Page:History of Oregon (Carey), volume 3.djvu/11

6 HISTORY OF OREGON

unswerving integrity and exalted honor, and the public press vied with the bar in expressing in feeling terms the deep sense of irretrievable loss suffered by the com- munity in the passing of this high-minded and highly respected citizen,With the example of his honored father to serve as a stimulus in his career, Fred W. Mulkey has added new honors to the family name. Liberal educational advan- tages were accorded him and he completed a course in the University of Oregon as one of its alumni of 1896. He then prepared for the bar in the New York Law School of New York city, where he won his LL. B. degree in 1S99. From the beginning of his professional career he has made steady advancement and his course has been one which reflects credit upon the profession, while at the same time he has achieved thereby a position that is most enviable. Moreover, Mr. Mulkey has almost continuously served in public ofiBce. He was a young man of hut twenty-six years when he was elected a member of the Portland city council for a two-year period and was honored with the presidency thereof during the last year of his term. He has always made a close study of the question of taxation and has been most fearless in support of his views, which he has ever expressed with remarkable clearness and in most convincing manner. He was the chairman of the Oregon tax commission, the report of which received favorable comment from the best tax experts in the United States. In June, 1906, he was elected to the United States senate to fill out the unexpired term of J. H. Mitchell, deceased, receiving a plurality of fifty thousand and becoming the unanimous choice of the state legislature. From 1910 until 1915 he was chairman of the public dock commission of Portland and is still serving as a member of the commission. In 1917 he was made chairman of the committee appointed to investigate the state penitentiary and from the 5th of Novem- ber, 1918. until the 17th of December of the same year he was a member of the United States senate but resigned on the latter date. In February, 1919, he became chairman of the soldiers' and sailors' committee of Oregon and is still acting in that capacity. All public duties he has assumed with a sense of conscientious obligation that has been manifest in his valuable service, his course being one of great usefulness along many lines.

LESLIE EUGENE CROUCH.

Leslie Eugene Crouch, a well known corporation lawyer of Portland, was born in Stockbridge, Wisconsin, July 28, 1878, his parents being John 0. and Elizabeth J. fYoumans) Crouch. The father, also a native of Wisconsin, was a farmer by occupa- tion but passed away in 1879, at the early age of twenty-six years. The mother is still living and now makes her home in Seattle.

Leslie E. Crouch was very young at the time of his father's death. His early education was acquired in district schools near his Wisconsin home and in the high school of Stockbridge, which he attended from 1893 until 1897. Subsequent" to this time it was necessary at various periods that he provide for his own support and he was employed from January, 1899, until July, 1902, by the Great Northern Railroad Company and the Chicago & Great Western Railroad Company. It was while thus engaged that he took up the study of law, for a commendable ambition prompted him to prepare for a calling that would give him wider opportunity and greater chance for advancement. In 1902 he became a resident of Oregon and matriculated in the law department of the University of Oregon, from which he was graduated in 1904 with the LL. B. degree. In June of that year he was admitted at Salem to practice in the Oregon courts and in the latter part of the same month was licensed to prac- tice in the United States district and circuit courts. He then became the professional associate of Rodney L. Glisan and specialized upon corporation law, abstracts and titles. Throughout the intervening years he has confined his attention to these branches of law practice and his constantly broadening experience, his thorough study and continued research have made him one of the ablest representatives of corporation law in western Oregon. He has made substantial advancement in his chosen calling and the older and more experienced members of the Portland bar soon acknowledged his worth, and he today enjoys the confidence and goodwill of his colleagues and contemporaries before the bar. Mr. Crouch was made attorney for the civic improve- ment board, having in charge the cleaning up of the city for the exposition of 1905. He became interested in the Almeda Consolidated Mines Company, owning one of