Why was the number of U.S. Representatives limited?
score:15
Pretty much correct Wladmir, this article shows the growth over time, but it was all due to the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Why_435.htm
As noted here: http://artandhistory.house.gov/highlights.aspx?action=view&intID=200 this came down to a fight after the 1920 Census, where apportionment did not happen, so it was mandated to be at the current level which was 435 at the time.
A battle erupted between rural and urban factions, causing the House (for the only time in its history) to fail to reapportion itself following the 1920 Census. Signed into law on June 18, 1929, the Permanent Apportionment Act capped House Membership at the level established after the 1910 Census and created a procedure for automatically reapportioning House seats after every decennial census.
At some point it had to stop, although it seems as if Congress could change it again if they wanted to, so long as the apportionment stay as constitutionally derived.
Upvote:1
One factor I don't see mentioned, but which has to be seen as a limiting factor, is the size of the physical US Capitol building. It is a historic building, having been built in the early 19th Century and expanded to (mostly) its current state in the mid 19th. The House Chamber only has 448 permanent seats. I suppose you could start sitting extra representatives in the gallery, but that would remove that seating area from public use (which would be a crying shame). So expanding the number of representatives much past the current 435 would require an extensive remodeling, or worse yet, a larger chamber.
There is so much history in that Chamber that frankly, tearing it down to build a new one would be a crime against history.
Upvote:3
Just to expand on MichaelF's answer, the House began to debate the increasing size of Congress after the 1910 census. There was worry that the House was becoming unwieldy, but as Representative Edgar Crumpacker stated:
Members are . . . supposed to reflect the opinion and to stand for the wishes of their constituents.
If we make the ratio [of persons per Representative] too large the idea of representation becomes attenuated and less definite. The personal interest of the voter in his representative becomes less important to him, and we may lose something of the vital strength of our representative form of government.
So there was concern on both sides of the apportionment issue. On the one hand there were too many representatives, and on the other hand there were not enough because they were now representing far more people than the 30,000 originally envisioned. The 1910 Apportionment Act had set the house at 433.
The people that were in favor of fixing the number were in part drawn from rural parts of the country that feared losing out on their proportion of power to the fastly urbanized parts of the country. Those in favor of fixing the number eventually won out so they passed the Apportionment Act of 1929 which fixed the number at 435.
If you are interested there is an excellent layout of the various methods that have been employed for reapportionment by Congresses throughout the years: Methods of Apportionment.
More post
- 📝 How is it that King Philips War devastated the colonists so much, but the Colonists were not driven out?
- 📝 How would emigrants travel the railway lines going from Grajewo to Bremerhaven in 1911 and from Grajewo to Rotterdam in 1917?
- 📝 Which RAF squadrons and aircraft types took part in the bombing of Berlin on the 25th of August 1940?
- 📝 How do repeating historical conflicts get resolved?
- 📝 After their rise to power in 1932, were any of the elections or referenda under the Nazis legitimate?
- 📝 Was having one breadwinner in the family feasible in the early 1900s because of greater pay, lower cost of living, or both compared to today?
- 📝 Why did the United States not seriously develop Anti Aircraft Missiles?
- 📝 Was the Hebrew Bible modified and rewritten from Aramaic to Hebrew after the death of Jesus?
- 📝 Why bother to attack in trench warfare?
- 📝 When were public tariffs and taxes for water supply introduced for the first time?
- 📝 Did Napoleon III reserve a special set of aluminum cutlery for special guests?
- 📝 Where were the British Forces located during Napoleon's Egypt Campaign?
- 📝 Did Stalin want to restore the Russian Empire's borders?
- 📝 What was the purpose of each project site during the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 Did Antoine de Saint-Exupery have any offspring?
- 📝 Are there churches that belong to the German Armed Forces?
- 📝 Why does Ngram show an extreme spike in use of "LOL" in mid 1600s?
- 📝 What is the nature of the Hyksos territory in Transjordan and northern Arabia depicted on these maps?
- 📝 Did 9/11 change people's behavior during the playing of the national anthem?
- 📝 What were the animals on the Coat of Arms of Edward IV of England?
- 📝 What are the historical reasons for the conventional map orientation?
- 📝 How did Lincoln know to stick with Grant before the completion of the Vicksburg campaign?
- 📝 After the Cold War, how did Berlin develop so much more rapidly than Moscow?
- 📝 Did the Axis use Villa Cisneros during WW2 for contact with South America?
- 📝 Did healers in medieval Europe use moldy bread in poultices for wounds?
- 📝 Were naval mines an underutilized weapon in WW2?
- 📝 How were political factions in the late Roman republic different from political parties today?
- 📝 What were the responses to Copernicus' heliocentric theory?
- 📝 Where did the Greeks look for descendants of the Byzantine dynasties?
- 📝 British ship movements immediately after the armistice of 22 June 1940
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why was the number of U.S. Representatives limited?
- 📝 Why was there a sharp decline in the number of municipalities in West Germany in the 1970s?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 Why was Poland spared from the Black Death?
- 📝 Why was Africa colonized last of the continents in the Age of Discovery?
- 📝 Why was the Scout movement so successful?
- 📝 Why was the Council of Nicea held in Nicea rather than Rome or Constantinople?
- 📝 Why was World War I ended on Nov 11 11:00, rather than immediately upon signing the armistice?
- 📝 In the Soviet Union, why was the Cheka renamed so many times?
- 📝 Why was "leaping into the river" a valid trial outcome to prove one's innocence?
- 📝 Why was the Japanese Army's fatalities inflicted:suffered ratio so low in the Pacific theatre?
- 📝 Why was capturing the south of Okinawa necessary?
- 📝 Why were the drawings of Colossus burnt after WW2 and why was its very existence "of course" kept secret?
- 📝 Why was there a surge in the US incarceration rate during the 1990s?
- 📝 Why was the Treaty of Versailles so harsh?
- 📝 Was slavery in the United States legally limited to blacks?
- 📝 If the Ch’in dynasty was so short-lived, why was China named for it?
- 📝 Why was Switzerland not attacked during the two World Wars?
- 📝 Why was sugar cultivation more profitable in the Caribbean/Brazil than West Africa?
- 📝 Why was PTSD not written about as much before the 20th century?
- 📝 Why was Kaliningrad placed under the Russian SFSR rather than the Lithuanian SSR?
- 📝 Why was the Roman Empire considered an empire rather than a kingdom (again)?
- 📝 Why was the northern boundary of the Mongol empire set where it was?
- 📝 When and why was the samurai class abolished?
- 📝 Why was uranium mined in the 1500s, but only "discovered" in 1789?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 Why were troops with bayonets often effective against enemy cavalry even though the bayonet was a "secondary" weapon?
- 📝 Why was the bald eagle chosen as the national bird of the United States?
- 📝 Why was the US so pro-China and so anti-Japan before WW2?