PROCEEDINGS
of the Bar Association of the City of Boston
and of the District Court of the United States
for the District of Massachusetts
(Hon. James M. Morton, Hon. James A. Lowell, AND Hon. Elisha H. Brewster, JJ.)
In Memory of FREDERICK PERRY FISH.
Temporary Federal Building (formerly Young's Hotel), Boston, Massachusetts.
December 26, 1931, 11 A. M.

Remarks of Robert F. Herrick, Esquire, in presenting to the Court the Memorial of the Bar Association of the City of Boston

FREDERICK PERRY FISH died at his home in Brookline November 6, 1930, in the seventy-sixth year of his age.  He was born in Taunton, Massachusetts, January 13, 1855, the son of Frederick Livermore and Mary Jarvis Perry Fish.

His father was a sea captain and for many years commanded whaling vessels sailing out of New Bedford.  In 1880 Mr. Fish married Clara Perkins Livermore, of Cambridge, who died November 14, 1914.  Two children survived them, Margaret Allina Fish and General Erland F. Fish.

He prepared for college at Taunton High School and entered Harvard with the Class of 1875.  After receiving his Bachelor's degree, he entered Harvard Law School. He left the Law School one year later for active practice, and was admitted to the Bar in Boston on May 13, 1878.

He was first associated in the practice of law with Colonel Thomas L. Livermore and former United States Senator Bainbridge Wadleigh, of New Hampshire, his office being in Boston.

His subsequent professional associations were successively with the firms of Wadleigh & Fish; Wadleigh, Fish & Wellman; Livermore & Fish; Livermore, Fish & Richardson; Fish, Richardson & Storrow; Fish, Richardson, Storrow & Herrick; Fish, Richardson & Herrick, Fish Richardson, Herrick & Neave, and finally Fish, Richardson & Neave.

Excepting for the six years when he was President of the Telephone Company, Mr. Fish was engaged in the active practice of the law, mainly in patent and trademark cases, until shortly before his death.

His most important work was performed during a period when American industry was rapidly expanding under the influence of discovery and invention.  It was a time of great enterprises, and many were formed under the protection of the patent law.  The validity of a single patent or groups of patents often involved the prosperity of vast undertakings employing thousands of persons and absorbing millions of money.

Problems with regard to the telephone, the air-brake, the steam turbine, the automobile, shoe machinery, radio and the entire range of electrical appliances, and a host of other highly technical inventions were in those years brought to Mr. Fish by persons who learned to depend upon his sound judgment, legal skill, and marvelous mastery of the exposition of complicated problems.

It has been said that he represented one side or the other in almost all the great patent cases arising in America during the last forty years.  Through his association with these cases, Mr. Fish played a large part in the industrial development of America during its period of fundamental expansion, and became the acknowledged leader of America's patent bar.

He was a wise counsellor in all business problems; and, as general counsel, first of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, and later of the General Electric Company, had much to do in the early eighties with the development and organization of the electric lighting business.

In July, 1901, Mr. Fish was chosen President of the American Telephone & Telegraph Corporation, a position which he held for six years.  During those years he infused in the Company's personnel his enthusiasm and his conviction that the full success of the industry depended on a national service by a national organization.  He drove forward the completion of the unified network of telephone lines which now inter-connects all sections of the country.

However, for the same reason that led him to refuse the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was glad at the end of six years to give up the administration of the Telephone Company and to return to the practice of law. So wide were his interests that he could never be satisfied confined to a single task, however great it might be.

In 1907, after returning from the Telephone Company, Mr. Fish resumed practice in the firm of Fish, Richardson, Herrick & Neave, with offices in Boston and New York.

He was Vice-President of the Bar Association of the City of Boston from 1909 to 1920, and President of the Massachusetts State Bar Association for the year 1919-1920.

During the two decades following 1907 he continued to engage in the most active and varied patent practice.  He appeared in every Court of Appeals in the country.  He was often at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, and never failed there to win attentive hearing.  Just as his field embraced all aspects of industrial development, so his forum was the whole United States.

He was able, it almost seemed intuitively, to reach conclusions which subsequent study and analysis confirmed; but perhaps his most remarkable trait as a lawyer was his ability to comprehend the salient points in a case and present them so clearly and persuasively that the Court immediately understood the real issues involved in hundreds of pages of a complicated record.

He had tremendous vitality, great imagination, and a marvelous memory, and his wide knowledge of the arts, sciences and history enabled him to present vivid illustrations and comparisons in a manner that made him unexcelled in the presentation of patent and trade-mark cases.

These gifts also served him well in the presentation of court cases involving every theory of the regulation of business by law.

