USA > Ohio > Bench and bar of Ohio; a compendium of history and biography, Vol. I > Part 49
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
STEPHEN R. HARRIS, Bucyrus. Honorable Stephen R. Harris, who was born on his father's farm seven miles west of Massillon, Ohio, May 22, 1824, sprang from patriotic stock. His grandfather was John Harris and his pater- nal grandmother Mary Hamilton. The former was a soldier in the army of Washington and distinguished himself at the battle of Monmouth, where his brother-in-law, John Hamilton, was killed beside him. The subject of this biography worked on the farm and attended district school until fourteen years of age, when he started out for himself. He was employed as clerk in a store at Canal Fulton, Stark county, about four years, attended a select school at Dalton, taught by John W. Rankin (afterwards a distinguished lawyer and a partner at Keokuk, Iowa, of the late Justice Miller, of the United States Supreme Court). In 1842 he was a student in the preparatory department of Washington College, Pennsylvania, which institution recently conferred upon him the honorary degree of A. M. In 1843 and 1844 he studied in Norwalk Seminary, under the late Edward Thompson, bishop of the Methodist Epis- copal Church. For the next two years he was a student in the classical department of Western Reserve College at Hudson. In the winter of 1846-7 he taught a school at Canal Fulton. Having by this time acquired a liberal edu- cation through his own unaided and persistent efforts, he entered upon the study of law in the office of his uncle, John Harris, a pioneer lawyer of ability, at Canton. After reading under instruction for two years he was admitted to the Bar in the spring of 1849, and on the 14th day of June in that year opened an office for practice at Bucyrus. From that time to the present, almost half a century, he has continued in practice at the same place. He became the law partner of the late Judge Josiah Scott in 1850, and the partnership was continuous until the death of the latter in 1879, except for the period of Judge Scott's service on the State Supreme Bench. Mr. Harris served as deputy United States marshal and member of the county military committee during the war. He was elected in 1894 to represent his district, which had been strongly Democratic, in the Fifty-fourth Congress of the United States, and was the candidate of his party for re-election in 1896; but the free silver sentiment and fusion of the Populists were sufficiently strong
382
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
to defeat the ticket. Mr. Harris has been a Republican ever since the organi- zation of the party, and prior to that was a Whig. He has, however, given his chief thought and nearly all his time to the duties of his profession, and has for years stood in the forefront of practitioners in Crawford county. His reading is deep and broad ; he is successful in the trial of cases, and remark- ably successful in the argument of cases before the Supreme Court. It has become proverbial in the Bar where he is well known that if Mr. Harris has the slightest ground for appeal on error to the higher courts his adversary may as well give up at once, because he nearly always wins in the Appellate Court. He holds the esteem of his brethren at the Bar and the confidence of courts. His methods are such as commend themselves to the best and most respected members of the profession. He also stands well in the highest political circles, and his personal popularity rests upon merit. He was married September 15, 1853, to Miss Mary Jane Monett, who died in 1888, leaving two sons and two daughters, offspring of the union. He has been very successful as a financier, and as a result is a man of large possessions. He is quite an extended landed proprietor in the States of Ohio and Iowa. As an amateur sportsman he is a frequent contributor to the Turf, Field and Farm and Forest and Stream. Now over seventy-three years of age, he is an excellent shot on the wing, either in the open or from the trap. Mr. Harris was one of the original members of the State Bar Association, and has been an active member from the beginning, serving as president of the association in 1894. He is now chairman of the committee on legal biography. As a public speaker, he is clear, logical and convincing, rather than eloquent. He enter- tains decided views on all questions of political importance or popular interest. A brief extract from his address as president of the State Bar Association to the members thereof will serve to disclose his views, tersely expressed on some practical questions :
" The Ohio State Bar Association had its origin in the long felt want of legal reform. It has already borne fruit in elevating the standard of qualifi- cations for admission to the Bar. It has prompted a more vigorous examina- tion of applicants under the immediate supervision of the Supreme Court, and especially did it influence the recent act of our legislature requiring three years previous study before admission to the Bar. Another important object was. to relieve the Supreme Court from their overcrowded docket, and to secure in our highest court a more speedy decision of important causes, involv- ing, as they often do, large amounts and great property interests which, lingering and undecided, entail disaster and ruin on litigants. A Constitu- tional convention met in the years 1873 and 1874. After spending much time and great sums of money, the fruits of their labor were deemed to be inade- quate to the wants of the people, who were attached to the Constitution of 1851, and the proposed new Constitution of Ohio was rejected at the polls. The Bar of Ohio, appreciating the want of improved and enlarged judicial tribunals, first organized this association, and next set to work zealously and at their own expense to facilitate the prompt administration of justice. The Circuit Court is one of the offsprings of the Ohio State Bar Association. The legislature acted upon it as it came from our hands, and the people ratified it at the polls. While it is true the Supreme Court is still overcrowded with busi-
