OKGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of OKGenWeb State Coordinator. Presentation here does not extend any permissions to the public. This material can not be included in any compilation, publication, collection, or other reproduction for profit without permission. Files may be printed or copied for personal use only. ===================================================================== J. ELMER THOMAS Vol. 3, p. 1232-1233 The representative of the Seventeenth Senatorial District, in the Oklahoma State Senate, J. Elmer Thomas, is a lawyer and constructive statesman of eminent ability, a methodical thinker and practical worker, a thorough master of parliamentary law and a leader in advanced thought relating to municipal and state government. Senator Thomas achievements have been earned by his own efforts and energies, and the struggles to get an education an a foothold in the professional world consist largely of alternate years of work and study. With a common school education he entered the Central Normal College, at Danville, Indiana in 1893, with financial resources that enabled him to remain there but one year. During the next three years he alternated teaching with going to school and in 1897 completed the course in the Central Normal College, following which he taught public schools and for one year was principal of a township school, and later entered DePauw University, at Greencastle, Indiana, from which institution he was graduated in 1900, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In 1900 Senator Thomas began the practice of law at Oklahoma City, having taken a law course in the Central Normal College, pursued law studies privately while attending DePauw University and been admitted to the bar at Greencastle in 1897, and his college diploma and admission credentials in Indiana admitted him to the Oklahoma bar. He had chosen the normal school education first in preference to the high school and college course because, being in moderate circumstances and having to make his own way, he saw an opportunity to make rapid advancement, and this idea has been the basis of learning in Oklahoma, an idea for the best advancement of poor boys and girls. A second factor in his educational career was the winning, in 1895, of a scholarship in an oratorical contest, and this paid his tuition and half of the expenses of a year in college. In 1901 Senator Thomas went to Lawton, Oklahoma, and there continued the practice of law, for a time being junior partner in the firm of Smith & Thomas. In 1896 Senator Thomas had his first experience in politics when, as a member of the Democratic Club of his college, he toured a part of Indiana as a speaker for William Jennings BRYAN. He took an active part also in the democratic campaign in Indiana in 1900, and that year had resolved to enter the Columbian Law School at Washington, District of Columbia, and had his books packed for departure when he concluded to come to Oklahoma instead. At Lawton, Senator Thomas assisted in the organization of the first democratic club, in 1901, but his interest in politics remained nominal until in 1907 he was elected a member of the Senate in the First State Legislature, a position which he has occupied uninterruptedly ever since. During the First Legislature he was chairman of the Legal Advisory Committee, a chairmanship which he retained in the Second Legislature. In the third session he was president pro tempore of the Senate and in the Fourth and Fifth Legislatures was chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. He is the author of practically all acts relating to the disposition of state school lands and the income received from them. In the third Legislature he sought to create the office of state tax commissioner, who should be secretary of the State Board of Equalization, but this bill was vetoed by the governor, but in the Fifth Legislature a similar idea was embodied in the message of the governor. As chairman of the committee of Appropriations he made an intimate study of the financial features of state government and developed his well-known plan for a commission form of government for the state, a plan somewhat like that advocated by Governor Williams in his first message. His ideas on a different basic form of state government are advanced and held in high esteem by leading men of Oklahoma. In the Fourth Legislature, Senator Thomas took a leading part in state capitol legislation and was a member of the committee that ended the historic fight for the capitol site and brought about the selection of the site on which the building was erected. In the Fifth Legislature he was the author of commendatory legislation that settled differences between opposing parties in regard to the Capitol Commission and their duties and the manner of spending the capitol money. To Senator Thomas is due practically all of the credit for the beginning of construction of Government irrigation projects in Oklahoma. As a representative of the Chamber of Commerce of Lawton, he made several trips to Washington, D. C., convinced the Secretary of the Interior that irrigation was needed in Oklahoma, caused the Reclamation Service to send an inspector to this state for investigation that resulted favorably to the project, and finally aided in the passage through Congress of a bill setting aside 600 acres of Indian School land near Lawton as the basis for operations and making available what may be necessary of the irrigation fund to the credit of the state held by the Government. The state has some millions of dollars to its credit for reclamation work, and the Lawton project is doubtless the beginning of extended irrigation projects in Oklahoma. Senator Thomas has completed a statute regarding the construction of roads and highways which is conceded to be a solution to the many complex legal and practical problems that have confronted the state since the beginning of state government. With H. A. LLOYD, a banker of Lawton, Senator Thomas established Medicine Park, one of the leading pleasure and health resorts of the state and the Southwest, located in the Wichita Mountains, near Lawton and Fort Sill, and he was also a prime mover in the construction of an interurban railroad between those two points. On September 24, 1902, Senator Thomas was married to Miss Edith SMITH, daughter of Judge Wilford M. Smith, who, as a lawyer in South Dakota, was a member of the First Senate of that state. One son has been born to this union: Wilford, aged ten years, who was a page in the House of Representatives during the Fifth Legislature. Senator Thomas is a member of the Lawton Lodge No. 1056, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, of the Masons, and of the Phi Delta Theta college fraternity. He belongs also to the Lawton Chamber of Commerce and of the Medicine Park Club, and is treasurer and secretary of the Medicine Park Company and an honorary member of the Oklahoma Press Association. Typed for OKGenWeb by Charmaine Keith, October 18, 1998.