It was easy to follow his arguments and impossible not to listen to them.

But the work of his life was not limited to the law.  His field was as wide as the world and as varied as its people.

Nowhere was the nobility of his character better shown than in his desire to be of service.  Just as he was constantly educating his own mind, so he showed constant interest in the education of others.  This aspect of his life was emphasized by the President of Harvard College, who said, in conferring upon him in his seventy-fifth year the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws: "Leading patent lawyer of the country, who, amid the work of an exacting profession, has wrung time from public service in directing education."

He was for years a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the Governing Board of Radcliffe College, an Overseer of Harvard College, a trustee of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Chairman of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, in all these positions a wise counsellor and a far-seeing guide.

He founded in 1916 the National Industrial Conference Board, which has been made up of the leading industrial figures of the country.

When the United States entered the World War he rendered most valuable service in helping coordinate the various industries of the country.

In less formal ways he was ever ready to advise a friend or a stranger who came to him for help, especially younger men.

He was a great lawyer and a great scholar, but above all he was a great human being.  Each of the thousands who came in contact with him during his extraordinarily active life is better for having known him.  He radiated kindliness, sympathy and courage.

He was a great soul, and as Lowell said: "Great souls are portions of Eternity." Such characters leave behind them an immortal inheritance of truth and faith. May it please your Honors: In memory of Frederick Perry Fish, the Bar moves that this memorial be made a part of the records of this court.

[Signed]

ROBERT F. HERRICK,
WILLIAM K. RICHARDSON,
JAMES F. JACKSON,
ODIN ROBERTS,
FREDERIC E. SNOW,
ROBERT P. CLAPP,
Committee.

If your Honors can bear with me for a moment, I can hardly leave the cold, formal words of the Memorial without adding just a little of my own personal feeling.

It is impossible to express in such words as these the character of Mr. Fish, - his force, - his effect or influence upon us all.  If he only were here for a moment his very presence would fill the court room with such a vivid realization of his personality that nothing more need be said.

My own experience with him lasted over twenty-five years. The first time I ever saw him I was working under Jim Storrow, who had coached the crew I was on.  I had taken a little desk in the old lumber room at the patent law office.  He stepped in, looked at me, and said, "Hello;" and that same manner he carried all through life; he was always just as friendly and kindly.

At one later time I had a most extraordinary experience with him that made me feel somehow that I had got more out of it than out of any other thing that I ever saw him do.  I had worked for several years on the old case of American Tube Works v. Bridgewater Iron Co., which had been brought in 1880 and had been going on for over fifteen years.  I found something that made it necessary to bring a supplemental bill in the nature of a bill of review.  I worked on that for weeks. Having prepared it as best  I could, I walked in with it to Mr. Fish.  He was sitting in his office, smoking a cigar.  With a stump of a lead pencil, inside of three-quarters of an hour he changed that Bill of Review over so that it looked like a real piece of work.  I had taken in to him simply a mass of clay, and I came out with something that was alive and spoke.

He was a great teacher, a great friend, and it was a great honor to serve and work under the light of his leadership.

Remarks of William K Richardson, Esquire

May it please the Court:  I should like to say a few words about Mr. Fish and his character, derived from a long and intimate association with him.

And first as a patent lawyer.  In the preparation of a case he was very remarkable for the analytical quality of his mind and his very ready grasp of complicated scientific testimony, whether relating to chemistry, electricity or mechanics.

His way of preparing for an argument was to take the record, which, as your Honors know, is, unfortunately, frequently several hundred pages in length; he would read it with great rapidity, holding the little stub pencil in his hand to which Mr. Herrick has referred, and marking those passages which seemed to him of particular importance.  At the end of that rapid reading of those hundreds of pages he would have a complete mastery of the case; he would know what were its strong points, what were its weak ones, how to enforce the one and to overcome the other.

Then would come the brief, which was usually, when I knew him, written for him by his junior or associate.  If time pressed, he would hire a room at the Parker House and remain there with his associate until late in the evening.  He would go through the brief with that same rapidity and the same unerring judgment; and he always, and rightly, insisted throughout on the use of classical English.  He was a severe critic, but most generously appreciative of anything in the nature of good work.

When it came to the argument, his junior had a most comfortable feeling that the points of the case would be put before the Court in the very best way.  He had two great faculties to which the Memorial has referred, lucidity of exposition, which is so necessary in these complicated patent cases, and an unequalled way of driving home the salient points of the case.  He never wandered into byways, as so many patent lawyers do, and he was not afraid to repeat a point that he thought was of importance.  I think that one always felt at the end of his argument that the case had been presented as well as it possibly could be.  He was successful in an extraordinarily large number of his cases, but I think that where he lost a case his client never felt that it was due to any defect in the presentation.

