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George W. Norris
American politician (1861–1944) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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George William Norris (July 11, 1861 – September 2, 1944) was an American politician from Nebraska. He served five terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican, from 1903 until 1913, and five terms in the United States Senate, from 1913 until 1943. He served four terms as a Republican and his final term as an Independent. Norris was defeated for re-election in 1942.
Norris was a leader of progressive and liberal causes in Congress. He is best known as the man behind the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933. Still in operation today, the Tennessee Valley Authority brought electricity to poor rural areas and constructed dams for flood control in the American Southeast. Norris was also the father of Nebraska's unicameral legislature (which remains the only one-house legislature in the United States) and the author of the Twentieth Amendment. He was known for his liberal and populist ideals, his defiance of party lines[1], his non-interventionist foreign policy, his support for labor unions, and his intense crusades against what he characterized as "wrong and evil".[2]
President Franklin D. Roosevelt called him "the very perfect, gentle knight of American progressive ideals", and this has been the theme of all his biographers.[3] He is one of eight senators profiled in President John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. A 1957 advisory panel of 160 scholars recommended Norris as the top choice for the five best Senators in U.S. history.[4]
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Early life
Norris was born in 1861 in York Township, Sandusky County, Ohio. He was the eleventh child of poor, uneducated farmers of Scots-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent. He graduated from Baldwin University and earned his LL.B. degree in 1883 at the Northern Indiana Law School.
He moved west to practice law, settling in Beaver City, Nebraska. In 1889 he married Pluma Lashley; the couple had three daughters (Gertrude, Hazel, and Marian) before her 1901 death. The widower Norris married Ellie Leonard in 1903; they had no children.
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Political career
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House insurgent
In 1900 Norris relocated to the larger town of McCook, where he became active as a Republican in local politics. In 1902, running as a Republican, he was elected to the House of Representatives for Nebraska's 5th congressional district. In that election, he was supported by the railroads; however, in 1906 he broke with them, supporting Theodore Roosevelt's plans to regulate rates for the benefit of shippers, such as the merchants who lived in his district.
Rising to prominence as an insurgent in the House of Representatives, Norris led the 1910 revolt against House Speaker Joseph G. Cannon. At the time, the Speaker's position held enormous unchecked power. Norris convened with House Democrats to introduce a resolution reducing the Speaker’s powers. The successful resolution ended the Speaker’s control over legislation by reducing his influence on the House Rules Committee, which is responsible for passing most legislation to the floor for a vote. This reform ultimately had mixed results for Progressives. A new, larger Rules Committee replaced the Speaker as the gatekeeper of House legislation, so the Speaker's power was redistributed, not eliminated[5].
In January 1911, Norris helped create the National Progressive Republican League and served as its vice president. He originally supported Robert M. La Follette, Sr. for the 1912 presidential nomination but then switched to Roosevelt. However, he refused to leave the Republican convention and join Roosevelt's Progressive Party. He instead ran for the Senate as a Republican.
Senator
Norris is known for leading the conversion of Nebraska's bicameral legislature to the unicameral system. He believed the two-house system was unnecessarily complex, a drain on resources, and vulnerable to corruption and outside interference [6]. Norris's initiative was passed by Nebraska voters in 1934, and the first session of Nebraska's unicameral legislature convened in January 1937. To this day, Nebraska remains the only state with a one-house legislature.
Notably, Senator Norris was the primary author and sponsor of the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, also known as the "Lame Duck" Amendment. The amendment shortened the “lame duck” period between elections and the start of new terms, enhancing government efficiency and creating accountability for elected officials who had been voted out of office.
Norris supported some of President Woodrow Wilson's domestic programs but became a firm isolationist, fearing that bankers were manipulating the country into war. In the face of enormous pressure from the media and the administration, Norris was one of only six senators to vote against the declaration of war on Germany in 1917.
Looking at the war in Europe, he said, "Many instances of cruelty and inhumanity can be found on both sides." Norris believed the government wanted to enter this war only because the wealthy had already aided the British financially in the war. He told Congress the only people who would benefit from the war were "munition manufacturers, stockbrokers, and bond dealers", adding that
"war brings no prosperity to the great mass of common and patriotic citizens. ... War brings prosperity to the stock gambler on Wall Street – to those who are already in possession of more wealth than can be realized or enjoyed."[7]
Norris joined the Irreconcilables, who opposed and defeated U.S. participation in the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations in 1919.
