Joe L. Smith

Joseph Luther "Joe" Smith (born May 22, 1880 in Glen Daniel , Raleigh County , West Virginia , †  August 23, 1962 in Beckley , West Virginia) was an American politician . Between 1929 and 1945 he represented the sixth constituency of the state of West Virginia in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Joe Smith attended both public and private schools. Later he got into the newspaper business. He was until 1911 publisher and editor of the newspaper "Raleigh Register", which appeared in Beckley. He also got into the real estate and banking business.

Politically, he was a member of the Democratic Party . Between 1904 and 1929 he was Mayor of Beckley; between 1909 and 1913 he was a member of the West Virginia Senate . In the 1928 congressional election, Smith was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , in the sixth district of West Virginia . There he took over from Republican Edward T. England on March 4, 1929 . After seven re-elections, Joe Smith could serve a total of eight terms in Congress by January 3, 1945 . In this time fell global economic crisis , the abolition of the Prohibition Act , the New Deal legislation set and the Second World War . Since 1931 Smith was chairman of the mining committee.

In 1944, Smith declined to run again. In the following years he worked in banking. He died on August 23, 1962. His son Hulett (1918–2012) served as governor of West Virginia from 1965 to 1969 .

Web links

• Joe L. Smith in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Joe L. Smith in the database of Find a Grave (English)