NORRIS, GEORGE WILLIAM 1861-1944

Legislator

The Fighting Liberal

During the thirty years that George Norris served in the U.S. Senate, his name became closely associated with a wide range of issues and causes relating to the public development of natural resources, the rights of labor, farm relief, and, to a lesser extent, foreign policy. Lesser known or remembered, however, is the most significant of his many achievements, a contribution he made to this country's history three years before he entered the Senate. In 1910 Norris brought about the most significant procedural changes the House of Representatives, of which he was then a member, had ever experienced; he thus opened the way for the passage of a legislative program with which the Progressive Era became so uniquely identified. A skilled parliamentarian and legislator who valued his independence above almost everything else, Norris rightfully earned his reputation as a champion of the progressive cause and as a determined foe of those whom he suspected of exploiting the nation's natural resources for their private advantage. To his constituents and the public at large, he projected an image of fearlessness and tenacity that belied the fact that he favored compromise and the give-and-take of politics as the preferred means by which to achieve his ends. Norris's opinions and views on any subject of consequence, as opposed to his party affiliation, usually dictated whatever position he took with respect to an issue. The independence he thrived on never allowed him to become indebted to any particular group or interest; his career did not begin, however, so independently.

Congressman Norris

After receiving his law degree in 1883 and gaining admission to the Indiana State Bar, Norris resumed his teaching career, which he pursued for another two years before moving to Nebraska. The upper Midwest was experiencing the heyday of a period of prosperity that was encouraging further development of Nebraska's resources and producing economic conditions that the young attorney, having just started his practice, did not hesitate to exploit. Soon thereafter he was retained as local counsel for the Burlington and Missouri Railroad and divided his attention between service to his principal client and his investments in the milling and mortgage loan businesses he founded. Norris's good fortune, however, suffered a severe blow in the 1890s when both drought and depression struck the state and reduced its economy to a shambles. The situation in which he found himself encouraged him to seek an appointment to a recently vacated and unexpired term as county prosecutor, a position for which he later, in 1892, successfully campaigned. In 1895 he ran as a Republican, an affiliation he maintained throughout his career, in a largely populist region, for a position in the state's Fourteenth Judicial District, a post he won by a narrow margin. Norris remained on the bench until 1902, when he ran as his party's candidate for Congress, again defeating the incumbent by no more than a few votes.

First Term

His first term in Congress was far from being notable. Indebted both to his party and his state's railroad interests, he supported a relatively modest and conservative legislative program and tried to avoid becoming embroiled in the increasingly volatile relations between Nebraska's farming and industrial factions. In 1904 Norris ran for reelection in a campaign the outcome of which was far from certain. Once again, he found himself in desperate need of his party's assistance and welcomed the support of the House Speaker Joseph Cannon, who toured the district on his behalf. Successful in his bid, Norris returned to Washington in 1905 as a man who had been tempered by his experience and who had become far more sensitive to the problems of his constituents, whose efforts to counteract the powerful railroad lobby in the state legislature and to make the state's government more responsive to their needs had attracted his attention and sympathy.

The Coming Storm

During the next two years Norris labored quietly to distance himself from the special interests that had been instrumental in providing him with the support, financial and otherwise, he had needed to secure his place in Congress. Increasingly, he was observed voting with the more progressive elements of his party and in favor of the Roosevelt administration's policies respecting governmental regulation and its struggle against monopolies. This transition did not go unnoticed—or unpunished. In 1908, after Norris announced his intention to run for another term in Congress, he discovered that whatever his expectations may have been, the backing he had anticipated from his party was not forthcoming. Norris won the election with a margin of only twenty-two votes and emerged from the ordeal a somewhat changed man.

Control of the House

This was a period in the history of the House of Representatives when control of its affairs rested almost entirely in the hands of its speaker, Joseph Cannon, whose defense of the status quo and opposition to progressive reform presented a nearly insurmountable barrier to any serious reform. By means of his position as speaker, Cannon controlled the process through which the individual representatives received their committee appointments and was thus able to determine which of any number of proposals pending the House's consideration would ultimately receive its attention. The first attempt to challenge his authority in 1907 had been defeated, and few who had participated in this early rebellion were prepared to resume the struggle. The growing rift between the supporters of President William Howard Taft and those of former president Theodore Roosevelt, however, precipitated another crisis with serious implications for Cannon's continuing domination of the House's membership. The debate among Senate Republicans over the Taft administration's tariff proposals served only to exacerbate the disagreement separating the factions in that party. Like many of his colleagues in the House who represented the midwestern states, Norris felt more inclined to side with the Roosevelt wing against those in his party who remained steadfast in their loyalty to President Taft.