But Mr. Fish was not only a great patent lawyer.  He had other very well defined tastes.  He had, for example, a strong taste for music, especially for Wagner's music.  He had sung in college, as I recall, as a member of a musical society, and he always retained that taste.

In literature his tastes were very marked.  He did not care for biographies, which form so large a part of our reading nowadays.  He read a certain number of detective stories, and so on, to lighten the time on the trains.  He was constantly on trains, going all over the country.  But, aside from that, he was specially well read in what I might call worth-while fiction, and his specialty was the Scandinavian sagas.  He was omnivorous in that department.  I remember that he bought a translation of the sagas, published in England in I do not know how many volumes, and when I saw him he was happily reading Volume 8.  I do not think that any one of us would have survived Volume 1.  I do not believe that in the whole country, outside of a few professors, there was any one more widely read in that field of Scandinavian literature.

His taste was classical in the arts.  He did not like what we call modernism.  I remember his talking one day about jazz in music, about vers libre in poetry, about cubism in painting, and I remember his saying forcefully, and I thought convincingly, that those things were a reversion to the forms of savage tribes.  He never took any active part in politics.  He was what I should call an intelligent conservative.  He had no patience with economic heresies or the vagaries of demagogues, and he would express his opinions in incisive and forceful terms.

But I think that Mr. Fish will be remembered, - certainly  at the bar, - chiefly as an advocate.  He had a beautiful voice; he was never tedious; he was always dignified and persuasive.  I  think that oratory in the popular sense, which implies something rather turgid or showy, is not possible in the presentation of patent cases.  But I think that he was an orator, a forensic orator, as defined by Tacitus, who says, "He is an orator who can speak well and convincingly in accordance with the dignity of his subject and to the pleasure of his hearers."

Remarks of Robert P. Clapp, Esquire

May it please the Court: I should like, if I may be permitted to do so, to say a few words in appreciation of the human qualities of Mr. Fish as I knew them in close association with him back in the eighties and nineties.  Upon my admission to the bar in 1883, I entered the office of Wadleigh, Fish & Wellman, at 40 Water Street. Mr. Wellman soon left to become assistant corporation counsel of the City of New York, where he afterwards achieved great distinction as a jury lawyer.

Mr. Fish's connection with the firm was at the time only nominal, and Mr. Wadleigh (ex-U. S. Senator from New Hampshire) went along by himself after Mr. Wellman's departure.  At first my work was chiefly with Mr. Wadleigh, but I came more and more into contact with Mr. Fish; and when Colonel Thomas L. Livermore returned to association with Mr. Fish after two years of special executive work for the Amoskeag Company in New Hampshire, I had an opportunity to contrast the quick, nervous, and emphatic manner of Mr. Fish with the cool, deliberate method of the stately Colonel, and to observe the accuracy with which the intuitive judgments of the one usually agreed with the reasoned conclusions of the other.

From the first I was greatly impressed by one of the traits to which the Memorial calls attention, -the ease with which Mr. Fish could be approached by anyone in need of friendly sympathy and advice, and his interest in the aspirations of young men. His friendly interest toward me soon resulted in my having general charge under him of the law department of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, and later that of the General Electric Company after its formation in 1893 by the union of the Thomson-Houston Company with the Edison Company of New York.  I divided my time in the first six months of 1894 between the Schenectady and Boston offices of the Company, with occasional trips in the west and south where electric lighting plants were being established; and in all that I did I was in close touch with Mr. Fish.  In the retrospect I find that the intercourse which I had with him is among the pleasantest experiences of my life.  Though one would not attribute to him the gift of humor, his was a nature which, always kindly and considerate, often showed a spirit of playfulness.  Within the period of our association at 40 Water Street I had opportunities to see this quality exhibited in his family life.  Often we would leave the office together, usually stop for a brief moment at Young's (those were the days when a Rhine wine and seltzer could still openly and lawfully be obtained there), and then walk to Bowdoin Square, where I, first observing him mount his saddle horse and start at a smart trot toward the West Boston Bridge, would proceed to Cambridge in a horse car.  If we met half an hour later at his home opposite Jarvis Field, we would have dinner and a delightful social hour together.  I resided in the neighborhood.  Sometimes on a holiday afternoon a game of scrub baseball would be improvised; and no one entered into its spirit with a keener zest than did Mr. Fish.  A leader in conversation, he was both entertaining and instructive, making free but never pedantic use of his wide and accurate knowledge of literature, available always under the command of a very retentive memory.  In the field of old-time fiction the novels of Sir Walter Scott were among his favorites.