. 383
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
ness, yet it is also true that the increased business, commercial, manufacturing, railroad, navigation, mining and other industries, have increased the litigation in our courts. The Supreme Court would evidently be in a worse condition than at present but for the large volume of business that has been finally terminated in the Circuit Court. Law is becoming more of an exact science. We have a greater number of elementary books and reports of adjudicated cases than in times past ; and here I will volunteer some advice to the younger members of the Bar, especially to those who, like myself, practice in the country towns, where they do not have access to public law libraries. Do not invest your earnings or your capital in reports beyond that of your own State, and per- haps the reports of the United States Supreme Court. Rather make use of elementary works and text-books of the latest editions; you there find the views of the author and his careful collection of all the reported cases on the subject of your study. With a library of that kind, costing a few hundred dollars, a lawyer derives more ready and practical advantage than from a library of reports that will cost thousands. Formerly lawyers had to argue elementary principles and apply them to the various and complicated phases of business under new and constantly developing branches of trade and com- mercial relations of men. Now we have either the authority of able law writers or the adjudications of the higher courts for the ready solution of nearly every question that can arise. By the aid of the official stenographer all the evidence and the rulings of the court can be preserved, and with a bill of exceptions or separate findings by the court, of the facts and conclusions of law, causes may be reviewed and errors corrected in the higher courts. It is a matter within the observation and experience of our profession that some- times in a trial a radical difference will spring up between the attorneys and the court as to the law of the case, in which the court has the best of the law- ver for the time being. The lawyer, however, having made a long, deep and careful study of his case, still maintains an earnest faith in his position, only to find himself stricken down by the trial court. He takes his case on error to the Supreme Court and secures the reversal of the judgment below ; feels him- self vindicated, and takes pride in himself and his chosen profession, to which he has conscientiously devoted every energy of his life. In the long years of my own practice I have observed with satisfaction the facilities that have been gradually afforded for the review of cases and the correction of errors by the higher courts. Some objections have been made to the continuance of the Circuit Court. We are sensitive to such remark because the Circuit Court is one of the fruits of the Ohio State Bar Association. The Circuit Court has, on the whole, been beneficial in the judicature of our State, and it is not likely to be'abolished. One of the long needed legal reforms in Ohio has been the improvement of our jury system. It is a fact well known that proper care was not always observed in the selection of jurors with respect to their mental and moral qualifications. They have been hastily and inconsiderately selected by the township trustees at the end of election days, as though it were merely a formal matter and of little consequence. The result has been that a lawyer of ability, when he addressed a jury in his best vein, felt that he was shooting over their heads, and when he came down to their capacity he felt that he was engaged in undignified business. ' A plansible, insignificant word in the mouth of an expert demagogue is a dangerous and dreadful weapon,' in which a dignified lawyer takes no delight. For years the juries in the Federal Courts were far the superiors of the average juries in our County Courts. as every lawyer of experience in both tribunals knows. I have given this subject much thought, and prepared some practical suggestions looking toward reform, when much to my delight, and no doubt to the gratification of the profession
384
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
generally, an act of the legislature, passed on the 23rd day of April, 1894, pro- vided for the appointment of a non-partisan jury commission of four suitable persons in each county, whose duty it is to select jurors for the ensuing year. Much may be expected from the improved jury system in the future. It is gratifying also to state that the measure was introduced in the House of Repre- sentatives by Honorable Curtis E. McBride, of Mansfield, an active and honored member of our association. After passing the House the bill was concurred in by the Senate without a dissenting vote. *
