¹ The Speaker has executive responsibility for the House side of the Capitol, including the three House Office Buildings, which he exercises through his chairmanship of the House Office Building Commission. The rules currently in effect on the allocation of office space are: Each member is entitled to the space he currently occupies. Vacancies as they occur are allocated to claimants in order of their seniority. Entering freshman members are ordered by lot and given their choice of the remaining office space at a predetermined time the at the beginning of each Congress. Any extra office space over and above members' suites and rooms set aside for the offices of specific committees are allocated at the discretion of the Speaker. See Tacheron, Donald G. and Udall, Morris K., The Job of the Congressman (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), pp. 41–43, 277–279 Google Scholar.

Until the opening of the Rayburn Building, the third House Office Building, in 1965, no clear patterns of preference for office space were discernible. Some members liked to be near the Capitol; others preferred more remote locations, away from the crowds of tourists. Many members had their offices near the rooms of the committees to which they were assigned, which were spotted through both “old” buildings. Some members preferred the more modern facilities of the Longworth Building (opened, 1926). Others agreed with Miller, Clem: “I don't care for it. Low ceilings, panelled walls smacking of a 1925 corporation lawyer. … I am in the Old Office Building [built 1909], a huge square with a hollow center, wide corridors, high ceilings. Old-fashioned railroad car carpeting. High-backed leather chairs. If you take away the electric typewriters, you move right into the world of William Howard Taft.” Member of the House (Baker, John W., ed.), (New York: Scribner's, 1962), p. 27 Google Scholar.

The Rayburn Building has changed some of this: about half of the House, including most of the ssnior men, are in it. Rayburn Building offices are larger and more commodious; the much greater inconvenience in getting from the Rayburn Building to the Capitol is somewhat offset by the installation of a Toonerville trolley in the subway that runs between this building and the Capitol building. The two older office buildings are being remodeled to provide more or less equal space for everyone once again.

² There are a number of kinds of Capitol Hill patronage. Employees of the Capitol fall under the control of the majority party. Major employees at the level of Clerk of the House, Sergeant at Arms, Parliamentarian, Doorkeeper and Postmaster are formally selected by party caucus, in fact are usually appointed by the Speaker, and are elected by vote of the whole House. These are more or less permanent career jobs, and most have minority counterparts built into the organization. When party control of the House shifts, the permanent top bureaucrats of the House exchange jobs with their minority “shådows.” When a vacancy occurs, the Speaker appoints what amounts to a permanent member of the Congressional bureaucracy. Jobs at the middle level such as assistant doorkeepers, assistant parliamentarians, folding room superintendent, reading clerks, recorders of debate, and so on are also regarded as career jobs, and require the initial sponsorship of Congressmen of the majority party. These jobs also come under the purview of the Speaker. Low level jobs such as elevator operator, mail room employee, page, are also handled by a system of sponsorship and cleared through a committee of the majority party appointed by the Speaker. An informal quota system based in part upon the seniority of members determines the entitlement of members to sponsor candidates for these jobs.

A second form of patronage is provided by the Congressional campaign committees of each party which allocate funds to House incumbents running for reelection. Seniority as such plays little part in the distribution of these funds. See Kirwan, Michael J. as told to Redding, Jack, How To Succeed in Politics (New York: MacFadden, 1964), pp. 9–11 Google Scholar; and Bone, Hugh A., Party Committees and National Politics (Seattle: Univ. of Washington, 1958), pp. 120–165, esp. p. 147Google Scholar.

³ See Masters, Nicholas A., “Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives,” this Review, 55 (06, 1961), 345–357 Google Scholar. Masters gives the following desiderata for appointments to committees: the candidate must show “legislative responsibility,” i.e., personal characteristics of flexibility and willingness to follow norms of predictability, reciprocity and courtesy; his district should allow him flexibility in major matters—which means that norms internal to the House must be allowed to weigh heavily in his committee decision making; the geographical balance of committees must be preserved; and the appointment should bear some relationship to the member's chance of being reelected. In addition to these criteria, Masters says: “When two or more members stake a claim to the same assignment, on the ground that it is essential to their electoral success, both party committees usually, if not invariably, will give preference to the member with longer service.” State delegations sometimes but not always use seniority as the criterion determining which among their members will lay claim to a seat on a major committee that the state is thought to be “entitled” to. On the whole, large state delegations are much more successful than small states in getting the committee assignments they want for their members. This is true for both parties, and it operates without regard to the seniority of individual members.

