Samuel Untermyer (March 6, 1858 – March 16, 1940) was a prominent American lawyer and civic leader. He is also remembered for bequeathing his Yonkers, New York estate, now known as Untermyer Park, to the people of New York State.
Life
Samuel Untermyer was born in Lynchburg, Virginia to Isadore Untermyer and Therese Laudauer, both of whom were German Jews who emigrated to the United States from Bavaria. His father, a planter, served as a lieutenant in the Confederate States Army. Following his death in 1866, the family moved to New York City.
He began his higher education at the City College of New York before receiving his LL.B. from Columbia University in 1878.
Following his admission to the bar, Untermyer started practicing in New York City. His younger brother, Maurice Untermyer, was later admitted, while he also recruited Columbia classmate Louis Marshall to join the firm in 1895. They, with Randolph Guggenheimer and his descendants, practiced as Guggenheimer, Untermyer & Marshall for 45 years.
Untermyer gained fame as a lawyer focusing on corporate law. An exponent of the Progressive Era, he became an advocate of stock market regulations, government ownership of railroads and various legal reforms. He was also the first attorney to earn a million dollars on a single case.
Career
Between the start of his practice and 1921, Untermyer was counsel in many celebrated cases, specifically:
As counsel for H. Clay Pierce, he prevented Standard Oil from dominating the Waters-Pierce after its dissolution in 1910. In the same year, he facilitated the merger of Utah Copper with Boston Consolidated and the Nevada Consolidated, a case that involved more than $100,000,000. In 1912, as counsel to the Kaliwerke Aschersleben and the Disconte Gesellschaft in the controversy arising out of the control of the potash industry by the German government, he assisted in reaching a settlement. In 1903, he undertook the first judicial exposure of "high finance" in connection with the failure of U.S. Shipbuilding, organized only a year before as a consolidation of the larger shipbuilding companies in America, including the entity subsequently known as Bethlehem Steel. As a result of the sensational exposures connected with that company, a reorganization was effected under the name of Bethlehem Steel, in which Untermyer became a large shareholder. After this he conducted a number of similar exposures. In 1911 he delivered "Is There a Money Trust?", an address that prompted an investigation by the Committee on Banking and Currency of the U.S. House of Representatives, then headed by Arsène Pujo. Untermyer was counsel-investigator to the Pujo Committee, famously cross-examining J. P. Morgan and other New York bankers. The Committee's work resulted in the passage of remedial legislation, including the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. Untermyer for years agitated before Congress and state legislatures such measures as the compulsory regulation of stock exchanges. He for many years conducted agitations and wrote magazine articles dealing with reforms in criminal law, the regulation of trusts and combinations and other economic subjects. He was counsel for many reorganization committees, including those of the Seaboard Air Line, the Rock Island Railway, Central Fuel Oil, and Southern Iron and Steel. In 1915, he acted as a counsel for the federal government in the suit brought against the Secretary of the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency by the Riggs National Bank of Washington, D.C., which charged there was a conspiracy to wreck it; the defendants were cleared. He took an active part in preparing the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 and other legislation curbing trusts. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1904, 1908 and 1912; and delegate-at-large for the state of New York in 1916. Accordingly, he was a strong supporter of Woodrow Wilson's administration. After America entered World War I, he was an advisor to the U.S. Treasury Department regarding the interpretation of the income tax and the excess profits tax laws. He was appointed by President Wilson to serve on the U.S. section of the 1916 International High Commission, which convened in Buenos Aires for the purpose of framing uniform laws in the Americas.