" Another topic I approach with diffidence, for the reason that no expres- sion has been uttered on the subject by our association. What the views of our members here assembled may be, is unknown to me, but I cannot refrain from expressing my own feelings and convictions, whether they be acceptable to this association or not. I allude to the growing state of anarchy to which our beloved Republic is rapidly drifting under the unchecked growth of com- munism, which takes the specious form and name of so-called strikes. Thou- sands upon thousands of laborers have had ample employment with good living wages on the railroads, in the mines and manufacturing establishments of our country. On the other hand there are triple the number of honest laborers in miscellaneous pursuits, uncertain in their nature, liable to fluctuate in wages and of uncertain duration, such as the common day laborer. The latter class may well envy the miner, the railroader and the factory hand. They would gladly change places for the same wages, but what state of things confronts them? They are met and repulsed by strikers who voluntarily go out themselves and refuse to permit other laborers to take their places. Here we see the work of seditious demagogues with political aspirations and a burn- ing desire for notoriety. With incendiary eloquence they seek to embitter labor against capital, when they well know that labor and capital are mutually dependent on each other. They tell the laborers, who are strongest numer- ically, that they are abused and oppressed by their employers, at times when the laborers are well compensated and contented. They incite discontent and resentments where none existed before. They arouse the dormant passions and cupidity of the laborer. They frame and formulate organizations and societies for them, and incite them to strike down and ruin their benefactors. They dupe their followers with the doctrine that capitalists and corporations are powerful and oppressive, but fail to tell the other truth that a host of hos- tile and unreasonable laborers are also oppressive and dangerous. The result is that they have prevented the running of railroad trains, they have tied the hands of property owners, they have closed factories, and they have shut up coal mines on which private families, factories, railroads and steamers on our navigable waters, depend for fuel. They have impeded the carrying of mails and have inflicted untold injury either directly or indirectly upon every business pursuit. For the vacant position of every striker there are three equally honest laborers with families in need of their earnings, who are ready and willing to go to work, but the horde of strikers, under the instructions of designing leaders, sullenly and forcibly repulse every non-union laborer who ventures to start the train, to open the mine, or set the idle machinery running in the factory, and that to the extent of assassination if necessary to carry the point. There can be a tyranny of labor as well as a tyranny of capital. Suppose a change of places. Imagine an employer who would dis- charge a laborer and at the same time say to him, ' I will neither give you employment nor permit you to work for anybody else.' The same designing and insidious leader who first inaugurated a strike would be ready to turn round and incite the rich against the poor, if he could thereby obtain political power and notoriety. A demagogue in a republic and a courtier in a mon-
385
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
archy are the same. They both fawn and flatter the governing power for the sake of personal gain and notoriety. The designing orator and demagogue who incites a happy and contented class of well paid laborers, as well as the poor who are out of employment, to mutiny against their employers and ben- efactors; who makes inflammatory speeches to convince them that the rich have no other design than to crush the poor, and that the poor have no higher mission than to ruin the rich, deserves to be classed with the bloody anarchist, and should like him be stamped out by the government for its own protection. * *
* The legislature of Ohio has enacted laws peculiarly beneficial to the laboring classes. It protects wages against the homestead and other exemptions of the debtor. It gives them priority over all others in case of their employers' failure. It gives them mechanics' and workmen's liens on structures of all kinds, and our courts construe all those laws liberally in the interest of the mechanics and laborers whose work is in the structures. I would go farther ; I would have our legislature and our courts protect the honest laborer, who is seeking employment, finds a vacant place with an employer ready and willing to set him to work, but finds himself met, halted and threatened, not by the owner of the property, but by a striker who has vacated the position, stopped the business, depreciated the property of his former employer, and now forbids a fellow citizen to work when his services are needed and the wages offered are satisfactory. It becomes at this point an issue, not between employer and employee, but it is the oppression of one class of laborers against another class. It is the tyranny of those who abandoned their work and deprive other worthy and needy laborers of employment. It presents the spectacle of an unreasonable and tyrannical class of laborers arrayed against another and less favored class seeking employment. Per- sonally, I am not interested in the conflict between the strikers and their employers. I allude to it without personal feeling for either class. In fact, I have a friendly feeling for the laboring man. I have been there myself. The first money I ever earned for myself was by chopping wood for forty cents a cord. I have a sympathy with the laboring man and especially for one who is out of employment and kept out by another. I have no especial affection for an unreasonable capitalist. *