⁴ Seniority is generally followed pro forma in the granting of subcommittee chairmanships, but not always. Neither Adam Clayton Powell nor Phil M. Landrum received subcommittee assignments, much less chairmanships, when they were each ranking member of the Education and Labor Committee. This was an unusually frank recognition of estrangement between them and their respective committee chairmen. Ordinarily, senior men out of favor with the chairman receive the recognition of a subcommittee chairmanship, but since the membership and the substantive responsibilities of subcommittees are more or less discretionary with the chairman, it is quite easy for the committee chairman to circumvent a subcommittee chairman he dislikes or mistrusts. Thus the operation of seniority in the organization of subcommittees does not necessarily mean very much. See e.g. Fenno, Richard F., “The House of Representatives and Federal Aid to Education,” in Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W. (eds.), New Perspectives on the House of Representatives (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), pp. 195–235 Google Scholar.

⁵ Seniority in a strict sense does not enter in as a criterion for party leadership. To be eligible for consideration as a party leader, a member must have served long enough to be well known; but Carl Albert was tied with nine others for 30th in seniority on the Democratic side of the aisle when he was elected majority leader in a 1962 Democratic caucus. The Republican caucus has twice, in recent years, removed a senior man from the party leadership and replaced him with a more junior one. Factors of personality, sectionalism and ideology seem to matter most in the choice of party leaders—including chairmen of the caucuses, whips, assistant whips, and Congressional campaign committee chairmen. See Nelson W. Polsby, “Two Strategies of Influence in the U.S. House of Representatives: Choosing a Majority Leader, 1962,” in Peabody and Polsby, op. cit., pp. 237-270; Peabody, Robert L., “The Ford-Halleck Minority Leadership Contest, 1965” Eagleton Institute Case in Practical Politics, No. 40 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966)Google Scholar; and Peabody, “Party Leadership Change in the United States House of Representatives” this Review, 61 (09, 1967), 675–693 Google Scholar.

⁶ Examples would include the following: There was a revolt against Chairman Dan Reed, of the Committee on Ways and Means in 1953. See Bauer, Raymond A., Pool, Ithiel de Sola and Dexter, Lewis Anthony, American Business and Public Policy (New York: Atherton, 1963), p. 33 Google Scholar; a revolt against Chairman Clair Hoffman of Government Operations in the same year; a number of smallscale rebellions against two successive chairmen of the Committee on Education and Labor (see Fenno, op. cit.); two major rebellions against Judge Smith of the Rules Committee, one in 1961 that packed the Committee against him, and one in 1965 that established the 21-day rule; in 1965–66 and again in 1967 a revolt against Chairman Wright Patman of the Banking and Currency Committee; and in 1967 a revolt against Chairman William Colmer of the Rules Committee. Both these latter revolts eventuated in important changes in committee rules.

⁷ See Sartori, Giovanni (ed.) Il Parlamento Italiano, 1946–1963 (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1963), esp. pp. 246–248 Google Scholar; Ward, Robert E., “Japan” in Ward, and Macridis, Roy (eds.) Modern Political Systems: Asia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 92–94 Google Scholar; Baerwald, Hans H. “Parliament and Parliamentarians in Japan,” Pacific Affairs 37 (Fall, 1964), 271–282 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yanaga, Chitoshi, Japanese People and Politics. (New York: Wiley, 1956), p. 255 Google Scholar; Ike, Nobutaka, Japanese Politics (New York: Knopf, 1957), pp. 181–182 Google Scholar.

