View Article - Digital Collections - University of Oklahoma

2sTHE SOONER MAGAZINEsooner persons and personalitieshe saved oklahoma $15,000,000--a sooner who sells the world newideas as advertising manager of america's largest woman'smagazine--an alumnus who answered a want ad andbrought the talkies to the southwest--aPAUL WALKER, '12THE freight rates on shipping potatoesfrom Spiro, Oklahoma, to Fort Sill, Oklahoma,has been reduced nine and a halfcents on every hundred pounds .This statement sounds like one of thosedull things that could be of interest onlyto shippers of potatoes . It sounds like oneof the many things in which you and Iwould never be interested . If this wereall there were to the story we should undoubtedlypass it by and return to readingour True Story or Time or VanityFair . But like most statistical statementsof dull fact there is a story and a personalitybehind it .It is a story in which you and I areinterested when we know that it has resultedin the potential advantage to ourstate of $15,000,000 . Fifteen millions ofdollars which you and I may divert intoother channels of culture, amusement orfood . The story becomes more interesting.It is the personality behind the storythat is of immediate interest to Soonersand to Soonerland, however . It is the personalityof Paul Walker, '12 law, whichhas been the chief element in creatingthis advantage to our state and which producedthe most exhaustive freight ratesurvey yet made by the interstate commercecommission .It has taken seven years for Walkerand his workers to complete this surveyand achieve the adjustment which grewfrom the case of the state of Oklahomato include the case of the states of Kansas,Missouri, Texas and Arkansas . Theyhave been seven years which would havewearied many a less diligent worker andwould have discouraged another with aless courageous heart. Because he has continuedto work and refused to be downheartedit is to Walker that the creditis due .Walker has devoted fifteen of the seventeenyears he has spent since his graduationin the service of the state . Not theleast of these services was his chairmanshipof the students' legislative committeewhich secured the appropriation for thelaw school building . His intensive interestin the university and the law school aftergraduation had been prefaced by variedactivities while in school .While studying law he was a studentinstructor and debating coach . He was amember of the Senate Literary society andwas a charter member and first presidentof the Holmes Inn of the Phi Delta Philegal fraternity. He was a member of theOklahoma-Kansas debating team in 1909-10 and a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilonsocial fraternity .After his graduation Walker went toShawnee where he entered private practicein law. At the end of two years heleft private life for public life and hasPAUL WALKERever since been connected with some legaldepartment of the state . First serving asattorney for the corporation commissionhe turned after four years to becomereferee of the supreme court of Oklahoma .The refereeship held him for four moreyears at the end of which time he returnedto the corporation commission asspecial counsel to work on rate cases . Hiswork on the Consolidated SouthwesternCases led in 1925 to his being appointedchairman of the committee on co-operationbetween federal and state commissionsof the National Association of Railroadand Utilities Commissioners . Thatsuch distinction was deserved can best berealized from the scanning of excerptsfrom a report made by John S. Benton,general solicitor of the National Associationof Railroad and Utilities Commissioners. Says Benton :"Consolidated Southwestern rates havebecome effective, marking the end of oneof the most protracted and sharply litigatedrate proceedings in the history ofthe Interstate Commerce Commission . Sixor seven years ago Paul Walker instituteda complaint for the corporation commissionof Oklahoma complaining of Oklahomainterstate class rates as unreasonableand discriminatory . This was combinedwith several other cases and with thembecame known as the Consolidated SouthwesternCases . . . . Existing rates werefound to be in a chaotic condition, manyof them being two or three times as highin one part of the territory involved asin other parts, notwithstanding substantiallysimilar transportation conditions .The report provided an entirely new ratestructure, which has been termed the mostconstructive and statesmanlike piece ofrate making yet to the credit of the com ,mission . The revision provided advancesas well as reductions, and naturally someshippers were dissatisfied ; and the carrierswere dissatisfied . Reconsideration wassought and granted . . . . They were disposedof early in July . . . . Certain shippersin the southeast made an applicationfor an injunction . The application washeard at St. Louis on July 9 and 10 . J .Standley Payne appeared for the commissionand Paul Walker and Albert Reedof Dallas intervened in support of thecommission's order . On July 12 the courtannounced its decision denying the injunction. Hence the rates as prescribedbecame effective and Walker feels entitledto a vacation ."The estimate of Walker's service to thestate may be judged from a notice givenout by the Oklahoma corporation commissionin which it states : "The new rateswill give added impetus to the locationand development of factories, distributingand jobbing houses within the state ofOklahoma . They have already brought toOklahoma City a new steel mill, and additionalindustrial development as the resultof these new rates has been reportedfrom other Oklahoma cities and towns."RAY H. HAUN, '12THERE was once a day when $20 amonth paid all of a student's expensesthrough school . That was back in 1911and '12 before the war could be heldresponsible for all manner of things, includingthe well known "high price ofliving ." But if $20 was a modest amount