Career
Hooper served two terms from 1893 to 1897 in the Tennessee House of Representatives. In 1898, he was a captain of the 6th U.S. Volunteer Infantry based in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. From 1906 to 1910, he was assistant U.S. attorney for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
In 1910, the Republican Party nominated Hooper for governor over intraparty rival Alfred A. Taylor. His initial Democratic opponent, incumbent Governor Malcolm R. Patterson, despite winning the nomination, withdrew from the race because of intraparty diffences. The party then turned to United States Senator and three-term former Governor Robert Love Taylor. Taylor was the younger brother of Republican Alfred Taylor, who in 1920 was elected governor of Tennessee.
The Prohibition issue split the Democrats and fueled a faction calling itself "Independents for Hooper." This division in the majority party led to Hooper's relatively narrow victory over Robert Taylor, 133,074 to 121,694. During the legislative session in 1911, Hooper's administration employed armed guards. Hooper obtained passage of laws limiting child labor and requiring that the wages of women be paid directly to them, rather than to any other persons. There was also a state pure food and drug law. Counties were authorized to issue bonds (1) to establish hospitals for treating contagious diseases and (2) to purchase school property. Hooper was elected as a Republican in a then heavily Democratic state.
Hooper was reelected in 1912, when he defeated another former governor, Benton McMillin. During Hooper's second term, the legislature increased state revenues for education and passed a compulsory education law that impacted children between the ages of eight and fourteen. It required county school boards to provide for the transportation of pupils. Under Hooper's adminisration, an examination procedure was authorized for the state banking system. Parole was also implemented, and the method of execution was changed from hanging to electrocution. Pensions were authorized for veterans and widows of the American Civil War. The so-called "Jug Bill" banned the intrastate shipment of liquor or the delivery of more than one gallon of alcohol from outside the state. A "Nuisance Bill" allowed as few as ten citizens to petition for the removal of saloons and gambling houses from a locality.
In 1914, Hooper was defeated in his bid for a third term in offie by Democrat Thomas Clarke Rye, a Prohibition advocate from Benton County in western Tennessee.
Read more about this topic: Ben W. Hooper
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