Robert White (West Virginia state senator)

In 1930, White was elected to serve in the West Virginia Senate representing the state's Fifteenth Senatorial District.[6][11][12] He served in the 40th and 41st Sessions of the West Virginia Legislature and completed his term in 1934.[11][12][13] During the 1932 legislative year, the West Virginia Senate was led by the Republican Party majority.[14] The following legislative year in 1933, White served as the floor leader for the West Virginia Senate's Democratic Party members.[6] The West Virginia Senate's majority had shifted to the Democrats in 1933, and in January 1933, White was selected by A. G. Mathews, President of the West Virginia Senate, as chairman of the senate's Judiciary Committee.[15][16] In this position, White introduced twelve bills in 1933 to correct errors and omissions in existing statutes.[17] Also in the 1933 legislative year, White served as a member on the Finance; Roads and Navigation; Counties, Municipal Corporations; Rules; Medicine and Sanitation; Education; Privileges and Elections; and Redistricting committees.[16] In the same year White was also appointed as a member on two special senate committees.

On January 19, 1933, White sponsored a resolution for the creation of a special committee on economy and efficiency to study state and municipal government spending. The committee was charged with making investigations, developing recommendations, and drafting bills to empower its recommendations. It was further permitted to summon witnesses, examine records, and to investigate all state and local government organizations to recommend further mechanisms to affect efficiency and economy. White was appointed to the committee, which consisted of the speaker of the House of Delegates, the president of the West Virginia Senate, and two members from each house.[18][19]

In February 1933, White was one of four senate Democrats appointed to serve on a special committee to investigate the road commission's awarding of a contract for gasoline, oil, and grease to the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey over the Elk Refining Company of Charleston. The committee's creation and investigation was in response to the Elk Refining Company's protest of the commission's decision, and the company's advertisement in which it claimed that its contract bid was $10,387.50 lower than that of Standard Oil. The committee not only investigated the commission's decision, but also examined the Elk Refining Company's advertisement.[20][21] White questioned the advertisement's merit and commented that the committee was "entitled to know what the motive behind this advertisement was." "If there isn't anything to investigate we shouldn't be here investigating," he concluded.[21]

On February 28, 1933, White was a member of a subcommittee which drafted a bill calling for a special state referendum on the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Under the plan, which was submitted by White, West Virginia would register its official stand on the proposed Twenty-first Amendment to end Prohibition in the United States at the federal level. The referendum was to choose a slate of 20 "wet" and 20 "dry" candidates for delegates to a state convention, which would present its final vote on the national repeal of Prohibition.[22]

White married Mabel Glasscock Fitch, the only child and daughter of E. H. Fitch and his wife Laura Glasscock Fitch, on January 7, 1903 in Washington, D.C..[3][5][23] Fitch was a native of Vanceburg, Kentucky and she attended Marshall College while her family resided in Huntington. She completed her education in Washington, D.C. White and his wife Mabel had five children:[3]

• John Baker White (born February 11, 1904)[24]
• Mabel Glasgow White Cornwell (born February 18, 1906), married James Leighton Cornwell on August 25, 1926 in Hampshire County[3][25][26]
• Elizabeth Steele White (born April 23, 1908)[27]
• Roberta Huston White McFarland (born June 18, 1912), married Dr. William Franklin McFarland on June 13, 1936 in New Cumberland[28][29][30]
• Robert White, Jr.[3]

White's wife Mabel was an active member of the Presbyterian Church.[3] While a passenger on a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad South Branch line train, Mabel took ill and died at the Wappocomo home of Garrett Williams Parsons on July 5, 1915.[31] She was interred at Indian Mound Cemetery in Romney.[32]