George Wharton Pepper (March 16, 1867May 24, 1961) was an American lawyer, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Christian activist, and Republican politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate, and founded the law firm of Pepper Hamilton.
Early life and education Pepper was born to upper-class parents, physician (and former Union cavalry officer) George Pepper and his wife, the former Mehitable ("Hitty") Markoe Wharton, on March 16, 1867. Each was descended from families prominent in the region since the colonial era: Pennsylvania Dutch on his father's side and Quakers and Episcopalians on his mother's. He was born in his paternal grandmother's house, in a fashionable neighborhood, 1215 Walnut Street. Their first child had died in infancy, and the family soon moved to quarters on Pine Street. Dr. Wharton died when George was seven and his only sister Frances a newborn, so the family moved to smaller quarters, 346 S. 16th Street in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood with his grandmother. His mother home-schooled her then weak-eyed son, with the assistance of his uncle, Dr. William Pepper (whom he considered like a father after his own father's demise), and later a blind tutor, John F. Maher.John Lukacs, Philadelphia Patricians & Philistines: 1900–1950 (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982) p. 221. His grandmother's summer estate on the Schuylkill River later became one of those consolidated into Laurel Hill Cemetery. He considered Willie Ryder his best friend, noting that he was "colored"; and also remembered informally competing at memory exercises with boys from a nearby prep school.Pepper autobiography, pp. 16–21, 28 In 1876, his mother remarried, to his father's friend and former classmate, lawyer Ernest Zantzinger.
Admitted to his father's (and step-father's) alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, Pepper was active in athletics, rowing crew, becoming captain of his class football and cricket teams and winning the hammer throw for the track-and-field team, and in drama. In addition to academic activities, for which he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key he often twirled later in his life, Pepper started the school newspaper and edited a literary magazine, which later merged into The Daily Pennsylvanian. He also joined several organizations, including the Zeta Psi fraternity, Sketch club and Philomathean Society. Pepper graduated first in his class from the college in 1887. Then he followed the examples of his maternal grandfather and stepfather, entering the University of Pennsylvania Law School, from which he also graduated first in his class and with several honors in 1889.Penn People A-Z | University Archives and Records Center
On November 25, 1890, in New Haven, Connecticut, Pepper married Charlotte Root Fisher (1865-1951), daughter of Professor George Park Fisher, dean of the Yale Divinity School. They had three children: Adeline Louise Forbes Pepper (1892-1971), George Wharton Pepper, Jr. (1895-1949), and Charlotte Eleanor Pepper (1897-1930). Both daughters married Fitz Eugene Newbold, Adeline seven years after her sister Charlotte's death and eventually surviving him as well as her parents.
Career During law school, Pepper worked part-time for the prestigious firm Biddle and Ward. He was admitted to the bar in 1889. He then taught law at his alma mater for more than two decades, as well as maintained a private practice. In his autobiography, dedicated to "Andrew Hamilton and all other Philadelphia Lawyers Past and Present", Pepper acknowledged that public dissatisfaction with the bar had always existed, but thought it increasing throughout his lifetime. He thus devoted the penultimate chapter as "a treatise for lawyers only", cautioning them that the poor repute to which the some deserve "to be scolded, is one whose offense does not consist in representing a corporation or in being disloyal to his client, but in allowing fidelity to that client to dim or black out entirely his sense of public duty." He thought those so indifferent to public interest were few and could be readily identified, but specifically warned against the "far more subtle and more common vice of regarding the client as a suitable subject for exploitation" cautioning "[t]he instant that the attorney's interest becomes inconsistent with the client's the attorney's interest must be forgotten."Autobiography at p. 342
Academic
Teaching at the Penn Law school for 21 years, Pepper began as a teaching fellow and soon became the first Algernon Sydney BiddleJoshua Lawrence Chamberlain, The University of Pennsylvania: its History, Influence, Equipment and Character vol. 1, p. 403 (Herndon Company 1911) at Google Books Professor of Law, a position he held from 1893 until 1910, when he became a trustee of the university.Colonial Families of Philadelphia, vol 2 p. 1091 In 1890–1891, he visited Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and studied the case system of instruction being introduced by Dean Christopher C. Langdell, and applied by John Chipman Gray in Property, James Bradley Thayer in Evidence and Constitutional Law, James Barr Ames in Torts, Trusts and Pleading, and Samuel Williston in Contracts. Pepper primarily taught about corporations, partnership and insurance.
