Aldace F. Walker

Aldace F. Walker held a high rank in that most important and difficult of American callings, the organization and administration of railways. Born in Vermont in 1842, he left college at the age of twenty to enlist in the Army of the Union, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the next two years, when his regiment was mustered out. He studied law at the Columbia Law School, and after practising a short time in this City, removed to Rutland, where he rapidly attained a high standing, especially in railroad law. In 1887 he was appointed a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, from which he retired two years later to become the Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Association and its successor, the Western Traffic Association, at Chicago. In 1893 he was chosen Chairman of the Joint Committee of Railway Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the lines belonging to the Trunk Line and Central Traffic Associations. In the next year he was appointed Receiver of the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Road, and in 1896 became the Chairman of the Board of the reorganized Company. In this varied and extensive career he showed qualities at once brilliant and solid, and won the confidence and admiration of all who were familiar with his remarkable achievements. Probably no one contributed more substantially than he to the progress made in the last fifteen years toward the solution of the intricate problem of the relations of the great railway properties to each other, and to the Government, and their healthy and sound development. His standard of corporate obligation, like his standard of personal conduct, was high, and his steadfast adherence to it, combined with rare intelligence and scope as well as penetration of judgment, made his influence powerful and beneficent. The effect of work such as his is felt in the very fibre of the vast material activities of the country and is never lost.

Edward Cary
1902 Century Association Yearbook