After several terms, Norris's seniority gained him the chairmanships of the Agriculture and Forestry and the Judiciary committees. As chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Norris blocked auto tycoon Henry Ford's proposal to buy the unfinished Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals, AL and turn the property and surrounding areas into a modern metropolis[8][9]. Norris was insistent that the property not be privatized, and instead be developed to provide public electricity and flood control[10]. He twice succeeded in getting Congress to pass legislation for a federal electric power system based at Muscle Shoals, but it was vetoed by presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.[11] Norris said of Hoover:
- "Using his power of veto, he destroyed the Muscle Shoals bill – a measure designated to utilize the great government property at Muscle Shoals for the cheapening of fertilizer for American agriculture and utilization of the surplus power for the benefit of people without transmission distance of the development. The power people want no yardstick which would expose their extortionate rates so Hoover killed the bill after it had been passed by both houses of congress."[12]
In 1933 the project for the Muscle Shoals Bill became part of the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).[13]
Although a nominal Republican (which was essential to his seniority), Norris routinely attacked and voted against the Republican administrations of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Norris supported Democrats Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt for president in 1928 and 1932, respectively. As a Progressive Republican, "Regular Republicans" deemed him one of the "Sons of the Wild Jackass".[14]
Norris was a resolute teetotaler, battling against alcohol even when the crusade lost favor during the Great Depression. Prohibition was ended in 1933. He told voters prohibition means "this greatest evil of all mankind is driven from the homes of the American people," even if it means "we are giving up some of our personal rights and personal privileges."[15]
In 1932, along with Representative Fiorello H. La Guardia (NY-20), Norris secured passage of the Norris–La Guardia Act. It prohibited the practice of employers' requiring prospective employees to commit to not joining a labor union as a condition of employment (the so-called yellow-dog contract) and greatly limited the use of court injunctions against strikes.
In 1935, Norris voted along primarily with Democrats to adjourn the United States Senate as the chamber was deadlocked over the Costigan-Wagner Bill;[16] the anti-lynching bill was ultimately defeated. In spite of inaction on the anti-lynching bill, Norris led efforts to outlaw poll taxes.[17]
Tennessee Valley Authority and later career
The major achievement of Senator Norris's career was the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933, a plan he conceived and fought incessantly over several years to bring to fruition. The Act established the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electricity to widespread areas of the rural South, stimulated the regional economy, and mitigated destructive flooding. Today, TVA provides electricity for over 10 million Americans [18]. In appreciation for his impact, the Norris Dam and Norris, TN, a new planned city, were named after Norris.[19][20] Norris was also the prime Senate supporter of the Rural Electrification Act, which brought electrical service to underserved and unserved rural areas across the United States.
Norris believed in the wisdom of the common people and in the progress of civilization.[21] "To get good government and to retain it, it is necessary that a liberty-loving, educated, intelligent people should be ever watchful, to carefully guard and protect their rights and liberties," Norris said in a 1934 speech, "The Model Legislature". The people were capable of being the government, he said, affirming his populist/progressive credentials.[22] To alert the people, he called for transparency in government. "Publicity," he proclaimed, "is the greatest cure for evils which may exist in government". [23]
In 1936, Senator Norris left the Republican Party and was reelected to the Senate as an Independent. Norris won with 43.8% of the vote against Republican former congressman Robert G. Simmons (who came in second) and Democratic former congressman Terry Carpenter (who came in a distant third). A staunch supporter of the New Deal among other progressive initiatives, the senator believed the Republican Party no longer represented the common American. Norris received a modicum of Democratic support when he departed the Republican Party, but remained an Independent and spent the rest of his career as such.
Norris opposed Roosevelt's Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 to pack the Supreme Court, and railed against corrupt patronage. In late 1937, when Norris saw the famous photograph "Bloody Saturday" (showing a burned Chinese baby crying in a bombed-out train station after the Japanese invasion), he shifted his stance on isolationism and non-interventionism. Siding against Japanese violence in China and Korea, he called the Japanese "disgraceful, ignoble, barbarous, and cruel, even beyond the power of language to describe".[24] He served as vice-president of the League of Friends of Korea, which advocated for Korea's independence.[25]
Unable to secure enough Democratic support in Nebraska in 1942, and having largely ostracized himself from the Republican Party, Norris was defeated by Republican Kenneth S. Wherry. He departed from office saying, "I have done my best to repudiate wrong and evil in government affairs."[2]
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Legacy and memorials
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Norris is one of eight senators profiled in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, included for opposing Speaker Cannon's autocratic power in the House, for speaking out against arming U.S. merchant ships during the United States' neutral period in World War I, and for supporting the presidential campaign of Democrat Al Smith.
The principal north–south street through downtown McCook, Nebraska, is named George Norris Avenue. Norris's house in McCook is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and is operated as a museum by the Nebraska State Historical Society.
The west legislative chamber of the Nebraska State Capitol, home of the unicameral legislature borne of Norris's own efforts, was named after Norris in February 1984[26].
George W. Norris Middle School and Norris Elementary School, both in Omaha, Nebraska, as well as Norris School District 160 near Firth, Nebraska, memorialize the late Senator. When several public power districts in southeastern Nebraska merged into one in 1941, the new utility was named the Norris Public Power District in Senator Norris's honor. Norris Electric, an energy co-op with headquarters in Newton, Illinois, is named after Norris and his progressive efforts to electrify the nation.[27]
On July 11th, 1961, a four-cent stamp was issued in his honor. It depicts, in shades of green, a TVA dam in the upper left, with his portrait in later life, to the right. "Gentle knight of progressive ideals" a quote on his character from FDR, is inscribed at the bottom left, while George W. Norris appears below his portrait.
In 1961, Norris was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
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