⁸ See Payne, James L., Patterns of Conflict in Columbia (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and Blanksten, George, Ecuador: Constitutions and Caudillos (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1951), pp. 100–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Bagehot, Walter, The English Constitution (London: Collins, 1963. First published 1867), p. 150 Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See, for example, on one hand, Pollock, James K. Jr., “Seniority Rule in Congress,” The North American Review. 222 (1925), 235–245 Google Scholar; and on the other, the testimony of George H. E. Smith in the Hearings; Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, Evaluation of Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (80th Congress. 2nd Session) Washington: Government Printing Office, 1948), pp. 61, 71–73, 184–185 Google Scholar. These are collected in Kravitz, Walter, “Seniority in Congress” (mimeo.), Library of Congress Legislative Reference Sendee, 11 7, 1961 Google Scholar.

¹¹ See, for example, Chiu, Chang-wei, The Speaker of the House of Representatives Since 1896 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1928), pp. 64–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galloway, George B., History of the U.S. House of Representatives (House Document 246, 87th Congress, 1st Session) Washington: Government Printing Office, 1962), 62–63 Google Scholar; Pollock, op. cit.

¹² Galloway, George B., Congress at the Crossroads (New York: Crowell, 1946), p. 187 Google Scholar. See also Goodwin, George, “The Seniority System in Congress,” this Review, 53 (06, 1959), p. 417 Google Scholar.

¹³ Pollock, op. cit., pp. 235–236.

¹⁴ Chiu, op. cit., p. 71.

¹⁵ Wilson, Woodrow, Congressional Government (New York: Meridian, 1956; First published, 1884), pp. 82, 85 Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Brock, W. R., An American Crisis (New York: St. Martin, 1963), pp. 58–59 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Hamilton, Gail, Biography of James G. Blaine (Norwich, Connecticut: Henry Bill, 1895), pp. 260, 263 Google Scholar. A slightly garbled version is in Alexander, DeAlva Stanwood, History and Procedure of the House of Representatives (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), p. 69 Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Brown, George Rothwell, The Leadership of Congress (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1922), p. 109 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth (New York: Macmillan, 1905), Vol. I, pp. 138–139 Google Scholar.

²⁰ Alexander, op. cit., p. 67.

²¹ Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1961 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1961)Google Scholar.

²² We doubt that this would make much difference in our findings. Hasbrouck, Paul DeWitt says, “Even Speaker Cannon did not go so far as to remove a committeeman in the middle of a Congress.” Party Government in the House of Representatives (New York: Macmillan, 1927), p. 50 Google Scholar.

²³ In classifying committees by order of importance (and therefore desirability) we relied upon two sources; Chang-wei Chiu's listing of important committees (op. cit. pp. 68–69) for the early period, and the sorting of committees into three classes by the Amended Legislative Reorganization Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Judiciary, Post Office and Civil Service, Public Works, and Science and Astronautics. 3) Seven committees are non-exclusive. A member may serve on any two of these seven, or on any one plus one of the ten-semi-exclusive committees. The seven are: District of Columbia, Government Operations, House Administration, Interior and Insular Affairs, Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Un-American Activities, and Veteran Affairs. Chiu mentions four committees not listed above as having some importance in the period (1896–1928) covered by his study. These are committees on Military Affairs, Naval Affairs, Post Offices and Post Roads and Rivers and Harbors. For our purposes, we considered these four semi-exclusive committees.

A total of 57 standing committees other than the ones mentioned in our sources also existed at some point in the period covered by our study. These were added to the non-exclusive committees for our purposes. In general, changes in the total numbers of committees over the years (until the major consolidation of 1946) reflect changes in the number of minor committees.

²⁴ For examples, see Abram and Cooper, op. cit., pp. 63 ff.

²⁵ Pollock, op. cit.

²⁵ Pollock, op. cit.

²⁶ Brown, op. cit., pp. 158–159.

²⁷ Norris, George W., Fighting Liberal (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1946), p. 111 Google Scholar.

