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Part of the American
History & Genealogy Project |
Mary E. Miller 1864 ~
Miss Miller, a distinguished woman
lawyer of Chicago, is a farmer's daughter, and was born on a
Michigan farm, in Calhoun County, December 28, 1864. Her early
education was obtained in a country district school. She
afterwards attended the Marshall High School, and graduated in
the Latin course. She then attended the Michigan State Normal
School located at Ypsilanti, from which she graduated in 1886.
The following year she taught school at Portland, Michigan. The
next summer she entered the office of the county clerk, of
Calhoun County, and there learned to use the typewriter. In the
winter of 1888, Miss Miller went to Chicago, and entered a
shorthand school, and in the following autumn took a position as
stenographer and typewriter with A. C. McGurg & Co., publishers,
remaining with them until the following spring. She followed the
occupation of a stenographer until 1894, occupying places during
that period in the offices of some of the most prominent lawyers
in the city of Chicago.
Miss Miller began the study of law about
the 1st of October, 1893, attending the Chicago College of Law,
from which college she received her diploma in June, 1896, being
admitted to the bar at that date. She afterwards took a post
graduate course in law, and received the degree of B.L, from the
Lake Forest University. She commenced the practice of law about
the 1st of July, 1895, and opened her office in Chicago.
It is something to have earned a $30,000
fee, but what Miss Mary E. Miller has done for the poor is of
far more importance to the public Miss Miller, who has been
practicing law in the Chicago courts for thirteen years,
received her largest fee for winning a suit in behalf of the
heirs of a millionaire and secured a court order for the
immediate distribution of $3,000,000. It was a triumph that
attracted attention to her, but what she considers her real
success at the bar was in a suit in which she received no fee
whatever. Miss Miller possesses a high sense of eternal justice
of right, and when she discovered that the Illinois courts had
deprived the poor of their rights of "a day in court," she
forthwith took up the cause of the pauper and fought to restore
to him equal rights before the law with the rich. The case which
brought her into the white light was a petition for mandamus,
compelling the judge to examine the relator, and certain
documents presented by her, and to determine whether she could
sue as a "poor person" under the Illinois statutes. The judges
of the Superior Court had enacted a rule regulating suits
brought under the statute as poor persons, whom the rule styled
"paupers," which was so burdensome and oppressive both to the
lawyer and the client that it was naturally impossible to comply
with it conscientiously. The rule worked to the benefit of the
corporations, traction companies, and others against whom
personal injury suits were brought, as it deprived many of the
opportunity of going into court Miss Miller won her case for the
"poor person," and the Supreme Court held the unjust rule null
and void, overruling the law enacted by the eleven judges of the
Superior Court. Miss Miller thereupon brought suit for her
client, a "poor person," and won damages of $1,000, the verdict,
however, was set aside and a second trial called.
Miss Miller's fee in this case was less
than nothing, her client being a poor Negress born a slave, but
the suit established the right of so-styled "poor persons"
to fight in court for their right against the rich. "It
restored," says Miss Miller, "the rights of the poor to sue,
a right of which the court had shamelessly deprived them."
She has always been very much interested
in procuring suffrage for women, and has devoted more or less
time to that purpose. For a short time in 1806 she published a
little suffrage paper in Chicago. For a number of years she was
also connected with various women's clubs, but has dropped her
membership in all save the Chicago Political Equality League.
She is the organizer of Cook County for the Illinois Equal
Suffrage Association, and has devoted considerable time to that
work.
Through her acquaintance obtained in the
suffrage work, she became interested in the Norwegian Danish
Young Women's Christian Home, and is now vice-president of the
executive committee which has this home in charge. The home was
instituted for the purpose of furnishing Norwegian and Danish
servant girls in Chicago a safe, clean, and attractive
residence. There is also connected with it a free employment
bureau, which investigates the applications for servant girls by
employers and ascertains whether they are desirable and safe
positions. By this means it is hoped to save numerous girls from
white slavery, as they are frequently lured into dens through
the employment agencies.
Miss Miller has spoken for suffrage in
the automobile tours through Illinois, and at the parlor and
hall meetings in the city of Chicago.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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