* * * The state of our feel- ings, however, has little to do with the subject under consideration. It is a question of vital principle and must be met. The Constitution of our own State, as well as the Federal Constitution, is broad enough to support appro- priate legislation to remedy these evils ; to practically afford equal and exact protection to the poor against the rich ; to protect the property of the rich against mob violence ; and, what appears to be more needed at the present time, to afford protection to one class of laborers against the tyranny of another class.
" In all the political history of our country, when emergencies have arisen, lawyers were depended on to guide legislation, to frame treaties, and to draft acts of legislatures, so they might be in conformity to law. De Tocqueville, that accurate and sagacious observer of our country, as early as 1835, wrote these remarkable words: 'I cannot believe that a republic could subsist at the present time if the influence of lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.' Thirty of the fifty-five members of the convention which framed the Federal Constitution were lawyers, and all of those who put it in proper legal shape were lawyers. Of all the United States senators since 1787, two-thirds have been lawyers, and of the entire number of Representatives more than one-half were lawyers. While it is true that men of other vocations have been useful and perhaps indispensable as leg- islators, because of their knowledge and experience in the various wants,
386
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
industries and business interests of the country, yet upon the lawyers rested and still rests the responsibility of framing laws to meet and protect those wants and business interests, that they may stand when contested in the courts. A lawyer devoted to his profession has little other thought than to study his cases in the interest of his clients. He seldom stops to reflect upon his calling or to view it from an outside standpoint. A Bar association with its period- ical meetings has a beneficial tendency to relax his labors for the time being and to afford him an opportunity to exchange views with his fellow members of the legal profession, when they are met together socially and not in the heat of litigation at the Bar. Upon the lawyer rests the responsibility of managing and directing the highest and most important business interests, the rights of person, the rights of property including in many instances the domestic relations. When I speak of lawyers I have no reference to that small class who have crept into our profession, who grovel in the dregs of dis- honorable practice, the shysters-a set of turkey buzzards whose touch is pollution and whose breath is pestilence. To such a class drifts dishonest litigation. If a man has a crooked case he naturally hunts a crooked lawyer to manage it. I desire, on the contrary, to bring my tribute to the higher class of our profession. I mean the honorable, conscientious lawyer, who has many important privileges conferred upon him, and who in turn has many important duties to perform. He acts with fidelity to his client and with courtesy to the court, gives all the light and aid he can to honorably advance the interests of his client. He discourages useless and discreditable litigation. He investigates his client's cause and promptly tells him, if it be true that he cannot defend or recover as the case may be, and advises a settlement or com- promise. While such a lawyer may forego a fee for the time being, he will build up a reputation for honesty that will ultimately flood him with business of a meritorious character in which he himself will have confidence. On such a lawyer will the business man rely when complications arise and his property is in jeopardy. To him will the testator in contemplation of death, send to write his last will and testament. On him will the widow and orphan depend when designing men seek to deprive them of their patrimony, and the lawver who would prove false to such a trust and himself become the robber, deserves to be expelled from the Bar in his lifetime and after his death go where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched - and that too without any obit- uary notice by our committee on legal biography. Everything a lawyer acquires in the practice of his profession he deserves, because he has earned it. Every step that he makes is in the face of tenacious opposition. His progress is contested inch by inch. His life is one of mental conflict. The other learned professions in the acquisitions of which the student burns the midnight oil in school or college, are not so. The pastor's sermon is an ex parte produc- tion. The physician prescribes to his patient in secret and without opposition. If he makes a mistake the world is none the wiser, but when the lawyer takes a false position or makes a mistake it is in the glare of the light. He is detected and exposed in public and suffers humiliation and perhaps defeat.
