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Show V THE CITIZEN: THE RISE OF J. REUBEN CLARK Claims Commission in session and Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, the British representative, listened with growing astonishment and admiration to the wonderfully lucid, logical and brilliant argument of the General Counsel for the United States. Although the argu-- . ment was formulated to break down many of the contentions of Great Britain, the British member of the court did not try to conceal his for the scholarly and legal attainments of the American representative. Long a member of the Supreme Court of Canada and renowned him-- . self for his culture and profound knowledge of the law, Sir Charles knew that he was listening to one of the ablest lawyers of the day. At the conclusion of the speech he stepped down from the bench and approached the American. I want to shake your hand, he said. That is the most able legal argument I ever heard. THE Mixed parents are Joshua R. Clark and Mary Louisa Woolley Clark, daughter of J. REUBEN CLARK Bishop Edwin D. Woolley of Salt Lake City. His grandparents were among the pioneers who braved and battled with the western wilderness. His elementary education was obtained in the grade schools of Grantsville and the preparatory department of the L. D. S. college in Salt Lake City. It was not until he was twenty-thre- e years of age that he was able to begin a high school course.In the next four years he completed that course and a college course and in 1898 received the degree of Bachelor of Science from the University of Utah. It might be supposed that his rapid rise would begin from that time, but his - struggles for the next five years have in them another lesson for the American who wishes to rise. To be really successful a man must find himself. ' Even the brightest of men, the ablest and the most determined to advance, are sometimes handicapped by the wrong choice of a profession. en-thusia- , t - in this ardent TO ionbe bypraised one of the. greatest jurists fash- of Canada no doubt aroused in the Americans mind some strange memories. It was only seven years before that he had left the Columbia University Law School, after beginning the study of law rather late in life. He realized that in the law he had found his true profession after years of grinding labor as a teacher. And"then his memory took him back to the little town of Grantsville, Utah, where he had been born, where he had worked hard on his fathers farm, and where he had attended the district school. It is not of record that anyone saw in Joshua Reuben Clark, Jr., any of those signs of genius which so often mark the youth of and all the time he was planning to get a higher education. There was no thought of law then. That inspiration came later. Today J. Reuben Clark is one of the worlds recognized authorities on international law. After being honored U- his country in the state department and being appointed General Counsel to represent the United States on matters of law and evidence before the Mixed Claims Commission, he received the appointment to represent his country before the Hague Conference which was to have met in 1915, but which was postponed on account of .the war. - private practice of TAKING uphethecontinued to achieve brilliant successes. He is not a rich r.rn, because he has been earning large fees for only a few years, but he is in comfortable circumstances and owns the biggest farm and ranch in Tooele county. This summer he has been able to pass a whole month in Utah for the first time in fifteen years. his entire four years in college he earned his livelihood by outside work. As clerk for the Curator of the Deseret Museum, Dr. James E. Talmage, he was janitor, showman and stenographer and, in addition, arranged for exhibiting the specimens of the museum. Soon after finishing his. course he married. Miss Leacine A. Savage, daughter of C. R. Savage, pioneer photographer of Salt Lake City. During the next five years he was engaged in educational work. He taught English and Latin at the L. D. S. college, was acting principal of the Southern Branch of the State Normal School at Cedar City; taught at the Salt Lake Business College and continued to teach there until the school was absorbed by the L. D. S. college, in the spring of 1903. "TV URING r At present he is chief counsel for the American International Corporation, which he formed for the National City bank group of New York financiers. He is adviser to the Cuban government and to several of the embassies in Washington. 1914 Philander C. Knox, one of IN our greatest lawyers, who was secretary of state during Clarks cumbency as Solicitor for the state partment, said of him: inde- I am doing him but justice in saying that for natural ability, integrity, loyalty and industry, I have not, in a long professional and public experience, met his superior and rarely his equal. PERHAPS it - is just as well to this juncture that J. Reuben Clark, renowned expert on ternational law and affairs, became an opponent of the Wilson covenant for the League of Nations as soon as he had given it close study. He saw in it so many and grave perils to his country that he could not subscribe to it. He considered its entire structure faulty and dangerous, from an American viewpoint, and he felt that it would be better to have no League at all than such a league. In lieu of a sounder covenant, however, he was willing to give his assent to a covenant properly amended with reservations which would go far to protect the interests of the United States. in- J. Reuben Clarks rapid rise to IN fame and fortune there is much inspiration for the bright, industrious, ambitious American boy. Whatever he has achieved has been won by his own hard work, without the aid of a pull. He was born September 1, 1871, in Grantsville, Tooele county, Utah. His A T years of age life look-eto him suspiciously like a failure, but it has been well said that no man is a failure until he considers thirty-tw- o d " James Brown Scott, a professor in the law school, he was invited by that scholar to assistjhim in compiling and annotating a case book on quasi contracts. Upon his graduation in 1906 he was employed by Dr. Scott, who had become a Solicitor for the Department of State at Washington, to compile and annotate the greater part of two volumes of cases on equity jurisdiction and kindred subjects. At this time Secretary Root was seeking a suitable man for Assistant Solicitor in the Department of State and his choice fell upon J. Reuben Clark in September, 1906. A T the very outset he made his mark, preparing an able monograph on the subject of citizenship from. the standpoint of existing judicial determinations and decisions. This was made a part of the final report of a board appointed by the Secretary of State to deal with the subject of citizenship and expatriation and protection abroad. For four years he was Assistant Solicitor, and during the latter part of this period he served as Acting Solicitor in the absence of Dr. Scott! The most difficult questions of international, constitutional and civil law were referred to nim and were handled in such manner as to greatly augment his reputation. One of his most notable achievements was the settlement of the celebrated Alsop case, in which Chile took issue with the United States. Philander Knox was then Secretary of State and, subject to his approval, Mr. Clark handled the diplomatic negotiations which led to a' protocol by which the whole affair was submitted to arbitration with the King of England as Royal Amiable Compositeur. The Assistant Solicitor prepared the whole case of the United States. The arguments and appendix occupied two volumes. The rush of work in his office was so great that- - he was compelled to do all the work on the Alsop case at night. The King of England gave an award in favor of the United States of $905,000. himself one.. In the fall of 1903 he was able to carry out a plan that' he had long been contemplating, but which. had seemed like a dream of the unattainable. In the hard struggle to support himself and family a higher career appeared to be out of the question, but in the autumn of 19.03 he struck out in a hazard of new fortunes. He moved his family to New York City and took up the study of law at Columbia. Ills wonderful health, his trained mind and his insatiable hunger for work soon took him to the very forefront among the law students. At the beginning of his second year he was appointed on the editorial board of the Columbia Law Review, an honor conferred only upon those whose scholarship is of the highest order. Attracting the attention of Dr. . July, 1910, President Taft, IN recommendation of on the Secretary Knox, appointed Clark; Solicitor of the State Department. Technically an officer of the Department of Justice, ranking as an Assistant Attorney General, the Solicitor is assigned to work in the Department of State, which makes use of all of his time. As the chief law officer of the State Department he continued to win laurels. lie assisted in drafting our treaty of peace and commerce with Japan in 1910 and our loan treaties with Honduras and Nicaragua. He was consulted in the drafting of the Knox-Brycarbitration treaties with Great Britain and France. During his term as Solicitor the science of international law developed greatly and he placed upon it the on Page 15.) e ed |