Winston & Strawn

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#CC9900" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="045005a0dwnjzk.png"> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Corporate History"><U><B>home</B></U></A><B>     | </B><B> </B><B> </B><B>  </B><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFCC66" FACE="Arial" ><B>Corporate History</B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" "><U><B> </B></U></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Churches blog"><U><B>The Churches - blog</B></U></A><B>   |   </B><B>Winston & Strawn</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> Winston & Strawn</div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Chapter 2: 1900, FS Winston & the Mayor</B></div> <bR> <div> Five-time Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr. (1897-1905, 1911-1915) called Frederick S. Winston -- son of Frederick H. Winston, the firm's founder -- "brilliant" and considered him a friend.  But he had to bawl him out on one notable occasion, in the summer of 1900, when FS was attorney for the "gas trust," as Harrison told it in his 1935 autobiography, <I>Stormy Years</I>.</div> <bR> <div> Harrison was in New York City for his brother's appendectomy, a very serious matter in those days.  He had left behind the power of veto to be exercised on an ordinance much desired by FS's "gas trust" clients.  FS and others, seeking to stop the veto, "deluged" him with telegrams begging him to return and reverse his decision, which would have been enacted in his absence.  The operation on his brother went well, but he was still reeling from the strain of worry.</div> <bR> <div> "Nerve-wracked close to the snapping point" and "outraged beyond measure by the heartlessness" of this "money-hungry crew," he ignored the telegrams.  Finally came a wire from his wife.  Fred Winston, "terribly worried" by his absence, had talked to her for an hour.  Her husband seemed to be opposing "the strong men" of his party and faced "political destruction" if he continued on his course, she wrote, passing on the advice from his "good friend" Fred, her sole source in the matter.</div> <bR> <div> He returned to Chicago Sunday afternoon as planned and found Fred at his house with John A. Spoor, of the Union Transit Company, elsewhere called the "J. Pierpont Morgan" of the middle west, newly installed as president of the International Livestock Exposition, who was also a friend but "not quite" as close as Fred Winston.  </div> <bR> <div> Harrison, "too furious" to let them get a word out, called their willingness to drag him from his only brother's "possible death bed" his "most outrageous experience" -- and that, he added, "for a mere matter of money"!  And bringing his wife into it too!  "Let me tell you now," he told them.  "I shall veto that amendment and make the veto stick if it's the last act of a misspent life!"</div> <bR> <div> He did both, delaying for five years what he called "the unsavory combination of Gas Trust millionaires and political freebooter" that led to Ogden Gas Company's making its millions.  One who profited from the sale of gas stock to the trust, he noted in <I>Stormy Years</I>, was a retired pawnbroker with a Midas touch, Jake Frank, whose son was later murdered by the sons of two neighbors, Leopold and Loeb.</div> <bR> <div> By his veto Harrison earned the enmity of machine politicians who "lined up for [his] undoing," he wrote.  And his "rock-ribbed Republican fellow citizens got an awful jolt from [his] political unconventionality."  His enemies tried to force him into the vice-presidential nomination, to run with the sure loser William Jennings Bryan on the Free Silver platform.  He outfoxed them, placing the ever-willing Adlai E. Stevenson in nomination before his enemies could do the same to him.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> This was almost the end of the Frederick H. Winston years, when father and son worked and hobnobbed together.  The father belonged to several clubs, the Iroquois, Union League, and Chicago clubs, and a men's choir, Germania "Maenerchor."  He also was a regular at Billie Boyle's, in Gambler's Alley (between Madison and Washington, Dearborn to LaSalle), where he and his son joined Mayor Carter Harrison the elder and his crowd.  FS was assistant corporation counsel for the city from 1881, only three years after beginning his practice of law; in 1885, at 28 he became the youngest city corporation counsel ever to hold that position.</div> <bR> <div> Others at the table, as told by Carter Jr., then with his brother running <I>The Chicago Times</I> on a shoestring, included Hiram Jones, a City Hall "fixture" from the elder Harrison's first days in office; Cornelius K.G. Billings, son of a "gas magnate" and at one time president of Chicago's gas company, Peoples Gas, Light & Coke Company, who was himself to form gas combines and quadruple his millions; and W.A. Amberg, of Cameron, Amberg & Company, printers.</div> <bR> <div> The younger Harrisons, Carter Jr. and his brother, found themselves "irked" by this "elderly crowd" and usually sat at a different table at Billie's for lunch, feeding and drowning and smoking away their weariness after a hard day, or at least long morning, of putting out the paper. </div> <bR> <div> In 1886 FS Winston partnered with James F. Meagher, who had been or would be president of Peoples Gas.  The firm became Winston & Meagher and remained that for the rest of the century.  Meagher and FS Winston had a large practice with breweries, for whom FS raised capital from English investors.  The breweries remained the firm's clients until Prohibition, when they either changed business or went out of business.</div> <bR> <div> Ralph M. Shaw, Kentucky-born alumnus of Transylvania U. (1888), Yale (1890), and U. of Michigan law (1892), practiced law in Chicago from 1892, apparently with the Winston firm, though that is not clear.  In any case, he became a Winston partner in 1899.  Shaw counseled the breweries organized by FH Winston and did the same for railroads and insurance companies.  Among the railroads was the Chicago Great Western (started in 1885 by A.B. Stickney and merged in 1968 with the Chicago & Northwestern), for which he became board chairman and general counsel.  </div> <bR> <div> He also counseled and became a director of the Chicago Junction Railway, which from 1898 served the Central Manufacturing District, running from Whiting, Indiana, to Chicago suburban Franklin Park;  U.S. Pipe & Foundry Company; Union Stock Yard & Transit; Stewart-Warner; and Live Stock National Bank.</div> <bR> <div> Politically, he was "at all times a staunch Republican," doing his bit in the war against FDR by chairing the Illinois division of the American Liberty League, which had former Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith as a member.  He was also prominent in the Repeal movement, according to a 1953 history of the firm by John Black.  His name would be on the firm's door until his death in 1951.  </div> <bR> <div> Meagher left in 1901, and Silas Strawn's name went on the door.  The full name was Winston, Babcock, Strawn & Shaw.  Strawn, a partner since 1894, elected with Frederick R. Babcock, had run the firm from the time Meagher left.  He had joined Winston & Meagher in 1892.  Three new partners were named -- James Miles, James T. Maher, and John D. Black, who was later to be a name partner and the firm's principal trial lawyer.</div> <bR> <div> James Miles worked almost entirely with railroads.  In fact, he did legal work for every railroad entering Chicago, working with the city on "track elevation," bringing tracks up above ground level, a project that cost millions.  He had pretty much completed this work in 1898, when he left for Cuba with his National Guard infantry regiment as a major.  He rejoined the firm after the Spanish-American War, but left it in 1901.</div> <bR> <div> James T. Maher was office manager and "guide, counselor and friend of associates" from 1892 to 1902, when he left for the Great Northern Railway Company, to manage its real estate and tax matters lying between St. Paul to its northwest end points.  He moved to St. Paul, where he became an "important and active citizen."</div> <bR> <div> Another lawyer, Kay Wood, left to join his father at Wood Brothers, livestock commission operators at the Union Stock Yards.  </div> <bR> <div> Another, William Raymond, "an attractive young man with an admirable baritone voice," left in 1900 or so to be leading man for "the charming comic opera star" and Austrian soprano, Fritzi Scheff.  Another, Ira C. Belden, became general counsel for the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. </div> <bR> <div> These FS Winston contemporaries are noted and catalogued in John D. Black's "A Century of a Law Firm: Winston, Strawn, Black & Towner, 1853-1953," a 33-page typescript.  (There is also a printed copy, printed Gunthorp-Warren Printing Co., Chicago, available at a few Illinois libraries, for which see FirstSearch, a standard on-line catalog used in libraries.)</div> <bR> <div> James Meagher left in 1901 to start his own firm, Sears, Meagher & Whitney, whose senior member, Nathaniel C. Sears, had been judge of the superior court and before this an appellate court chief justice.  He had also run for mayor as a Republican in 1897, losing to Carter Harrison, Jr., a Democrat, in the first of his five winning mayoral elections.  Joining Sears and Meagher as a partner was Edward S. Whitney, an associate of the Winston firm.</div> <bR> <div> Frederick S. Winston died in 1909.  Silas Strawn eulogized him: "A close student of law and also of literature, he considered all sides of a controversy . . .   [He] foresaw and measured well the strength of his adversary.  This led to more careful preparation and permitted his side to anticipate the outcome of litigation, good or bad.  </div> <bR> <div> "He had a creative mind and enjoyed solving difficult problems.  What most found impossible, he resolved in some honorable way --  to his own satisfaction and the admiration of other lawyers, often to the great advantage of his client.  </div> <bR> <div> "A modest man, though quicker than others to understand, he was never arrogant.  No one ever heard from him . . . a suggestion of pride . . . or intimation of egotism.  He got to the point quickly and accurately, was logical, lucid, and convincing."</div> <bR> <div> <B>[End of chapter 2]</B></div> </td> </tr></table></body>