Smith, were the prime movers in the work which gave the State its railroad legislation and the practical solution of problems of administration thereunder. So important was the part taken by each of these public officials that it may safely be said that if any one of them had at any time flinched the formidable work might have met defeat.
Mr. Berryhill was the lawyer who made a careful examination of the constitutional points involved in the proposed legislation. Familiar with the decisions of the State and Federal Courts in relation to fixing rates, he so framed the bill that unquestioned principles of constitutional law were back of every part of the statute. While some of the more radical reformers were impatiently urging the fixing of inflexible rates, Mr. Berryhill firmly urged that the State could not safely go beyond the point of establishing a maximum rate which should only be prima facie evidence of a reasonable rate. While this simply shifted the burden of proof in the event of litigation from the shipper to the carrier and left the former with nothing more substantial than a better standing in court, the outcome proved that this was all that the shipper really needed in the way of laws. The railroad companies were so thoroughly convinced of the constitutionality of the legislation that they never permitted the controversy to go to the Supreme Court of the United States. They preferred to submit to what they declared to be disastrous reductions of rates, rather than permit the legal questions involved in railway control to go to the court of last resort on grounds chosen for the test by the framers of this statute.
The battle-ground of the movement was in the first instance in the State Legislature, after years of agitation through the press and the Granges. The preliminary skirmishing was in the Twenty-first General Assembly, while the Twenty-second carried the struggle to a conclusion. James G. Berryhill was the acknowledged organizer and leader in the House of Representatives of the
