A meeting was called at Stolley's Dance Hall, where several members of what was to be called Local 5221 of the American Federation of Labor met with AFL organizer Charles Cassel. Henry Miller, a St. Louis lineman, was elected president and J.T. Kelly, a wireman recently settled in St. Louis, vice president. But these men realized a single isolated local union could accomplish little permanent success without the weight of a national organization of electrical workers behind it. So they set out across the country to organize other locals, hoping to eventually bind them together. Traveling in railroad boxcars, Henry Miller visited Evansville, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, organizing as he worked.
Unions ere organized in Toledo, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Duluth.
Other small organizations of linemen and wiremen in New York, Denver and on the West Coast were contacted. A year later, in September of 1891, the call went out to all those newly organized locals to meet in St. Louis to pull this loose collection of locals into a national union. Miller was elected first Grand President and Kelly first Grand Secretary. Henry Miller was born on a ranch near Fredericksburg, Texas, on January 5, 1858. At the age of 14, he worked as a water boy for a government project to string a telegraph line from San Antonio, Texas, to Fort Clark.