Dudley Mays Hughes

Dudley Mays Hughes was an American farmer, railroad executive and politician from Georgia who represented the state's third and later twelfth congressional districts in the United States House of Representatives from 1909 to 1917. Before entering Congress he served in the Georgia Senate and was president of the Georgia State Agricultural Society from 1904 to 1906, and he remained a trustee of the University of Georgia from 1905 until his death. In the House, Hughes chaired the Committee on Education and co-authored, alongside fellow Georgian Senator Hoke Smith, the Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act of 1917, which provided the first federal funding for vocational education in agriculture, trades and homemaking and established the Federal Board for Vocational Education to administer it.