Charles Webster Bell (June 11, 1857 â April 19, 1927) was an American politician who served one term as a U.S. Representative from California from 1913 to 1915.
Born in Albany, New York, Bell attended public schools. He moved to California in 1877 and settled in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, where he engaged in fruit growing and the real estate business. Bell was member of the Pasadena Republican Club. Moreover, he also served as a county clerk of Los Angeles County from 1899 to 1903.
He was also a member of the state Senate from 1907 to 1913. It was said that he was an independent man, not subject to partisanship, which led to the formation of the Lincoln Roosevelt republican league, and a big defeat for the partisans. In 1911 he was the Majority Leader in the California State Senate. Bell authored SCA 8 in 1911, which gave women the right to vote in California, and authored a bill that abolished racetrack gambling and caused the banishment of horse racing. Bell was against anti-Japanese sentiment, but also for local control of the law.
Bell was elected as a Progressive Republican to the Sixty-third Congress (March 4, 1913 â March 3, 1915). The three way contest showed him getting 22,951 votes, while opponent Thomas H. Kirk (Democrat) received 11,703, and Ralph L. Criswell (Socialist) received 9,192. He pledged to work for the protective tariff for citrus fruits and sugar beets. However, he lost his re-election campaign to Charles Hiram Randall of the Prohibition Party. Bell ran unsuccessfully a second time against Randall as an independent in 1916.
After the end of his political services, Bell resumed his former business pursuits in Pasadena, California and became secretary of the Pasadena Mercantile Finance Corporation.
Bell was a married man with a son born in 1894.
On April 19, 1927, Bell died in Pasadena, California. Bell is interred in Mountain View Cemetery.