Governor of Maryland
As Governor, Smith promoted education, labor, and healthcare reform. In education, Smith reorganized the public school system, guaranteed free textbooks for all students, appointed a school superintendent, and removed the Agricultural College of Maryland (now known as the University of Maryland, College Park) from private control and placed it under the guidance of the State. He also improved the State's workman compensation program, encouraged a merit system for promotions, reorganized health laws and constructed a State psychiatric hospital. Governor Smith is also credited with signing into law, the Certified Public Accountant Act, making Maryland the third state to create a Profession of Public Accounting with an exam, and State licensing and oversight. Smith also freed the State from much of its debt by the time he departed from the position in 1904.
Read more about this topic: John Walter Smith
Famous quotes containing the words governor of and/or governor:
“Three years ago, also, when the Sims tragedy was acted, I said to myself, There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of Massachusetts,—what has he been about the last fortnight? Has he had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral earthquake?... He could at least have resigned himself into fame.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“President Lowell of Harvard appealed to students ‘to prepare themselves for such services as the Governor may call upon them to render.’ Dean Greenough organized an ‘emergency committee,’ and Coach Fisher was reported by the press as having declared, ‘To hell with football if men are needed.’”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)