Black Robe, Black Mark: Chicago’s Only Chief Justice

By Joe Mathewson

It seems incongruous. No, unbelievable. After the terrible carnage of the Civil War and the three post-war Constitutional amendments apparently settled once and for all the rights of Negroes as free citizens, the ultimate enforcer of those historic decisions denied them.

For several decades, well into the twentieth century, the U.S. Supreme Court shamelessly abrogated the amendments, ruling against Negroes’ claims of Constitutional voting rights and equal treatment before the law. Not to discriminate, the Court also turned down the Constitution-based claims of Chinese immigrants, working men and women, and residents of U.S. territories. In its ultimate affront to individual rights, the Court stared down the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection to declare “separate but equal” the law of the land.

A principal perpetrator of this a history was a Chicagoan. He was chief justice of the United States from 1888 to 1910, the only Chicago resident ever to reach that pinnacle. His name, now conveniently buried in the sands of time, was Melville Weston Fuller.

A migrant from Maine, Fuller married into a prominent Chicago business family and established a comfortable law practice representing the owners of property and the managers of corporations. On many occasions he traveled by train to Washington to argue for his clients before the U.S. Supreme Court. As a young man Fuller had political interests if not ambitions, twice supporting Stephen A. Douglas against Abraham Lincoln, for the U.S. Senate in 1858 and for the presidency two years later. He served briefly in the Illinois legislature as a Democrat.

So it was that some years later, in 1888, when President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, sought to curry favor in the Midwest for his re-election bid, he selected as chief justice of the United States 55-year-old Melville Fuller, who shared the president’s belief in sound money and his opposition to protective tariffs. Fuller succeeded Morrison Waite, who had already cast the Supreme Court as a spoiler of the postwar amendments and individual rights generally. (Although he narrowly won the popular vote, Cleveland lost Illinois, the Midwest and the election, only to rebound to a second term four years later.)

Ironically, some of Fuller’s fellow Chicagoans were among the first to feel his bite. They worked at the Pullman Palace Car Company on the South Side. Their wages drastically slashed in the depression of the early 1890s, they walked off the job. Their cause was promptly embraced by Eugene Debs, head of the American Railway Union. He called a strike of other railroads handling Pullman cars, triggering a massive tie-up and unprecedented reaction by the federal government.

The U.S. attorney general petitioned the federal court in Chicago to grant an extraordinary remedy, an injunction ordering the strikers back to work. There was no Taft-Hartley law authorizing such legal force, but the attorney general got his order. Debs ignored it. He told the workers to stand fast. The attorney general pressed ahead, asking the court to hold Debs in contempt of court. Again the court complied, ordering Debs jailed. He resisted all the way to the Supreme Court, but it unanimously upheld both his contempt citation and his jail sentence. It was the first time the Court authorized the use of an injunction against a labor union.

The Debs case was just one of many Fuller Court rulings against workers, black and white. In other actions the Court--

Upheld a federal statute that authorized U.S. marshals to enforce seamen’s contracts by physically delivering them to their ships;

Reversed the conviction of a creditor in Georgia for violating a federal statute against forcibly returning a person to peonage, meaning forced labor to work off his debt, on the ground that there was no proof offered that the debtor had been in peonage previously;

Overturned the federal convictions of three Arkansas white men for frightening and coercing eight African-Americans to abandon their job contracts, reasoning that the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery did not give the government authority to criminalize such an offense;

Affirmed the conviction under a state statute, although it was criticized by the U.S. attorney general as an unconstitutional attempt to maintain a system of peonage, of an Alabama man for accepting $15 for work with intent to defraud, i.e., to not work;

Threw out federal statutes holding railroads liable for employees’ work accidents and barring discrimination against a railroad employee because he was a union member;

Applied the Sherman Antitrust Act, intended to curb anticompetitive restraints of trade by businesses, against a labor union’s organizing effort at a Danbury, Connecticut, hat factory, and a secondary boycott that grew out of it, with damages assessed against several union leaders personally;

Voided a New York statute limiting the hours of bakery workers to 10 a day and 60 a week, on the grounds that it violated a pro-employer concept called “freedom of contract,” nowhere stated in the Constitution. Strong dissents were registered by influential Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Marshall Harlan, whose reputations have long outlasted Fuller’s. With this historic exercise in judicial activism, Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court made itself the ultimate decider of the wisdom of state regulatory policies, establishing a precedent for similar rejections of other state social and economic measures by both the Supreme Court and lower courts for many years to come.

