A prominent Chicago lawyer who in his youth had worked for years under Gary was appealed to in this regard. And this is what he said:
“Judge Gary had the ability and courage to, whenever necessary, abandon the old precedents which, by reason of changed times and conditions, had been relegated to the scrap heap of progress. He was one of the few attorneys who could, with almost prophetic vision, see the positions which the courts of appeal must eventually be obliged to take with reference to questions of public policy and the great industrial organizations just then in their infancy.”
The lawyer then went on to tell an anecdote illustrating the fact that the Judge though a member of the legal profession did not believe in recourse to litigation when it could be avoided. He said:
“I recall that on one occasion a client called on the Judge in an irate mood and asserted his intention of prosecuting a neighbor for slander. He told Gary what the neighbor had said and asked his opinion and advice. And this was the reply he received: ‘If you are guilty of what he charges perhaps you had better sue; but if you are not--why, go home and forget it.’”
Nor did Gary’s prophetic vision “extend only as regards the position which the courts must take” but to the trend of human events generally. There is nothing uncanny about this foresight or sixth sense. It is due entirely to the fact that its possessor has a mind peculiarly capable of estimating and sizing up the relative values of known causes and deducting from them the natural, in fact, the inevitable results.
No better exemplification of this can be given than is afforded by the policies which he advocated for the Corporation, and which were gradually adopted and put into practice. He saw plainly, long before any one else did, how subject to criticism was the gigantic organization which he had helped to form, and of which he was the head; he realized that its very size contained an element of weakness in that it attracted enmity, and made it the subject of attack.
And in the face of powerful opposition, not only from some of his fellow directors at first--an opposition that gradually diminished and eventually vanished, or was converted into admiration and hearty coöperation--but from subordinate executives of the subsidiary companies who could not accustom themselves immediately to new business methods, he insisted that the big company should so deal with all with whom it came in contact, its competitors, its customers, its workmen, as to make all of these its friends.