Insurgent Republicans Revolt Against Speaker Cannon: 29-Hour Session Strips Autocratic Powers, Splits GOP

After a dramatic 29-hour marathon session, the House of Representatives voted 191 to 156 to strip Speaker Joseph Cannon of his autocratic powers, removing him as chairman of the Committee on Rules and expanding its membership from five to 15 members. Representative George William Norris of Nebraska, leading a coalition of insurgent Republicans and Democrats, introduced the resolution on St. Patrick’s Day when many Republican “regulars” were absent celebrating. For eight years, the staunchly conservative Cannon had exercised complete control over the House legislative agenda and debate proceedings, serving as both Speaker and Rules Committee chairman—an obstacle to progressive policies advanced by Theodore Roosevelt. More than 40 Republicans voted against their own Speaker, representing a fundamental split between reform-minded Progressive Republicans (primarily from the Midwest) and the conservative “Old Guard” aligned with corporate interests.

President Taft privately disliked Cannon but refused to challenge the Speaker’s authority, fearing he needed House Republicans to pass his legislative program. This pragmatic accommodation of corporate-aligned leadership infuriated Progressive Republicans already betrayed by Taft’s support for the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. After the vote stripped his powers, Cannon defiantly offered to vacate the Speakership entirely in a dramatic speech defending himself, but this motion failed 192 to 155—Cannon managed to keep his title even as his power was broken. The revolt’s political consequences extended far beyond House procedures: Democrats won control of the House in the 1910 midterm elections for the first time since 1894. The Republican Party split deepened, ensuring Wilson’s Democratic victory in 1912 and launching a more dynamic phase of the Progressive movement. The Cannon revolt demonstrated that even entrenched legislative power could be challenged when reformers built cross-party coalitions—but it also revealed how corporate-friendly forces would simply regroup and find new institutional vehicles for their influence, as subsequent decades of business lobbying and campaign finance would prove.