In glaring contrast to its expansive reading of the Sherman Antitrust Act in regard to a labor dispute, the Fuller Court took a very narrow view of that same statute when dealing with what the act specifically forbade, a business monopoly.

The American Sugar Refining Company created what was indisputably a monopoly by buying all its remaining competitors. Not surprisingly, the U. S. Justice Department brought suit against the combination to break it up. But the Supreme Court rejected the government’s plea, reasoning narrowly that the Sherman Act did not extend to manufacturing, only interstate commerce. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Fuller declared,

"Doubtless the power to control the manufacture of a given thing involves in a certain sense the control of its disposition, but this is a secondary and not the primary sense; and although the exercise of that power may result in bringing the operation of commerce into play, it does not control it, and affects it only incidentally and indirectly. Commerce succeeds to manufacture, and is not a part of it."

United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1, 12 (1895).

Further denigrating individual rights, the Fuller Court handed down more than a dozen rulings, known as the Insular Cases, holding that the Constitution and therefore the Bill of Rights did not apply in U. S. territories, notably the islands acquired in the Spanish-American War of 1898. In one decision the Court explicitly made light of both the Fifth Amendment (due process of law) and the Sixth Amendment (fair trial) by declining to require a jury trial in the case of two Manila newspaper editors, both native-born U.S. citizens, convicted of criminal libel.

Still, the decision for which the Fuller Court will always be remembered is Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896, upholding Louisiana’s requirement that rail passengers be separated by race. The Court declared that the statute did not suggest one race was inferior, it was just that one race chose to see it that way. And so from that day forward “separate but equal” was legally acceptable in public transportation, schools, restaurants, hotels, drinking fountains and throughout American life until it was finally undone by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the federal civil rights statutes of the 1960s.

Curiously, the Chicago Daily Tribune did not even mention the historic Plessy decision. However, the paper was hardly ignoring Mr. Fuller’s court that day in May. It reported a number of other Supreme Court rulings and gave effusive prominence to a local case. The Court said it had no jurisdiction to hear a challenge to a Chicago land title, covering 460 acres along Western Avenue from 51st Street to 61st Street and valued at $3 million, held by one Mrs. Hetty R. Green, described by the Tribune as “America’s Richest Woman.” Once again the Fuller Court’s affinity for the haves prevailed.

Still in office, Melville Fuller died of a heart attack at age 77 in 1910. He was buried in Graceland Cemetery. His work lived on.

Joe Mathewson teaches journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He previously covered the U.S. Supreme Court for The Wall Street Journal and practiced law in Chicago. This article is adapted from his book, The Supreme Court and the Press: The Indispensable Conflict, to be published in fall 2010 by the Northwestern University Press in the Medill School’s “Visions of the American Press” series edited by David Abrahamson.

Recommended reading:

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Plessy v. Ferguson (PBS)
Plessy v. Ferguson (Wikipedia)
Landmark Cases
Modern America: The South Under Jim Crow

Pondering Pond: A Raison d'Etre

I enjoyed a great deal of personal satisfaction when I ordered a copy of The Autobiography of Irving K. Pond, edited by David Swan and Terry Tatum. You see, Irving Pond is responsible for the creation of The Chicago History Journal. Since Pond died in 1939, I suppose I should explain.

The Journal began on November 7, 2007 with the post, "The Fine Arts Building: Living History." Included in that entry was a recounting of my visit to the building and the advantageous meeting of David Swan. I also wrote, "It turned out that he was working on a history of the building and a book on the Pond brothers, Irving and Allen." True to his word, both books have now come to fruition.

I continued...

Mr. Swan invited me to his end of the hall studio and it was while we were taking the few steps down the hall that I noticed the plaques next to the doors: Frank Lloyd Wright, Lorado Taft and the one next to Swan’s studio (Room 1022) was John T. McCutcheon, the famous Chicago Tribune cartoonist...

For over an hour Mr. Swan told me stories of 19-year-old Irving Pond who had done the initial drawings of the Pullman planned community under Solon Beman. Wishing I had had a tape recorder, I tried desperately to concentrate and make mental notes of people and topics I needed to investigate later.

