In his private life, he was president of a company operating compresses in Victoria, Shiner, Cuero, and Taft, Texas.

He served as member of the Texas Senate from 1947 to 1954, participating as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1948 and 1952.

Bell was elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-fourth Congress (January 3, 1955 – January 3, 1957), when he was one of the majority of the Texan delegation to decline to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto opposing the desegregation of public schools ordered by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.

After his political service ended, he continued as a lawyer, rancher, and farmer in Cuero, Texas, until his death January 24, 1963.

This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress