Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/145

 120

prominent farmer and leader in the granges. The legislature and the governor were elected on the " boom " of this new issue, and at the following session a law was passed fixing a limit to railway freights and fares within the State. The railway companies took advice from distinguished sources, and having the written opinions of B. R. Curtis, William M. Evarts and George F. Hoar, that the law was unconstitutional, refused to obey it, and so notified the governor. Thereupon suits were instituted — one by the State to enjoin the companies from dis regarding the law, one in the Federal court by some non-resident landholders to enjoin the State railroad commissioners from taking any step to enforce the law. An able array of counsel appeared on both sides with ponder ous printed arguments. Judge Dixon was retained in behalf of the State, and his friends were out in great force to hear " the effort of his life " at the bar. They were a little surprised and disappointed when he began. He had no brief; he hesitated. He pulled first from one pocket and then another little scraps of paper on which he had jotted down points and authorities. His effort to the audience seemed a flat failure; but, it is told that, when the judges met in the consul tation room, Judge Davis remarked, " Dixon has told us the law of this case," and the Court, and later the Supreme Court of the United States, followed his exposition, and settled the then burning question as to legis lative control over corporations. The case in the Supreme Court of the State was ar gued the same summer, and there the valid ity of the law was upheld in one of the most interesting and able opinions of the late Chief-Justice Ryan, which is read, far and wide, for its masterly style and close judicial reasoning. Judge Dixon would never be drawn into partisan politics. In 1875, in a dead-lock between candidates for the United States Sen ate, Dixon could have been elected if he had but consented. " I cannot afford it," he said.

In 1879, he was obliged to leave Wiscon sin and seek higher altitudes on account of an asthmatic trouble that debarred him from refreshing sleep. He was banished by the rigor of our climate. He there built up a large practice, and gradually disengaged himself from his Wisconsin clientele. On his leaving for the West, the bar of Mil waukee tendered him a banquet, which he gracefully declined. He detested notoriety and preferred to work quietly and unostenta tiously- at his professional labors, and to meet his friends in social intercourse in an informal way. His malady wore upon him and sapped the foundations of a constitution of great strength and vigor, but he labored constantly and successfully in Colorado, feeling always an exile from Wisconsin. He came home to Milwaukee in the latter part of November, 1891, after a professional visit to Washing ton, worn down by his long struggle with the cruel malady. On the 6th of December he died, lamented by all, and by his profes sional brethren honored and beloved as but few arc. In the memorial proceed ings held in court and given in the eigh ty-first volume of Wisconsin reports are many eloquent and tender tributes to his memory. His work is found in the twenty-six vol umes of reports beginning with the ninth and closing with the thirty-fifth. He has indelibly impressed his name upon the jur isprudence of the State. " His judgments are among its jewels," said one of his eulogists, Hon. Charles E. Dyer, himself of long service as a Federal Judge. "Without exception they bear the stamp of his pene trating and vigorous mind. None fail in that lucidity of statement, strength of diction and cogency of argument which were his happygifts. If his intellect was not what may be called brilliant, it was comprehensive and powerful." " The name of Dixon is the synonym of Justice, Integrity, Truth and Honor. These were virtues which illumined