According to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle as a senator he "sponsored and passed more big legislation than any two members of that body put together during the corresponding period".

[2] As chairman of the New York Senate Committee on Public Education, he introduced legislation such as the Teachers' Salary Increase act, which did much to prevent the breakdown of the school system, due to the failure of teachers' pay to follow the soaring cost of living during the war.

[14][15] The proportion of dwellers per square foot was three to four times that of the pre-War level and considered a "menace to lives, health, morals and safety of the entire community.

[17] At the outset landlords who charged tenants usurious rents were in the committee's spotlight, but subsequently labor unions and building material suppliers were found implicated in a racket that inflated housing costs.

[18] In April 1920, the Committee issued a series of recommendations to diminish the rent spiral, resulting in the passage of twelve laws in the Anti-Rent Profiteering Bill.

Officials in the administration of New York Mayor John F. Hylan, opposed the Lockwood bills because of the curtailment of absolute property rights.

In defense of the bills he had sponsored and largely helped to draw, Lockwood was actively involved in the litigation.

The decision of the highest New York State and Federal courts to uphold the validity of the laws was a severe blow to those who had capitalized for their profit the housing shortage growing out of the war.

After nine years of public life and citing ill health, he did not seek re-election for a new term in the Senate in 1922, and focused on his family and private law practice.

[3][16][19] In 1923, he was considered for a federal judgeship in Brooklyn, but the business and labor interests that had been under scrutiny of the Lockwood Committee effectively opposed his nomination.

[20] Lockwood tried to unify the subway system under municipal authority and was a strong proponent of the five-cent fare,[3][21] a contentious issue, which in New York City had become a fundamental right that no politician could oppose without severe political consequences.

[24] In his final years, Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed Lockwood along with New York City’s construction coordinator Robert Moses and former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson as a member of the Temporary Long Island Railroad Commission, installed after the Richmond Hill train crash on November 22, 1950, that claimed 79 lives.