page_title: Ben W. Hooper
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Ben W. Hooper / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: U.S. Railroad Labor Board member and former Tennessee governor Ben W. Hooper (1870–1957) in his office in Chicago. DN-0074689, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.
context_page_description: Ben Walter Hooper, was an American politician who served two terms as Governor of Tennessee from 1911 to 1915. Elected as a Fusionist candidate, he was one of just three Republicans to hold the office from the end of Reconstruction to the last quarter of the 20th century. His success was due to divisions in the state Democratic Party over prohibition; he received support from some of the party. During his two terms, Hooper signed several prohibition laws, enacted a measure requiring mandatory school attendance, and signed a law requiring direct pay for women workers.
  Hooper served as a member of the U.S. Railroad Labor Board during the administration of President Warren G. Harding in the early 1920s. As chairman of the RLB, he was a central figure in the 1922 Railroad Shopmen's Strike. He later worked as chief land purchasing agent for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
context_section_description: After his gubernatorial tenure ended, Hooper returned to his law practice in Newport, but remained active in  Republican politics. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1916, but was defeated by Democratic politician Kenneth D. McKellar.
  In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Hooper to the U.S. Railroad Labor Board (RLB). As chairman of the RLB, Hooper was a central figure in the Railroad Shopmen's Strike which erupted in the summer of 1922 over wage cuts for maintenance workers approved by the RLB.
  In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Hooper was the chief land purchasing agent for what would become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which was being developed on the Tennessee and North Carolina border.
  In 1934, at the age of sixty-four, Hooper once again ran for one of Tennessee's U.S. Senate seats.  He won the Republican nomination, but was defeated in the general lection by his 1916 opponent, Senator Kenneth McKellar.
  Hooper died on April 18, 1957. He is interred at Union Cemetery in Newport, Tennessee.
caption: Hooper at his Railroad Labor Board office in 1922
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