Biography of Fred L. Feick, pages 688/689/690/691.  History of DeKalb 
County, Indiana; B. F. Bowen & Company, Inc., Indianapolis, 1914



Fred L. Feick



	Indiana has been especially honored in the character and career 
of her active men of public service and the professions.  In every 
section have been found men born to leadership in the various 
vocations, men who have dominated because of their superior 
intelligence, natural endowment and force of character.  It is always 
profitable to study such lives, weigh their motives and hold up their 
achievements as incentives to greater acitivity and higher excellence 
on the part of others.  These reflection are suggested by the career of 
one who has  forged his way to the front ranks and who, by a strong 
inherent force and superior ability, controlled by intelligence and 
judgment of high order, stands today as one of the leading men of his 
state.  No citizen in northern Indiana has achieved more honorable 
mention or occupies a more conspicuous place in the public eye than 
Fred L. Fieck, of Garrett, who though just at the threshold of the 
prime of live, has already an enviable reputation as a lawyer in a 
community noted for the high order of its legal talent.  Success is 
methodical and consecutive, and Mr. Feick’s success has been attained 
by normal methods and means-the determined application of mental and 
physical resources along a rightly defined line. A self-made man in the 
truest sense of the term, Mr. Feick is eminently deserving of 
representation in the annals of DeKalb county.

	Fred L. Feick was born on March 8, 1878, at Chicago Junction, 
Ohio, and is a son of  Jacob and Catharine (Zuelch) Feick, natives 
respectively of Ohio and Germany.  Jacob Feick was the son of Adam and 
Catherine Feick, who were natives of Germany, Jacob Feick became a 
successful architect, contractor and builder, becoming very prominent 
in his profession.  He and is brothers built the capitol building at 
Cheyenne, Wyoming, and have erected large and costly structures in all 
parts of the country.  He is now living at Crestline, Ohio, at the age 
of seventy-one years, his wife being sixty-nine years of age.  Mrs. 
Feick, who was well educated, and who engaged in teaching school in 
Germany before coming to this country. Landed her when twenty-three 
year of age, joining relatives in Sandusky, Ohio, where she met Mr. 
Feick.  Her parents were Frederick and Christina Zuelch.  To Jacob and 
Catharine Feick were born eleven children, namely; Mrs. Libby Perman, 
deceased; Katy, deceased; Catherine, deceased; George, who was employed 
as trainman on the Akron division of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, was 
killed in 1911; John, employed as trainman, was killed on the Baltimore 
& Ohio railroad at Defiance, Ohio, in 1907; Mrs. John Berk, of Chicago 
Junction, Ohio; Philip is a professional baseball player and a member 
of the Memphis Club of the Southern League; Jacob, of Crestline, Ohio; 
Frank of Crestline, and Anna and Tillie, who reside with their parents.

