Here’s to Business Ben
Today is Governor Ben Laney’s birthday. Laney, who is often referred to as “Business Ben,” was a far more important governor than many people realize. He was a modernizing governor, a champion of a rational balanced budget, and he made economic development a major thrust of his administration. Laney missed greatness because he was, as historian Ben Johnson has written, “resolute in preserving segregation.”
Benjamin Travis Laney was born Nov. 25, 1896, one of 11 children born to Ben and Martha Saxon Laney in rural Ouachita County near Camden. He was a smart lad, and did well in school. He entered Hendrix College in Conway in 1915, though he stayed only one year. He taught in the local schools until joining the U.S. Navy during World War I. Laney enrolled at Arkansas State Normal School, in Conway, after the war, graduating in 1924. He married Lucile Kirtley in January of 1926 in Conway, but soon he returned to Ouachita County. Oil had been discovered on his land, which allowed Laney to invest in banking, farming, cotton gins and even retail stores.
Laney ventured into politics in 1935 when he was elected mayor of Camden. After leaving the mayor’s office, Laney held a seat on the powerful Arkansas Penitentiary Board until his election as governor. Laney also boosted his political standing in 1942 when he helped fellow Camden resident John L. McClellan defeat three well-regarded and popular leaders—Jack Holt, Clyde Ellis and David D. Terry—for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Laney was little-known when he filed for governor in 1944, but he had the crucial support of conservative business leaders, and he emerged victorious. The new governor’s primary initiative during his first legislative session was a bill that became the Revenue Stabilization Act. This act codified the state constitution’s prohibition of deficit spending, but more importantly, it provided a means to stay within budget. As Ben Johnson has written, “. . . the Revenue Stabilization Law placed most tax revenue in a general fund and established a mechanism for the Legislature to incorporate unanticipated surpluses and downturns into budget priorities.”
Perhaps more importantly, during his second term, Governor Laney secured passage of a bill to create the Arkansas Legislative Council. In his book Arkansas in Modern America, Ben Johnson summarized the slip-shod nature of the Arkansas General Assembly: “In effect, legislative sessions had long been biennial conventions in which delegates tended to business primarily at Little Rock’s downtown Marion Hotel. Committees met infrequently, usually kept no minutes, and gave ‘do passes’ to unread bills.”
Modeled on a Kansas law, Laney’s Legislative Council and the Bureau of Legislative Research provided for systematic review of budgets before legislative sessions began. Before long, a young bureau director named Marcus Holbrook was even drafting proposed bills—a process previously handled by lawyers for private interest groups. Interestingly, Holbrook shocked lobbyists by refusing to release contents of bills before they were introduced.
Laney did not run for a third term in 1948. He should have retired to one of his farms, but instead, as one historian has written, he “turned from the good government issues to the construction of a regional defense of segregation.” President Harry Truman had proposed civilrights legislation to eliminate the poll tax, eradicate lynching, create a federal fair-employment program, and halt segregation on interstate transportation—and this had caused a backlash in the South.
In early 1948, Laney took on the national chairmanship of the States’ Rights Democratic Committee with the task of denying the Democratic nomination to President Truman. These conservative anti-Truman activists became known as the Dixiecrats, and for a time Laney was considered a possible Dixiecrat nominee against Truman. Ultimately, the Dixiecrats nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, and Laney worked hard to deliver the Arkansas delegates to Thurmond.
In the end, delegates from Arkansas voted for Truman, which was due to the hard work of the new Democratic nominee for governor, young war hero and reformer Sid McMath of Hot Springs. McMath’s actions earned him the antipathy of the outgoing governor, and in 1950, Laney unsuccessfully challenged Governor McMath for a second term.
As historian Tom Forgey has noted, though Laney remained active in states’ rights efforts, he did not support Governor Orval Faubus’ segregationist efforts during the 1957 Little Rock Integration Crisis. Laney rightly believed that, as Forgey wrote: “Faubus was less a defender of Southern traditions on race and states’ rights than a demagogue interested in immediate political gain.”
Laney lived in his final years in Magnolia, dying in January of 1977. He is buried in Camden Memorial Cemetery. His papers are at the University of Central Arkansas Archives in Conway.