Work, Hubert, , Pennsylvania 1860 1942 Male Physician Secretary of the Interior physician and cabinet officer, was born in Marion Center, Pa. , the sixth of seven children and only son of Moses Thompson Work, a farmer, and his second wife, Tabitha Logan (Van Horn) Work.
After attending local schools and the Indiana (Pa. ) State Normal School, Work began medical training at the University of Michigan (1882 - 84) and completed it at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his M. D. in 1885.
He then went west to seek his fortune and settled in Colorado, where he began practice in Greeley, removed to Fort Morgan, and in 1896 founded the Woodcroft Hospital for mental and nervous diseases in Pueblo.
In 1920, now a figure of some prominence, Work was called upon by Will Hays, the Republican national chairman, to aid the presidential campaign by organizing farmers in support of the Harding-Coolidge ticket.
After the election, when Hays took over the Post Office Department, Work accepted appointment as First Assistant Postmaster General.
Hays resigned in January 1922, and after two months as acting Postmaster General, Work succeeded to the post on Mar. 4, 1922.
After the resignation of Albert B. Fall [Supp.
He inherited a department beset by internal conflict and attacked from the outside as corrupt and inefficient and as an enemy of conservation.
These feelings were heightened with the gradual disclosure of the Teapot Dome scandal.
On policy matters, he affirmed his support of conservation of natural resources.
He also called for legislation to stop unauthorized and unrestricted grazing, which was destroying the public domain.
The Reclamation Service posed a particular problem.
It had been set up as a self-financing system, its funds to be replenished by fees paid by water users, but in the agricultural depression of the early 1920's many hard-pressed settlers defaulted on their payments.
Many of the committee's findings were adopted, and in 1924 Work appointed one of its members, the able Elwood Mead [Supp.
Work left the Interior Department in July 1928 to become chairman of the Republican National Committee, in which capacity he directed the election campaign of Herbert Hoover.
[Work Papers, Colo.
Archives, Washington; Harding Papers, State Hist.
Soc. , Columbus, Ohio; Coolidge Papers, Lib.
of Cong. ; Hoover Papers, Hoover Lib. , West Branch, Iowa; Von Gayle Hamilton, Work Family Hist.
(1969); Nat.
Cyc.
Am.
Biog. , Current Vol.
of Nervous and Mental Disease, Mar. 1943, and Jour.
Am.
He served on the State Board of Medical Examiners and the State Board of Health and was elected president of the Colorado State Medical Society in 1896, the American Medico-Psychological Society in 1911, and the American Medical Association in 1921.
Work was a Presbyterian in religion.
Work was a Republican and early took part in local politics.
A, p. 14; Eugene P. Trani, "Hubert Work and the Dept. of the Interior, 1923-28, " Pacific Northwest Quart. , Jan. 1970; Donald C. Swain, Federal Conservation Policy, 1921-1933 (1963); obituaries in N. Y. Times, Dec. 15, 1942, Jour.
His wife died in 1924, and on Dec. 8, 1933, he married Mrs. Ethel Reed Gano, the widow of George W. Gano, a Denver merchant.
On Aug. 31, 1887, Work had married Laura M. Arbuckle of Madison, Ind.
His wife died in 1924, and on Dec. 8, 1933, he married Mrs. Ethel Reed Gano, the widow of George W. Gano, a Denver merchant.
They had five children: Philip, Frances Mary, Hubert, Dorcas, and Robert, of whom the second and third died in infancy.
