Daniel Spencer McCorkle was born on March 29, 1880, in Ridge Prairie, Missouri, the son of Archibald and Hepsabeth McCorkle. He received his early education at area schools while working on his father's farm. In 1903 McCorkle entered Missouri Valley College (Presbyterian), located in Marshall, Missouri. He worked as a farm hand in the Midwest during the summers between 1903 and his graduation in 1909. After graduation, he joined the Socialist Party and organized a chapter of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society on the Missouri Valley campus. In 1910 he enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, while studying for a master's degree in sociology at Columbia University. In the summer of 1911 he wrote his master's thesis, "An Agricultural Community, or the Social Phenomena of a Rural District," based upon his experiences as a miner in Bearcreek, Montana. In 1913 after graduation from the seminary, he met Panayiota Alexandrakis, a Greek immigrant and graduate of Springfield International College. They married a year later and moved to Sunrise, WY, where McCorkle served as a Presbyterian minister. Improving the life of the miners and their families in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company-controlled town became one of McCorkle's major goals. As a part of his effort, he testified in 1915 before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. McCorkle was elected as moderator of the Cheyenne Presbytery in 1916. However, early the following year his wife's failing health necessitated a move to Chance, Montana, where McCorkle served as a circuit minister while teaching at Bearcreek High School. In 1930 the McCorkles and their two sons moved to Conrad, Montana, where he became Presbyterian minister for the town and surrounding farm region. In succeeding years, Conrad was the center for the many activities McCorkle pursued. In 1941, McCorkle was appointed by Governor Sam C. Ford to the Board of Public Welfare. He used this position to publicize the plight of the mentally ill and the retarded. Encouraged by public support, he established the Montana Welfare Association in 1947, to extend the work of the State Board of Public Welfare. Throughout his life, McCorkle maintained his membership in the Socialist Party, an often unpopular stance, which caused some difficulty in his ministerial career. He continued his public work until his death in July 1956.