Revolt

On 17 March 1910 Norris, having warned only a few colleagues about his intentions, requested permission to raise what he described as a matter of constitutional privilege. Cannon's caution momentarily failed him, and he granted Norris the opportunity the latter sought to introduce what was immediately recognized for what it was, a proposal of enormous consequences for the House. Norris's proposal called for an expansion of the membership of the House's most powerful committee, the Rules Committee; it also provided for the election of the committee by the House and excluded the speaker from membership. The ensuing debate lasted days and was bitterly fought. The Insurgents, as they became known, were galvanized by Norris's bold move and offer of leadership and were soon reinforced by the House's Democratic minority, who were quick to appreciate the advantage they would gain by splitting the Republican ranks. By a vote of 191 to 156, Norris's proposal was adopted by the membership, opening the door to a flood of hitherto blocked social and economic legislation.

Senator Norris

Norris's victory brought him to the forefront of the progressive movement and gave him considerably more influence in the development of its program than he might otherwise have had. The election of 1912 provided him another opportunity he had been considering since even before the beginning of his crusade against "Cannonism," running for one of Nebraska's seats in the Senate. Despite the Republican losses that year, Norris was able to succeed in fulfilling his ambition and embark upon a career of service that would garner him a stature accorded few others of his contemporaries. Although a Republican, Norris felt no hesitation in supporting much of the reform legislation supported by President Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic Party. He favored the administration's anti-trust policy and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, and while he opposed the appointments of those whom he believed unqualified for the positions for which they were chosen, or whose interests conflicted with the duties they were to assume, he was quick to recognize talent when he saw it. His perceptiveness explained both his later opposition, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to the nominations of Charles Evans Hughes and John J. Parker to the Supreme Court, and his outspoken support of President Wilson's nomination of Louis D. Brandeis as an associate justice.

Foreign Relations and World War I

Norris, however, stopped short of offering the administration an unqualified endorsement, his reservations being nowhere more evident than in the area of foreign policy. The temporary occupation of the Mexican port city of Veracruz by American forces in 1914 gave the senator reason to criticize strongly President Wilson. Norris's dissatisfaction with U.S. policy toward Mexico stemmed in part from the respect he had for the aims of the Mexican Revolution and in part from his belief that U.S. commercial interests were behind the administration's interventionist policy, a suspicion he carried into his views of the country's relations with the warring nations of Europe. In 1917 he joined with several other senators to oppose a resolution that permitted U.S. merchant ships to arm themselves against the threat of submarine and surface raider attacks. Norris's subsequent opposition to the nation's declaration of war against the Central Powers did not prevent him from later supporting Wilson's conduct of the war. This display of wartime unity, however, did not survive long beyond the conclusion of hostilities. Norris was both angered and repulsed by the secret diplomacy in which Secretary of State Robert Lansing and the representatives of the Japanese Empire had engaged and which resulted in the transfer of Chinese territory to Japanese control. Disappointed, as well, in the American response to the Allied nations' claims of colonial rights, he joined those in the Senate who opposed and eventually defeated the president's efforts to enroll the United States in the League of Nations.

"The Knight of American Progressive Ideals." This was the description President Franklin D. Roosevelt used when he referred to Norris following the news of Norris's death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1944. The 1920s proved to be an excruciatingly long and dismal period for Norris, who, after the death of Sen. Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin in 1925, became one of the few remaining progressives among the Republicans serving in the Senate. A leading critic within his own party of the Republican administrations that succeeded each other throughout the decade, he spoke out frequently in favor of the rights of the laboring man and the need for a special program for farm relief. Not until after the election of Franklin Roosevelt (whose candidacy he endorsed) in 1932 did Norris recover and expand his influence in the Senate. In short order he introduced and ushered through to passage important legislation that included the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932, the Norris-Rayburn Rural Electrification Act of 1936, and the Norris-Doxey Farm Forestry Act of 1937. He became the principal author and proponent of the act that created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and almost single-handedly guided another resolution through Congress that resulted in 1933 in the adoption of the Twentieth "Lame Duck" Amendment to the Constitution. As his biographer would later note, the senator's years in the "wilderness" had come to a distinguished and fitting end.

Sources:

Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Making of a Progressive 1861-1912 (Syracuse, NX: Syracuse University Press, 1963);

Lowitt, George W. Norris; The Persistence of a Progressive 1913-1933 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971).

George William Norris

George William Norris (1861-1944), U.S. congressman and senator, authored the 20th Amendment to the Constitution and sponsored numerous pieces of Progressive legislation.

George W. Norris was born on July 11, 1861, in Sandusky County, Ohio. He attended Northern Indiana Normal School (now Valparaiso University), where he received his bachelor of arts and law degrees. Returning to the family farm in 1883, he clerked in a local law office and taught school. He settled in Nebraska and in 1899 opened a law office in McCook, which remained his home until his death.

In 1892 Norris was elected Furnas County prosecutor and 3 years later, district judge. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1902, where he aligned himself with the Progressive wing of the Republican party. His most noteworthy achievement was his leadership of the 1910 rules fight which clipped the autocratic powers of the reactionary Speaker, Joseph G. Cannon.

