To set the scene for the accounts of substantive policy making that follow, this chapter examines in some detail the composition and organization of Congress in the Progressive Era. It describes the characteristics of the membership, the composition of congressional business, the nature of the legislative process, and the influence of party organizations on parliamentary decision making, which led in both chambers to a concentration of authority virtually without historical parallel. It looks also at the relationship between Congress and the wider political environment, considering in particular the implications of the electoral changes that followed the so-called “critical realignment” of the 1890s and the ambitious state-building project initiated by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Men and Measures

At noon on 4 December 1905 members of the Fifty-ninth Congress were called to order by the Clerk of the House. Once the Chaplain had offered up a suitable prayer for the eighty million persons who had been entrusted to their care, the Clerk proceeded to call the roll. The Representatives who answered to their names conformed very much to a type. They were typically large, well-built men, imposing in manner and physical presence. They sported cutaway jackets, somewhat shiny and not too well pressed, lest they acquire a reputation as “dudes” among the folks back home, and wore their hair somewhat longer than current fashion prescribed.