418 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



to enter in any contest for personal political preferment 

 and devoted my time to my business. 



In 1870 I wrote and published the Third Iowa Digest, 

 a volume of Iowa law, being a continuation of the pre- 

 vious digests of Judge Dillon and Professor Hammond. 



In 1875 I published the first volume of Lacey's Railway 

 Digest and in 1884 the second volume. This work in- 

 cluded all cases of railway law in the English language 

 from the time of the invention of railways to the year 

 1884, including Australian, Canadian, and English cases. 

 The work involved in the preparation of these two large 

 volumes was very great. The work speedily passed into 

 the hands of all practitioners of railway law. My royalty 

 on the volumes was not an adequate compensation for the 

 labor involved, but it was of great value to me in the 

 practice of my profession to have actually examined per- 

 sonally every railway case in the English language, and 

 to have digested the same. I was called into the trial of 

 many railway cases and by employment in that line of 

 work received many very satisfactory fees, thus obtain- 

 ing my reward for the work done. 



My name was in 1872 brought up in the Republican 

 convention for circuit judge, but I did not actively seek 

 the position and was fortunately not nominated for the 

 position. Going upon the bench would have withdrawn 

 me from the active practice which had now become second 

 nature to me. I tried cases continually in all the courts, 

 state and federal, and for thirty years no Iowa report 

 was published that did not contain one or more of my 

 cases. I have preserved in bound volumes the printed 

 records of my cases in the Supreme Court of Iowa and 

 other courts in which the records are printed, and the 

 record is quite a voluminous one. 



I was fortunate in the selection of a location for the 

 practice of the law on one account, and that was the 



