Frank P. Sargent

Frank Pierce Sargent (November 18, 1851 – September 4, 1908) was an American trade union functionary and government official. Sargent is best remembered as the head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen for a period of more than 17 years and as the United States Commissioner General of Immigration during the first years of the 20th Century.

Biography

Early years

Frank P. Sargent was born on November 18, 1851, in the small town of East Orange, Vermont. He was the son of Charles Edwin Sargent, a farmer, and his wife Mary C. Kinney Sargent. Sargent completed his education in a rural district school of Orange County, Vermont at the age of 17 and left for Manchester, New Hampshire to learn photography as an apprentice in a photography shop.

Having learned the trade, Sargent went to work as a photographer himself, plying his trade in Manchester, Philadelphia, and Haverhill, Massachusetts. He was subsequently elected as a delegate to the BLF's 1882 Annual Convention, held in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Sargent was an active member of the National Civic Federation as well as a trusted associate of Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor and John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers of America.

Sargent was succeeded in his government role by Assistant Commissioner of Immigration Frank H. Larned on an interim basis. His permanent successor, however, was Daniel J. O'Keefe, who served as Commissioner-General from 1909 to 1913.

Footnotes

Works "A Short History of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen," in Carroll D. Wright (ed.), Fifth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1889: Railroad Labor. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1890; pp. 40–41. "Problems of Immigration," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 24 (July 1904), pp. 153–155.