The White Pine News

A FEARLESS JURIST
JUDGE GARY RULED AGAINST CHICAGO ANARCHISTS.
Venerable Jurist Completes 40 Years of Continuous Service on the Superior Court Bench of Cook County, Ill.
--A Most Picturesque Figure.

After court nowadays the venerable Judge Joseph E. Gary, of Chicago, famous throughout the country as the jurist before whom the anarchists were tried and convicted for the Haymarket riot and murders seventeen years ago, may be seen late in the afternoon of almost any sunny day drawing his little grandchildren about in a hand cart in Ontario street. At first sight the stranger knows the jurist for a gentleman of the old school. He stops the cart load of jubilant youth and turns his kindly, forceful face alternately from the speaker to the youngsters. His coat is black--of old-fashioned cut--his trousers are black and wrinkled from the knee clear down to his plain, old-fashioned boots. Loosely tied over an expanse of white shirt is a soft black neckerchief--a stock, you might say, of the period of Henry Clay. Judge Gary is now completing his fortieth year of continuous service in the Superior Court bench of Cook County, Ill., a record unequaled by any elective jurist in the United States. He is a product of the State of New York, but of Puritan extraction. He was born at Potsdam, St. Lawrence County, in 1821. His parents were Eli Bush Gary and Orilla Easton Gary. To-day he is not only older in point of years and judicial service than any other judge in Illinois, but he is also perhaps the wittiest, most satirical and in some respects the most picturesque figure who has ever occupied a seat on the bench in the Middle West. Though a man of few words, brusque in manner, keen in wit and often cutting in sarcasm, seeking neither publicity nor applause, Judge Gary's popularity has increased as he has advanced in years. Snow-haired and bowed with his four-score years, he is still alert physically and mentally. He pays close attention to witnesses, clipping short their verbosity, reproving their indiscretions and punctuating the questions of counsel with wit and apt inquiries of his own. He looks like a picture of Adolphe Thiers. For a long time after he presided in the trial of the anarchists his house was guarded by the police, but this was not done at his request. Detectives also kept him under their eyes in his walks about the city. But these precautions are taken no longer. Though he was often threatened and warned during the excitement following the Haymarket riots, he never showed fear. Anarchists Parsons, Spies and their six companions were convicted of the murder of Police Officer Matthias Degan in May, 1886. Seven received the sentence of death and one was sent to the penitentiary for seventeen years. During the trial and afterward the friends of the accused bitterly denounced Judge Gary for his rulings and conduct of the case. But his decisions were sustained in the State and Federal Supreme courts, and his course went far toward solving the problem of dealing with an element which had announced its antagonism to organized society and sought to destroy the whole fabric of enlightened civilization.