	Fred L. Feick received his elementary education in the common 
schools of Chicago Junction, taught by Miss Stella Gregory.  He left 
school at the age of twelve years and became call boy for the Baltimore 
& Ohio railroad in the transportation department, under J. P. 
Fitzgerald, brother of General Manager Thomas Fitzgerald, later 
president of the Baltimore & Ohio. Nineteen months later he was 
transferred to the machinery department, where he learned the 
machinist’s trade under William Taylor, son-in-law of the 
superintendent of motive power under General Harrison, where he served 
an apprenticeship of four years.  In September, 1906, he came to 
Garrett, entered the service of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad as 
brakeman, and two years later was promoted to train conductor, being at 
that time the youngest conductor on the Baltimore & Ohio system.  In 
June, 1901, Mr. Feick was injured in a collision at Gravelton, Indiana, 
where several person were killed, his legs being broken and he being 
otherwise badly crippled.  The railroad company sent him to various 
hospitals for treatment, and, while trying to recuperate, and at that 
time having a wife an family to support, he realized that he had to 
turn his attention to another method of gaining a livelihood.  He 
decided to study law and economic and public questions.  In September, 
1905, while still on crutches, he was elected to represent the C. N. 
Bell Lodge of Railroad Trainmen as local delegate to the state 
convention at Indianapolis, and at that election he was elected vice-
chairman of the state association. During 1905 he wrote a book entitled 
“The Life of a Railway Trainman,” which was copyrighted, and many 
thousand were sold in America and Europe, it proving a very popular 
book and giving him a substantial start.  In 1907 Mr. Feick was  re-
elected as a delegate and was eventually elected president of the  
Railroad Trainmen at the state convention in 1907.  In that same year 
he wrote and had introduced into the Legislature the “full freight crew 
law” and the “ full passenger crew law, “ which bills were passed by 
that Legislature, and which were the first laws of the kind in America.  
He also succeeded in having passed the bills entitled “sixteen hours of 
service law,” the “trainmen’s caboose law” and the “medical case law.” 
The latter providing for the carrying of medical cases on passenger 
trains.  In 1908 Mr. Feick spoke at the Jefferson banquet at Lafayette, 
where he received the personal compliments of William Jennings Bryan, 
and was asked by Mr. Bryan to stump the county for him in the event of 
his nomination.  During that campaign Mr. Feick made three hundred and 
eighty-seven effective speeches, traveling with John W. Kern, William 
Jennings Bryan and other prominent men, and also made a three-day tour 
with Samuel Gompers over the state of Indiana.  In 1907 Mr. Feick was a 
Democratic candidate for congressman in the twelfth district.  In 1909 
he was re-elected president of the  State Association of Railroad 
Trainmen, and during the legislature session of that year he secured 
the passage of the “safety appliance law,” the “full switching crew law 
for yards,” the  “anti loan shark bill,” and various other measures of 
vital interest to laboring men.  Mr. Feick has no personal interest in 
advancing these laws which he had introduced, but worked for them 
solely through his interest inhumanity and to advance the welfare of 
his fellow laboring men, whose dangers and difficulties he fully 
understood, for he had risen through the ranks, passing through every 
gradation of labor from boy to man, and was thus able to speak and 
write with authority on those subjects which he discussed.  In 1909 Mr. 
Feick was admitted to the practice of law in the circuit court, and two 
years later was admitted to the supreme court.  He assisted the 
attorney who had charge of all the railway litigation in Indiana courts 
and the United States supreme court.  In 1911 Mr. Feick was again re-
elected unanimously as president of the State Association of Railway 
Trainmen, and during the session of the Legislature in that year had 
several other beneficent labor laws enacted. In 1912 he took an active 
part as speaker in the campaign, and was later nominated for joint 
senator from DeKalb county, which nomination he declined in order that 
he might serve the national Democratic committee and his fellow railway 
men to the best advantage.  Mr. Feick was a delegate to the national 
Democratic convention at Baltimore and took a very active part in the 
insertion of the labor plank, in the national platform.  He was also a 
delegate to the Democratic state convention, where he had a plank 
placed in the platform providing for semi-monthly pay-days. During the 
last national campaign he was attached to the western headquarters of 
the Democratic party at Chicago, and to him was assigned the task of 
writing the railway campaign literature, given the records of Wilson 
and Marshall in relation to railroad, and laboring men.  He also 
delivered three hundred speeches.  During the same year he was 
prominently mentioned for the nomination of lieutenant-governor of 
Indiana, and could have probably secured the nomination had he not 
emphatically declined.  In 1913 Mr. Feick was again elected president 
of the Railroad Trainmen’s Association and secured the enactment of the 
semi-monthly pay day bill and other bills of a like nature.  He has 
been frequently called into consultation with national leaders at 
Washington, and his advice sought on labor legislation and  other vital 
questions of the day. He is now closely applying himself to his law 
practice, which has assumed large proportions, and is giving his 
attention practically entirely to personal injury cases, having taken 
over eighty thousand dollars’ worth of claims during the past two 
years.  Keenly alive to the great issues of the day, and especially 
those pertaining to capital and labor, and the laws of the country and 
state relating to the protection and welfare of the laboring classes.  
Mr. Feick has gained a place in the hearts of the common people which 
could not have been attained had he not possessed those qualities which 
merited the confidence bestowed in him.  Mr. Feick is a well-read man 
on general subjects, especially those pertaining to national questions 
of politics and economics, and is a fluent and forceful speaker at all 
times.

	In 1899 Mr. Feick was married to Lena Stoner, daughter of George 
F. and Rosa Stoner, her father being a successful druggist at Angola, 
Indiana. They have a son, Dale Frederick, born on April 22, 1900.

	Politically, Mr. Feick is an ardent supporter of the Democratic 
party, of which his father and grandfather were adherents, while on the 
maternal side his ancestors were all Republican.  Religiously, he and 
his wife are earnest and faithful members of the Methodist Episcopal 
church, to which he gives an earnest support.  Fraternally, he is a 
member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Tribe of Ben-Hur 
and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen.

	

Submitted by:

Arlene Goodwin

Auburn, Indiana

Agoodwin@ctlnet.com