He had a happy faculty, when dealing with complex questions of a scientific aspect, of making his meaning clear by means of quaint and homely illustrations.  If explaining the difference between a supply of current operating electric lamps connected on one series and the use of such current when operating different lamps not so connected, but arranged in multiple arc, he would liken the former case to one sucking a soda lemonade through several straws connected end to end, and the latter to taking it through them when held in a group side by side.  Again he would show that the introduction of additional lamps in a circuit would increase the load upon the generating dynamo in much the same way as the putting of more Indian meal by our grandmothers into a pot wherein hasty pudding was in the making would require additional strength to stir the mixture.

I promised to speak only briefly, but I cannot close without bringing into prominence two other traits which were a distinct part of Mr. Fish's personality.  The first was his hatred of sham or hypocrisy of any kind; the second was his great love for children.  He was never so busy that the morning call for a few moments' play with his grandchildren had to be omitted, or so engrossed that his mind could not find rest in the heart of a child.

The great tenderness and sympathy which were conspicuously  manifested in his family life naturally found an outlet also in works of charity in the community.  He was generously helpful to his fellow-men, and a believer in the practice of giving help during one's own lifetime.

Remarks of James F. Jackson, Esquire

May it please your Honors:  The tribute which has been paid to the man of whom we are thinking today, in the memorial that has been read and in the addresses that have been made, needs no words of mine.  Their justification lies only in the fact that I speak from a lifelong, unbroken friendship.  He was my boyhood friend, the friend of manhood, and the friend of what I must now admit to be old age.

I recall a day in September of 1867, when I was sitting at my desk in the Taunton High School.  Disregarding the rule against whispering, I said to my next neighbor, "Who is that new boy over there who always has his head in his books, dead to the world?"  His reply was, "That is Fred Fish."  "Well," I said, "he looks to me like a fellow who would make a good ball player.  Why not ask him to join our team?"  The answer came, "I will.  We will try him out."  He joined the team and it was not long before he was one of the two best players on it.  He had thrown himself for all he was worth, heart and soul, into the game on the playground, just as he had thrown himself into his studies in the school room.  That characteristic followed him throughout life. He always gave the best there was in him to everything in which he took an interest, and there were very few things that were worth while in which he did not take an interest.  The Master of that High School, in speaking of him some years later, said to me, "Fish was the best scholar that I ever had, and one of the best fellows I ever knew."

Though we were schoolmates, afterwards fellow students at Harvard, and then both members of the same profession, our pathways rarely met in these later years.  When they 'did I always found at the meeting the same man, the same loyal, true, dependable friend.

With that marvelous strength and vitality, unequalled in any man whom I ever knew, he would spend the day in his office at unremitting toil, the evening at home or elsewhere, reading, or in social intercourse, or in keeping some appointment in connection with his varied interests in the scientific or educational world, and then take a midnight train to some distant city, where he would appear in the court room the next morning and argue an important cause, later again take a night train home and reach his office for a brief stay before he left it again upon another round of the same kind. So he went on, month after month, year after year, with that marvelous vitality of his, traversing the country from one end to the other, and beyond its boundaries, as he rose rapidly to the leadership in that department of the law which he had chosen.

I always thought that any Judge, on finding upon the docket, the name of Frederick P. Fish as one who was to argue a case before him, would look forward to it with pleasure, knowing that he would hear a clear, concise but complete statement of all pertinent facts, to be followed by a logical, forceful argument, which could not fail to be a help to the Court in reaching its decision, favorable or unfavorable.  He would know that he was to listen to a man who believed that it was his professional duty to aid the Court as well as serve the client, and that in doing the one he was doing the other.  The record would seem to prove that this was his way to success.

I remember our last meeting.  He was entering and I was leaving our club.  As we approached, neither recognized the other, for we were each victims of failing sight.  When face to face, I heard his exclamation, "Why, this is Jim Jackson!"  "Yes," I responded in the same breath, "and this is Fred Fish!" In the course of our conversation he remarked, "I have practically given up active work.  Have you retired from practice?"  The question took me unawares; I was not sure whether I had or not; but I said, "Not yet, although it looks as if I would have to pretty soon if I am to see my way out!"  I had noticed a change in his appearance, something peculiar, or something different, rather than peculiar, in his appearance, but as I went away I carried with me something from that cheery voice and that warm hand-clasp, that has remained with me ever since, -something that I knew would last, in the fullness of its meaning, no matter when or how soon the physical structure might fail.

Two or three weeks after his death, his brother, meeting me, said, "When I made my last call on Fred, he called to me as I was going, 'Be sure and come next Wednesday.  I shall be here.'"  He was not there in one sense, and yet in a deeper sense he was there and ever since has been present in the thoughts of those nearest to him, of those that miss him most.  In happy memories they see and hear, perhaps more clearly than ever before, the real man, the broad-minded, warm-hearted, plainspoken father, brother and friend.

Remarks of Charles Neave, Esquire

May it please the Court:  I was associated intimately in the practice of the law with Mr. Fish for more years than I would care to state were it not for the fact that those years were inspired, and zest was given to them by his personality.  And it is of his personality that I like to think, rather than of his ability as a lawyer, great as it was.  There are many men who have great ability as lawyers and in other ways who do not make much stir in the world.  But he had much more than that.

I knew him first when I was a young man in his office here in Boston, and intimately over a much longer span of years in New York, where he was so frequently.  I often attended with him dinners and other purely social gatherings, constantly was with him in conferences with the captains of industry and with members of the bar, and frequently was with him in the argument of cases throughout the country.  My own participation in those matters is nothing of any moment, except that it gave me an opportunity to see him in varied relations and in various environments.  And what I always noticed was that he never pushed himself forward, but he always dominated each meeting.  He did not push himself forward, but he was thrust forward by those who were around him and who recognized the qualities in him of not only being a great lawyer, but of having great tact and unfailing courtesy, so that he did not excite animosities and jealousies and he was always just and fair in his treatment of others, and in his estimates of them; and he was a keen searcher for the facts, and when the facts were found, whatever they might be, he had strength to look them in the face and deal with them, and he had the courage of his convictions - the courage to act in accordance with his convictions.

Those were the attributes that, as I look at it, made him what he was, that made him the dominant figure wherever he might be, and that made all of us love him.

He had many friends among the business men in New York, and among the lawyers there, and I know that if they knew that I was to be here today at this meeting they would wish to join me in expressing the sense of privilege in having known him, and the great feeling of loss on his departure.

Response of Judge James M. Morton in accepting the Memorial presented to the Court

One associates him first, perhaps, with the electrical patents and industry, in which he was easily the leader, not only on the telephone part of it, but on the light and power side as well.  There is however, hardly an important field involving patents in which he was not counsel on one side or the other in some decisive case.  As has been said, for six years from 1901 to 1907, he withdrew from practice to serve as president of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co.  But his mind was of the distinctly professional type, and he preferred to return to law.

As an advocate, his manner was very individual.  He had none of the cant tricks of oratory.  He had the ability to think things out to absolute clearness, - there were no hazy fringes to his ideas, - and having done so to express his thoughts so clearly that other persons could understand them.  An argument by him was almost like a pleasant explanation of a problem in mathematics.  His manner of speech was also highly individual. Most persons, in undertaking a similar task, speak slowly and deliberately in order that the listener may have time to grasp the ideas.  Mr. Fish, on the contrary, spoke rapidly, but so clearly and logically that it was easy to follow him, using repetition as necessary to drive the idea home.

I first met him when I was a student in the Harvard Law School and attended his lectures on patent law.  They were amazing performances.  He went at us in his clear, rapid way, just as he went at courts, to try to make us boys understand the thought which lay in his mind; there was drive and speed to his talk and to his discussions, nothing hesitant about them.  He radiated force.

In later years I had the privilege of knowing him rather intimately and became aware of his wide interests outside his profession.  As I saw them, they were mainly in education and in history.  We had a common interest in classical archaeology; and I once heard him discuss offhand and very pointedly a rather intricate question about the Norse Sagas.  Mr. Richardson says (what I did not happen to know) that he had made a special study of them.  He had, as I saw him, very little interest in science and mechanics as such, and I should not think that, for an industrial leader, he had much interest in wealth.  I once said to him that I doubted whether our modern industrial development had added to human happiness.  He replied, immediately, "The electric light certainly has; the others, perhaps not.  But there is no doubt about the electric light."  The incident illustrates, I think, the quickness and accuracy of his thought.  I never knew anybody who seemed to care less about public recognition of his service or to be more genuinely interested in the public welfare. His private life, of course, was above reproach.

His dominating quality, as it seemed to me, was a certain detached devotion to the truth for its own sake.  I agree that that is a quality which any great advocate must give the appearance of having; but in Mr. Fish's case I believe it was genuine and complete.  He wanted the truth as he saw it to prevail, the best course to be followed, because it was the best; and he did his utmost to bring that about in whatever he undertook.  It seems to me that he was a great man, and that we shall hardly see his like again.

The Memorial will be entered upon the records of the Court, and, out of respect to the memory of Frederick P. Fish, the Court will now adjourn.