Frank Wheeler Mondell was an American congressman. He was also a mine operator, and lawyer.
Background
Frank Wheeler Mondell was born on November 6, 1860, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the youngest of seven children of Ephraim Wheeler and Nancy (Brown) Mondell. His father, a native of Brattleboro, Vermont, had followed a variety of occupations before coming to St. Louis, where he operated stables and later was a proprietor of a hotel. Both he and Mondell's mother died before the boy was seven, and he was brought up in the family of a Congregational minister named Upton in Dickinson County, Iowa.
Education
Mondell attended school no more than three months a year.
Career
After a sketchy rural education, Mondell went to Chicago in search of his fortune, working his way there on a cattle train. In 1879, he moved to Denver, Colorado, where for eight years he engaged in various mercantile pursuits and in mining and railroading ventures. The decisive event of this period of his life was his agreeing in 1887 to prospect for coal for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. This took him to Wyoming, where he discovered what developed into the rich Cambria coal mine. He became general manager of the mine and laid out the town of Newcastle, Wyoming. At once, Mondell became the first citizen and the first politician of the new community. He was chosen a mayor, a position he held until his election to Congress, and served two terms in the Wyoming state Senate. He also continued his mining work, pioneering in the development of oil as well as coal deposits. Once while leading a posse he was wounded by outlaw bullets; he carried two slugs in his body for the rest of his life.
Frank Wheeler was defeated in 1896, a victim of the western demand for free silver, which he opposed, but after serving for two years as assistant commissioner of the General Land Office he won back his seat, and thereafter he remained in Congress continuously until 1923. When the Republicans captured the House in the 1918 elections Mondell became majority floor leader. He was a prominent administration spokesman during the first two years of Harding's term. In 1922, he ran for the Senate but was defeated by John B. Kendrick. For years, he had been studying law, and he now determined to abandon politics for that profession. Refusing offers of appointment as ambassador to Japan and governor of Puerto Rico, he was in 1924 admitted to the bar. His last political service was as permanent chairman of the Republican National Convention of 1924. Mondell passed his last years in Washington, D. C. He died at his home there of leukemia and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Washington.
Achievements
Politics
Mondell was elected to Congress in 1894 as a Republican. Mondell was the old-fashioned, spellbinder type of politician. A lifelong conservative, he was always an "organization man. " He supported Joseph G. Cannon against the insurgents in the celebrated fight for the speakership of the House in 1910, and he was a prominent foe of Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 Republican convention, despite powerful grass-roots support for Roosevelt in Wyoming. In the campaign, he was a vociferous critic of the Progressive party and its leader. Later he criticized Woodrow Wilson's Mexican policy, urging recognition of Victoriano Huerta as the only man who could give Mexico a stable government. After the outbreak of war in Europe, he resisted all preparedness legislation and voted for the unsuccessful McLemore Resolution (1916), which would have declared that Americans traveling on belligerent ships did so at their own risk. He also opposed the draft and, after the war, the League of Nations. His election as Republican floor leader in 1919 marked a triumph for the Old Guard; liberals in his party charged Mondell with being a "do-nothing" leader.
Mondell believed in the rapid expansion of the West even at the expense of the preservation of natural resources. Theodore Roosevelt's statement that Mondell "took the lead in every measure to prevent the conservation of our natural resources" was perhaps an exaggeration, but Mondell was a consistent and vocal foe of the Forest Service, which he accused of withholding vast areas of non-forest land from the general public. He also opposed the reserving of coal lands on the ground that this tended to cause a coal shortage in the West. A supporter of dry farming, he advocated, while in Congress, increasing the size of homestead grants in the dry areas of the Great Plains. However, after his retirement he became a lobbyist for the Wyoming Wool Growers Association and completely reversed his position, arguing that the semi-arid lands of the high Plains should be reserved for grazing.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
During the 1924 Republican convention, the New York Times commented: "The word 'reactionary' is a mild one, almost significant of progress, as applied to Mondell's pre-Adamite views. "
Connections
In 1899, Mondell married Ida Harris, daughter of a Laramie, Wyoming, physician. They had five children: Dorothy, William Harris, Frank Wheeler, George Parker, and Marjorie.