JOHN KISSIG COWEN did not live, largely by the efforts of men he had often vigorously combatted. It is given to few mere lawyers to serve other generations than their own. They can merely keep up the standards and form part of the line of transmission. Their names and the abstracts of their arguments in the reports, and nothing else survives the memory of their contemporaries. But who would not prefer the warm and tender recollection of these, brief as it is since they so soon must follow, to some cold though more enduring memorial from men to whom he is only a name? After long and distinguished service as head of the Legal Department of the Balti more and Ohio Railroad Company, which position he attained at an unusually early age, Mr. Cowen became its president. This was a tribute to the broadness of his faculties, though it was, perhaps, due in a measure to the difficulties which already beset the company and soon led to the receivership, in the conduct of which he achieved such striking success. It in no measure detracts from the credit due to his associates, great as that is, to award him the praise his ac knowledged leadership deserves. He devised the plan, which in about three years was accomplished, of reorganizing that great property and putting it in a permanently successful condition. This was done without a foreclosure, thus preserving the advantages of its original charter from Maryland and its rights elsewhere. Se curities amounting to $200,000,000 of un certain value, some of them involved in conflict, were transformed into harmonious and safe investments. And meanwhile, by a broad but true conception of the powers and duties of a court of equity dealing with property impressed with a public character, whose value and usefulness depend on its condition, amounts which then seemed enor mous were raised and expended in better ments. That this was done with hardly a protest from the many parties in interest, and with the final full acquiescence of them
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all, shows the soundness of Mr. Cowen's views and his power of bringing men to adopt them. It was a task few men would at that time have had the genius to con ceive or the force to accomplish. While he was thus raising and expending millions and making the fortunes of many people, so absorbed was he in his duty that he passed by, if he even noticed, the oppor tunities afforded to enrich himself. Let this not be ascribed to lack of thrift or the con tempt of wealth which some affect. I know he felt, when the matter was suggested to him, that his duty was to encourage the security holders to be steadfast and not lose the profits which should be theirs. He always declared his own faith in the out come, and no man can blame his loss on Receiver Cowen. It was entirely appropriate for Mr. Cowen to be at the head of that great enterprise while its destiny was being shaped and secured by means so largely legal. When that was done I was sorry to see him chosen president again, because it seemed to in volve a permanent departure from his proper career. He was a great lawyer and had won universal recogntiion as such. I could not be sure, broad and varied as his talents were, that he would win equal rank as a railroad manager. Besides, I realized the difference in tenure. Who is so truly independent as a lawyer of assured ability and reputation? No man, no combination of men, can reduce his rank, curtail his income, or interfere with his career. He is the master, and men will seek his counsel and service so long as he chooses to render them. No position which depends on the formal choice of others can be secure. I told him all this, but he thought the call one of duty to conduct what he had led in recreating. And no doubt there was a glamour about the posi tion, and some sentiment for he was to fill the place of his friend and benefactor. And when after a short while he returned to the law again, I wrote him a letter of
