred by Governor Brumbaugh an appointment as Associate Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but refused to leave his war work and, therefore, declined to accept. In 1898 he married Roberta Bartlett Dixon, daughter of Hon. Robert B. Dixon, of Easton, Maryland, and has one child; a daughter about ten years old.
He has been the member of the Democratic National Committee from Pennsylvania since 1912, having defeated Colonel James M. Guffey in a bitter fight in that State, involving the election of delegates to the Baltimore Convention. Mr. Palmer was a delegate at large to the Baltimore Convention, where he was a floor leader of the Wilson force and where Pennsylvania, under his leadership, was a vital factor in securing the President's nomination. He was also a delegate at large to the St. Louis Convention in 1916 and a member of the sub-committee which drafted the platform.