In 1913 Norris was elected to the Senate. He voted against most of the Woodrow Wilson administration's domestic legislative program on the grounds that it was not sufficiently Progressive, and he bitterly opposed Wilson's foreign policy, even voting against the declaration of war against Germany. He was against American membership in the League of Nations and later opposed United States adherence to the World Court.

In the 1920s Norris was a leading supporter of farm relief legislation. He successfully blocked the sale to private interests of the hydroelectric facilities at Muscle Shoals, Ala., and in 1928 and 1931 he pushed through Congress legislation providing for government operation of the facilities. Although presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover vetoed the bills, Norris saw his dream realized with the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority under the New Deal.

Norris was the cosponsor of the Norris-LaGuardia Act (1932), which outlawed labor contracts that made union membership a condition of employment and drastically limited the use of injunctions in labor disputes; and the Norris-Rayburn Act (1936), which made the Rural Electrification Administration permanent. He was the father of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution (which eliminated the "lame-duck" Congress and changed the date for the president's inauguration) and was instrumental in Nebraska's adoption (1934) of a unique non-partisan, unicameral legislature.

Unlike most Progressives, Norris was a loyal supporter of the New Deal. Alarmed by the Nazi threat, he favored limited American intervention in Europe and backed Franklin Roosevelt's third-term bid in 1940. In 1936 he had formally renounced the Republican label and won reelection, with Roosevelt's endorsement, as an independent. In 1942 Norris again ran as an independent but was defeated. He died in McCook on Sept. 2, 1944.

Further Reading

Norris's autobiography is Fighting Liberal (1945). Richard Lowitt's George W. Norris: The Making of a Progressive, 1861-1912 (1963) and George W. Norris: The Persistence of a Progressive, 1913-1933 (1971) are two volumes of a projected three-volume biography. Norman L. Zucker, George W. Norris: Gentle Knight of American Democracy (1966), analyzes Norris's political thought.

Additional Sources

Lief, Alfred, Democracy's Norris: the biography of a lonely crusade, New York: Octagon Books, 1977, 1939.

Lowitt, Richard, George W. Norris: the triumph of a progressive, 1933-1944, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.

Norris, George W. (George William), Fighting liberal: the autobiography of George W. Norris, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. □

George William Norris 1861–1944, American legislator, b. Sandusky co., Ohio. After admission to the bar in 1883, he moved (1885) to Furnas co., Nebr., where he practiced law and was prosecuting attorney and then (1895–1902) judge of the district court. From 1903 to 1913 he served in the U.S. House of Representatives. A liberal Republican, Norris secured (1910), through an alliance of insurgent Republicans with Democrats, the passage of a resolution that reformed the House rules and wrested absolute control from the speaker of the House, Joseph G. Cannon . Elected (1912) to the U.S. Senate, he opposed President Wilson's foreign policy, voted against U.S. participation in World War I, and denounced the Treaty of Versailles. He was at constant odds with the Coolidge administration, backed (1928) Democrat Alfred E. Smith for President, and favored President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policies. Norris was read out of the Republican party and became (1936) an independent. He was author (1932) of the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished the "lame duck" session of Congress and changed the date of the presidential inauguration. He sponsored (1932) the Norris–La Guardia Act, which forbade the use of injunctions in labor disputes to prevent strikes, boycotts, or picketing. An advocate of government water power development, he fathered the bills that created (1933) the Tennessee Valley Authority. He also supported farm relief measures. After serving 30 years in the Senate, he was defeated for reelection in 1942. His Fighting Liberal (1945, repr. 1961) is autobiographical.

Bibliography: See R. Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Triumph of a Progressive, 1933–1944 (1978); biography by N. L. Zucker (1966).

NORRIS, GEORGE WILLIAM

George William Norris was born July 11, 1861, in Sandusky County, Ohio. He graduated from Indiana Normal College in 1881 and pursued a career in law and politics.

After admission to the Ohio and Indiana bars in 1883, Norris established a law practice in Nebraska, where he also served as prosecuting attorney. He presided as a Nebraska district court judge from 1895 to 1902.

In 1903, Norris was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1910, he was instrumental in modifying the House rules so as to diminish the excessive powers of House Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon.

In 1913, Norris was elected to the Senate, where he would serve for the next 30 years. He opposed the entry of the United States into world war i but generally supported the policies of President franklin delano roosevelt. During Roosevelt's administrations, Norris was involved in several important activities. In 1932, he drafted the twentieth amendment to the Constitution, which designated January 20 as the date of a presidential inauguration instead of the traditional March 4, thus eliminating the need for a "lame duck" congressional session. During that same year, he was instrumental in the passage of the norris-laguardia act (29 U.S.C.A. § 101 et seq.), which restricted the use of injunctions in labor disagreements. He also helped to draft measures for the establishment of the tennessee valley authority in 1933 and advocated programs for farm relief.

Norris died September 2, 1944, in McCook, Nebraska.

further readings

Norris, George William. 1992. Fighting Liberal: The Autobiography of George W. Norris. Reprint. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.