After World War I, Draper and Elihu Root founded the American Law Institute, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation and George W. Wickersham as its first President. Pepper became a member of its governing council in 1930 and succeeded Wickersham as president from 1936 to 1947. He also served on the Federal Advisory Committee which drafted the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, with former Attorney General William D. Mitchell as chairman Charles L. Clark as reporter. He delivered the commencement address at the graduation ceremony at the University of Pittsburgh in 1921.Pepper, George Wharton | Digital Pitt
For his academic pursuits, Pepper was elected to both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Author Pepper wrote over 40 articles in various legal publications.Jenkins Blog | Jenkins Law Library and, from 1892 to 1895, edited and published the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (then the American Law Register and Review), with his friend, William Draper Lewis. His 1895 presentation to the Pennsylvania Bar Association about legal education prompted reforms. With Lewis, he edited the Digest of Decisions and Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Law, 1754–1898 (1898–1906). Pepper also authored The Borderland of Federal and State Decisions, Pleading at Common Law and Under the Codes , Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania 1700 - 1901, and Digest of Decisions and Encyclopaedia of Pennsylvania.Colonial Families of Philadelphia, vol 2 p. 1092
Private practice
Pepper served as president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association early in his career, and as chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association late in his career, from 1930 to 1932. As he retired, his law firm in 1954 merged with Evans, Bayard & Frick (whose leading partner by that time was Francis M. Sheetz) to form Pepper, Bodine, Frick, Scheetz & Hamilton, which eventually became Pepper Hamilton; the 35 member firm moved to the building of its largest client, The Fidelity Bank.
The earliest case he recounted in his autobiography concerned a bequest to the City of Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin in 1790, which was to fund interest-bearing loans to deserving artisans. Newly minted lawyer Pepper lost the case brought on behalf of Franklin's heirs in 1890, but learned "in any human system for the administration of justice there must be a reserved judicial right to refuse in exceptional cases to stretch beyond the breaking point a legal principle that is sound enough for everyday use." Five decades later, the Orphans Court (which was found to lack jurisdiction in the original case) appointed him Master to determine question under Franklin's will and thus facilitate the administration of the trust which as a youthful advocate he had tried to set aside.Autobiography at p. 351-352
Pepper also learned from his days trying many cases for the Union Traction Company (Philadelphia's streetcar purveyor) that perjury is plentiful but Philadelphia's jurists, while disposed to favor plaintiffs, were nonetheless quick to detect fraud and prompt to condemn it. He also found jurors sympathetic to anyone who has acted under provocation, and apt to resent the conduct of the provocateur, and proudly recounted a cross-examination he had made before Judge Mayer Sulzberger.Autobiography at pp. 352-353
Pepper recounted his first brush with politics occurred as Republican boss Matthew Quay's term as Senator expired before Pennsylvania's legislature could reappoint him, due to a revolt led by State Senator William Flinn, who blocked the reappointment despite daily ballots from January until adjournment in April. Governor Stone then gave Quay a temporary appointment, which led to protests in the Senate. After the argument, a senator had mistaken Pepper for Pennsylvania's Attorney General, Elkins, although in fact Pepper had written the opposing brief. The Senate refused to recognize Quay's appointment, which eventually reduced his power, although the case led to a friendship between Pepper and Elkins (who had hoped to succeed Stone as Governor, but became a justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania instead).Autobiography at pp. 78-80
In the early 1900s, a federal judge in Massachusetts appointed Pepper receiver for the Bay State Gas Company, a bankrupt Massachusetts utility which had been promoted by former Philadelphian J. Edward Addicks, who had also caused controversy (and the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by trying to buy the Senate seat from Delaware). Pepper then sued a number of nationally known businessmen, including William Rockefeller, Henry Rogers, and Thomas Lawson, for enriching themselves at the expense of the utility, and secured several recoveries, as well as a successful receivership of the utility.Pepper, George Wharton. Philadelphia Lawyer: an Autobiography. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1944) pp. 95-97.
Pepper represented Gifford Pinchot in connection with the Pinchot–Ballinger controversy, which began his political career on the national scene, as discussed below.
He was counsel to the National and American League baseball clubs, defeating the application of the Sherman Antitrust Act to their activities in Chicago in 1915 before judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis in preliminary injunction case. However, it was revived four years later after the Black Sox Scandal and his clients received an unfavorable jury verdict, which was reversed by the Supreme Court in Federal Baseball Club v. National League (1922) after lawyer Pepper and Judge Landis (who by then became baseball Commissioner) revised the leagues' organizational structure, Pepper writing the caption for the new series of agreements, "Play Fair. Play Hard. Play for the Team."Autobiography at pp. 357-359