"In conclusion, my friends, I propose to you this sentiment : 'There is no more exalted human character than the man of our profession who has rounded up a life of industry as an honest and successful lawyer.'"
-
387
BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO.
THOMAS BEER, Bucyrus. Honorable Thomas Beer, late judge of the Cir- cuit Court, was born in Wayne county, Ohio, in 1832. His ancestors were of Norman, Scotch and Dutch extraction. He was educated in the primitive log school house common in that part of Ohio sixty-five years ago. At the age of fifteen he was qualified to teach a district school and did engage in teaching for a few terms in winter. He read law in Coshocton, but did not inmedi- ately take up the practice. He was editor of a newspaper from 1858 to 1862. In the year 1860 he settled in Bucyrus, which has since been his home. In 1863 he was elected representative of Crawford county in the Ohio legislature and was re-elected two years later, serving as a member of that body from 1864 to 1868. During the period from 1862 to 1874 Mr. Beer engaged in the practice of law and built up a profitable business, establishing for himself a reputation for integrity and legal ability. In 1873 he was elected a member of the Constitutional convention presided over by Morrison R. Waite, after- wards Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and by Rufus King. He was appointed judge of the Common Pleas Court in 1874 by the governor, and was elected his own successor and re-elected five years later, occupying the Bench of that court continuously for eleven years. While still serving on the Bench of the Common Pleas he was elected judge of the Circuit Court in 1884 for the term beginning in February next following, and occupied the Circuit Bench for eight years, until February, 1893. Since he retired from the judicial office Judge Beer has been engaged in the practice of his profes- sion. In 1892 he was a candidate on the Democratic ticket for judge of the Supreme Court, but was defeated with the ticket by a narrow margin. He is quite active in support of his political party and popular with the opposition. Both as a practitioner at the Bar and a judge on the Bench Judge Beer has exhibited much learning in the law and high regard for the obligations and duties appertaining to the profession. He has esteemed the organized court as the best human agency for securing individual rights, the protection of society and justice between man and man. His record on the Bench was admirable, evincing at once deep knowledge of the law, inflexible integrity, an accurate sense of equity, and impartiality which "knows nothing of the parties but their names on the docket," and perennial good temper. He has always preserved the habits of a student and hence has become thoroughly versed in the law. His standing at the Bar as a practitioner is very high and he enjoys to the fullest degree the confidence and esteem of his fellow practi- tioners as well as the courts. During a service of nearly twenty years on the Bench he maintained an irreproachable character and at the same time ren. dered decisions which generally withstood the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. He was accustomed to listen with no manifestation of impatience to argu- ments of counsel, never seeking to anticipate them by an inopportune display of knowledge. Appreciating the dignity of the judicial office, he at the same time respected the rights and privileges of the Bar; so that his court was a model of decorum and his intercourse with lawyers always marked by a due courtesy. It is a recognized fact that tendencies and idiosyncrasies are trans-
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.