And that is precisely what I did. The result was the creation of The Journal. And, all because, at the time, I had no idea who Irving K. Pond was.

Irving Kane Pond, born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1857, was a Chicago architect. His career began in the firm of William Le Baron Jenney and Solon S. Beman and while there drew up the initial designs for George Pullman's company town. By 1885, Pond was ready to move on and with his brother Allen, formed the firm of Pond & Pond Architects.

According to the Newberry Library biography, "Pond & Pond's buildings typify Arts & Crafts-style architecture and are considered some of the best examples in Chicago. The firm designed several settlement and civic institutions including, Jane Addams Hull House, Northwestern Settlement, the American Correspondence School and Chicago Commons."

Irving, however, was interested in more than architecture. He was also involved in several literary organizations - The Little Room, The CliffDwellers and The Chicago Literary Club. Irving also wrote fiction, poetry and essays and a long list of his contributions to The Chicago Literary Club archives can be found here (scroll down). And, then there was the circus. He loved the circus and served as Vice-President of the Circus Fans Association.

But, until now there has not been an easily accessible book dedicated to this creative and eclectic early Chicagoan. Irving's autobiography, titled The Sons of Mary and Elihu, was only available on micro-film at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The memoir was written between 1937 and 1939 and the entire manuscript was in pencil. Yes, pencil. Please note that including a brief preface, an introduction by Guy Szuberla, the lists of illustrations, buildings and projects, Swan's book is a hefty 588 pages. It is not recommended as a "beach book," but I also couldn't recommend it more strongly. It is a journey back in time with a man who was at the center of Chicago's rise, and he paid attention. He made notes, and they are all here.

The Autobiography of Irving K. Pond and The Book of the Fine Arts Building are both available directly from Hyoogen Press, Inc. The word "Hyoogen," by the way, is Japanese for the English word, "Expression." The Chicago History Journal is my expression of thanks to David Swan and Irving K. Pond for inspiring what has become my calling.

Exploring Madame Grandin’s Chicago

By Mary Beth Raycraft

While translating Madame Léon Grandin’s 1894 travel memoir, A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition, I also played the role of tag-along tourist. Her 1894 account of her stay in Chicago during the World’s Columbian Exposition first caught my attention in a Paris library. As I read her spirited descriptions of late 19th-century boarding houses, shops, and social and cultural life, the city’s spectacles seemed to literally jump off the page. Since I am not a Chicagoan, I had no choice but to allow Madame Grandin to lead me around the city. Strolling along the lakeshore, shopping at department stores in the Loop, attending classes at the Art Institute, and exploring the Fairgrounds at Jackson Park, she left me breathless as I tried to keep up on her colorful, behind the scenes tour of 1893 Chicago.

As I began to translate her adventures, I used a late 19th-century map to identify the places mentioned in her account. Mapping the neighborhoods and places that she frequented allowed me to visualize her movement throughout the city. At the time of her visit, Madame Grandin was a twenty-eight year old Parisian school teacher with a lively curiosity about American life. Her husband, the sculptor Léon Grandin, was part of a team of artists working on the Columbian Fountain for the Exposition and so in preparation for the fair, the couple spent ten months in Chicago between August of 1892 and June of 1893. [See a slideshow of the Fair from the Brooklyn Museum]

Arriving in the city via a train from Niagara Falls, Madame Grandin was astonished at Chicago’s sprawl which was five times that of her native Paris. She gasped as she took in the broad thoroughfare of State Street, with its whirlwind of activity and dramatic architecture. Eager to find their lodgings, the Grandins jumped on a streetcar and headed to the south side of the city. Unlike most foreign visitors who stayed in hotels, Madame Grandin and her husband rented rooms in three different boardinghouses over the course of their stay, because, as she explained, this setting “offered the best opportunity to meet a wide range of people and gain true understanding of the intimate details of American life.” Their first stop was a boardinghouse located at 3700 South Ellis Avenue. Although they complained about the miserly landlady and the skimpy meals, they relished the lovely view of Lake Michigan. In search of more comfortable accommodations and better food, the Grandins moved to another rooming house near Drexel Boulevard. Seeking more privacy and independence, the couple subsequently found lodging with kitchen privileges on 44th Street near Wabash Avenue. They ended their stay in the residential Hotel Everett on Lake Park Drive. Although I have not been able to locate any of the original dwellings, a stroll around Hyde Park, Kenwood and the Museum of Science and Industry, which served as the Palace of Fine Arts for the Columbian Exposition, gives a general sense of their comings and goings in this part of the city.