²⁸ Mooney, Booth, Mr. Speaker (Chicago: Follett, 1964), p. 109 Google Scholar.

²⁹ See, e.g., Murdock, Victor, “After Cannonism, What?” The Independent, 09 22, 1910, pp. 622–625 Google Scholar, George B. Galloway, History of the United Slates House of Representatives, op. cit., pp. 51–52; Hasbrouck, op. cit., p. 48.

³⁰ Charles O. Jones describes a number of the powers available to a Speaker in this era which could be used as strategic resources: “He could appoint committees—including the chairmen, determine the schedule of business, recognize members on the floor, appoint members to conference committees, dispense favors of various kinds. Particularly significant was Speaker Cannon's power as chairman of the Committee on Rules. … Speaker Cannon was not above delaying the appointment of committees until his wishes on legislation had been met. In the famous 61st Congress, he appointed the important Rules and Ways and Means committees on March 16, the second day of the session. Most of the remaining appointments had to wait until the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill was in the conference committee—nearly five months after the session began.” “Joseph G. Cannon and Howard W. Smith: An Essay on the Limits of Leadership in the House of Representatives” Journal of Politics 30 (08, 1968), 617–646 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Fuller, Hubert Bruce, The Speakers of the House (Boston: Little, Brown, 1909), pp. 256 ffGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Bolles, Blair, Tyrant From Illinois (New York: Norton, 1951), p. 195 Google Scholar.

³² See Hasbrouck, op. cit., pp. 4–6.

³³ Brown, op, cit., pp. 175 ff.

³⁴ Ibid., pp. 175–187. See also Haines, Wilder “The Congressional Caucus of Today,” this Review 9 (11, 1915), pp. 696–706 Google Scholar. The corresponding story in the Senate is told by Bowers, Claude G., The Life of John Worth Kern (Indianapolis: Hollenbeck, 1918), pp. 287–295 Google Scholar.

³⁵ Holt, James Congressional Insurgents and the Party System 1909–1916 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 84–85 Google Scholar.

³⁶ New York Times February 28, 1919.

³⁷ Seniority has also been pretty much inviolate since 1946 for committee rank and file as well as chairmen. There are only two exceptions. It took an elaborate warning procedure followed by a fight in the full caucus of the House Democratic party in 1965 to impair the seniority of two southern House Democrats, neither of them chairmen, who had campaigned actively for Republicans in the election of 1964. One of these Democrats promptly resigned his seat and was reelected to Congress as a Republican. The other quit the House soon thereafter and became Governor of Mississippi. Under a rule of the Democratic caucus, the so-called Byrnes Rule, the Democratic committee on committees' assignments are subject to review by the caucus. In practice, however, except for these two cases, there has been no review. The overwhelming liberal Democratic majority of 1965, mobilized by the Democratic Study Group, was able to threaten a review and thereby opened the question of the seniority of these two members.

³⁸ It also increased the difficulty for any member of attaining a chairmanship. Richard Brooks shows a tremendous contrast in the average number of years a member had to serve before becoming a committee chairman before and after 1946. From 1889–1910 the average wait was 6.1 years. From 1911–1946 the average wait was 7.5 years. From 1947–1954 chairmen served in the ranks an average of 16.6 years. Brooks, Richard Stephens “The Sectional and Seniority Bases of the Standing Committee Chairmanships in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1889–1954” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1956),p. 89 Google Scholar.

³⁹ See Gawthrop, Lewis C., “Changing Membership Patterns in House Committees” this Review, 60 (06, 1966), 366–373 Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Holt op. cit. passim makes this argument very persuasively.

⁴¹ On the present-day weakness of the Democratic caucus, see Miller, Clem Member of the House, Baker, John W., ed. (New York: Scribner, 1962), pp. 88–89, 92 Google Scholar.

⁴² See Polsby, Nelson W., “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives,” this Review, 62 (03, 1968) pp. 144–168 Google Scholar. The present discussion supersedes, and in some respects corrects, the preliminary findings on seniority offered there on pp. 160–161.