Bio of FIFIELD, James Clark (b.1862), Hennepin Co., MN
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EXTRACTED FROM: History of Minneapolis, Gateway to the Northwest; 
Chicago-Minneapolis, The S J Clarke Publishing Co, 1923; Edited by: Rev. 
Marion Daniel Shutter, D.D., LL.D.; Volume I - Shutter (Historical); 
volume II - Biographical; volume III - Biographical
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JAMES CLARK FIFIELD - Vol II, pg 548-551
James C. Fifield, lawyer, publisher, and editor, has been actively engaged in
busi­ness in Minneapolis since 1887. He is a native cf Iowa, born at Cedar
Falls, February 3, 1862. After finishing his public school work he attended
Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and after graduating from that
institution he went to Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, where he
graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1887, after completing the regular
undergraduate course in which he specialized in history and political science.
He is a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
Mr. Fifield was a law student at the Maryland University Law School, and later,
upon coming to Minneapolis, he read law in the office of the well known law firm
of Shaw & Cray. He was admitted to the Minnesota bar in 1891, and entered upon
the practice of his profession, subsequently becoming a member of the law firm
of Fifield, Fletcher & Fifield.
Mr. Fifield soon discovered that the active practice of the law did not appeal
to • him and was not suited to his temperament. He was more interested along
industrial lines, and this interest led him into Mexico, which in his judgment
offered exceptional opportunities for industrial and agricultural development.
He became interested in sugar production, organized an American Company, of
which for a period of years he was the general manager, and had personal charge
of the financing and construction of the largest and best equipped modern sugar
factory in the southern republic. During this period Mr. Fifield made a deep
study of cane sugar production, upon both its agricultural and manufacturing
sides. These studies took him to the great sugar estates of the Hawaiian
Islands, Cuba, and our own Southern states. In these travels there was placed at
his disposal every facility for careful observation of cane sugar production in
all of its phases, and he soon became recognized among professional sugar people
as a man thoroughly well versed on the subject. During this time, which he often
speaks of as the most interesting period of his career, he had not severed his
partnership with his brother in The Attorneys National Clearing House Company.
In 1911 Walter V. Fifield passed away, and James C. Fifield became president and
manager of the publishing business which the brothers had organized in 1895. As
editor of The Clearing House Quarterly, a magazine devoted to the interests of
com­mercial lawyers throughout the country, he found an opportunity to benefit
this branch of the legal profession in a way that brought him the most favorable
recognition from lawyers in every state in the Union. In the face of great
opposition on the part of certain interests, he instituted and conducted to a
successful conclusion a national rate reform campaign for a fifty per cent
increase in the rates of compensation to com­mercial lawyers. This was done
through a series of editorials in his magazine, wherein he reviewed the economic
history of the United States, showing that since 1860 the value of the dollar
had fallen to forty-three cents, and that, in other lines, wages and salaries
had risen on the average more than one hundred ten per cent, while the rates of
compensation of lawyers in the commercial branch of the profession had remained
stationary.
In 1916 Mr. Fifield began the preparation of a biographical directory of leading
lawyers of the United States and the Dominion of Canada. This book, The American
Bar, achieved almost instant recognition in the legal profession as an
authoritative work on the ranking members of the bar in all important towns and
cities of the two countries. This directory is revised and republished annually,
and to this work and the editorial work on The Clearing House Quarterly, Mr.
Fifield expects to devote the rest of his days when he is not playing golf. He
belongs to the Brentwood Country Club of Los Angeles, California, and the
Superior Golf Club of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Those who know him best say of Mr. Fifield that he is a man of high ideals and
worthy accomplishments and is recognized as a man of superior intellectual
attain­ments who represents the highest type of his profession.
In 1906 Mr. Fifield was married to Effie W. Merriman, an -editor and writer of
prominence. This has been a most harmonious union; they work together, study
together, and play together, and Mr. Fifield declares that his wife is his best
pal.
Mr. Fifield is a republican in politics and takes a deep interest in national
and local affairs but has never sought nor desired public office.