When the Grandins arrived in Chicago in August of 1892, a grueling heat wave was underway that would be followed by a severe winter and a rainy spring. Despite Chicago’s weather, which European travelers often called extreme, Madame Grandin went for daily walks. One of her favorite spots was Lake Michigan. Over the course of her stay, she watched its transformation during boating races, summer dances, and ice skating parties. She also admired the lush, green spaces of the city, including Washington Park, and enjoyed walks along Drexel Boulevard which she compared to the elegant Parisian Avenue des Champs Elysees. As the November 1892 presidential election approached, Madame Grandin witnessed noisy street parades in support of incumbent Benjamin Harrison and former President Grover Cleveland, who was the eventual winner.

After getting settled on the south side of the city, Madame Grandin soon discovered that a tram car conveniently shuttled between Jackson Park and the Loop. The throbbing heart of the city, the Loop became the focus of many of her expeditions, including visits to the Art Institute, the Chicago Public Library, and the Auditorium, where she and her husband attended the Inaugural Ball of the Exposition in October 1892. Madame Grandin also frequented the commercial establishments of the Loop, including the elegant Siegel Cooper department store and Gunther’s Confectionary on State Street, where she found the candies far superior to those in Paris.

Madame Grandin’s outgoing personality and curiosity about the city soon led to a flurry of social activity. Her friendship with two instructors at the Art Institute, Lydia Hess and Marie Gélon Cameron, enabled her to visit their studios and classes, located at the time in the Athenaeum Building on Van Buren Street. The Grandins regularly attended the “five o’clock gatherings” with the Art Institute director, William Marchant Richardson French, where they sipped tea and participated in discussions about the art scene in Chicago. During social outings to cultural events, parties, and dinners, Madame Grandin kept a sharp eye on the behavioral codes of Chicago’s men and women. She was shocked that young ladies were free to socialize with young men away from the watchful eye of a chaperone. At the same time, she openly admired American husbands who took their role as protector and provider very seriously and who seemed to marry for love rather than money. Armed with a letter of introduction from an acquaintance in Paris, Madame Grandin eventually gained entrance into the highest social circle by becoming a habituée in the salon of Bertha Palmer’s elegant home on Lake Shore Drive. At the time, Mrs. Palmer, whom Madame Grandin calls “the incarnation of charm,” was busy organizing events at Woman’s Building of the Columbian Exposition.

Writing about the fair, Madame Grandin noted: “I literally watched the Exposition site come to life.” She provides a meticulous tour of the buildings and exhibits, beginning with the Woman’s Building, which she describes as “without question one of the most interesting places of the entire site.” Grandin’s visits to the Woman’s Building and her conversations with individual women involved in the project provided her with a place and a framework for thinking about much of what she had admired in Chicago in terms of education and gender relations. She was also impressed with the child care facility in the Children’s Building, the innovative technology behind the Ferris Wheel, and the eclectic international exhibits, enthusiastically concluding: “that this Exposition was marvelous and superior to all previous ones.”

Not content to restrict her research to the city’s neighborhoods, she headed to Oak Woods Cemetery on All Soul’s Day, and made the two hour train trip to Calumet Lake, where she also toured Pullman and its remarkable railroad car factory. Like many other European visitors, she visited the Union Stock Yard, and in spite of being revolted by the “sickening odor,” she found “the different processes performed on the animals fascinating.”

Although Madame Grandin visited many of the same Chicago places as other foreign travelers, her lengthy residence and natural curiosity eventually led her to enter a number of homes, schools, and shops where she experienced her own “Chicago” rather than that depicted in tourist guides for visitors to the fair. As she circulated in the bustling streets, Madame Grandin discovered a vibrant urban setting where she began to feel at home. Her adventures offer not only a juicy window onto the spectacles offered by the city and the fair in 1892-93, but also on daily life as experienced by a young, open-minded Parisian school teacher, energized by the dynamism of Chicago and its inhabitants.

Mary Beth Raycraft is a senior lecturer in French at Vanderbilt University and the translator of Madame Léon Grandin’s A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition. (University of Illinois Press, 2010) See www.aparisienneinchicago.com for interactive maps of Madame Grandin’s Chicago.