Served as the 8th Secretary of Agriculture during the administration of President Coolidge, and he served as17th Governor of West Virginia.
1877-1947 | Artist: Robert Wadsworth Grafton (1876-1936)
Impact & Accomplishments
With an agriculture degree from the University of West Virginia, and experience breeding beef cattle and hogs on the family farm in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Howard Gore worked for the U. S. Department of Agriculture in both the Bureau of Animal Industry and the Packers and Stockyards Administration.
In 1923, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, and then briefly designated Secretary of Agriculture by President Coolidge, upon the death of Henry C. Wallace. He served for just four months, having been elected Governor of West Virginia.
Another Saddle & Sirloin inductee, William Marion Jardine, succeeded him. Following his term as governor, Gore served as state commissioner of agriculture and was director of several West Virginia banks.
Did You Know?
His support of road construction earned Gore the nickname, "road building governor."
Shortly after World War I, there was an outbreak of the dreaded foot-and-mouth disease in California. Gore immediately called a meeting of the most influential livestock producers in the United States and worked out a plan for the isolation, quarantine, and slaughter of every clove hoofed beast in its infected area. The group then persuaded the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, to enforce the program to prevent the escape of the disease from Southern California.