Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/91

 Some Instances of Large Fees

69

Martin W. Littleton is also a brilliant

town, and most ardent supporters of

example. He was born in Roane county, Tenn., Jan. 12, 1872, and started in life as a track walker out of the town of Weatherford. He had no intention, however, of remaining in such an occu pation for any length of time, for he had one great purpose in life. He was

the little Methodist Church there. Later,

going to be a lawyer. At all sorts of odd hours he gathered

his education. He had no time to go to school. Then one day he told his boss on the railroad that he was going to New York to become a great lawyer,

and threw up his job. At the age of nineteen he began the practice of law. The opportunities in Texas attracted him, and he went to Dallas, where he soon became well enough acquainted to enter the lists and be elected assistant prosecuting attorney. The experience he obtained in this position proved invaluable to him. In the office of assistant district attorney of Kings county, N. Y., which he later held for four years, he made an enviable record. Then August Belmont found him, and he was made.

when he was able, he took a course

in the Wheaton College, which was organized when he was fourteen years of age. He was admitted to the Illinois state bar in 1867, and settled down to the routine of a small town lawyer.

In turn he was president of the village (for three terms), and the ﬁrst mayor (for two terms) when the place was

incorporated. As a politician of the "old school” it is said that there were few better than Gary. At that time he was apparently a shining mark of the kind that prefers to be a big toad in a little puddle to a pollywog in a pond.

Du

Page county folk thought a good deal of him, too, so much so, in fact, that

after his last term as mayor they elected him county judge and kept him in office for two terms. stituents Then, all immeasurably at once, he shocked by pulling his con~ up stakes and going to Chicago to hang out his shingle. He had seen the grand

disturb the serenity of his bank account,

opportunity of his life in the way of “specialization," which about that time began to receive much attention, and he had lost no time in taking advantage of it. For twenty-ﬁve years the “county judge" practised law in Chicago with single purpose and signal success. He

and he has just been elected to Congress, though scarcely more than forty.

and manufacturing corporations, his

As attorney for the United States Express Company, and various other

combined interests, his fees have in creased to that point where the ex

travagances of life in New York do not

Elbert H.

Gary, Chairman of the

Board of Directors and the Finance Committee of the United States Steel Corporation, did not follow the path of the least resistance when he started out to make his way in the world. He chose the law, and this choice meant

became the counsel for several railroad interests gradually widening and deepen

ing. In 1898 he retired from the public practice of law, to become the president of the Federal Steel Company, which

was the ﬁrst of a number of similar positions he has held. The general-in-command of the Standard Oil Company’s legal army,

hardships and hard work. He received his early education in the Wheaton, Ill., public schools. His

position to his quickness in recognizing

parents were pioneer residents of that

and seizing upon a single opportunity.

Mortimer F. Elliott, owes his present