Abstract
The special session of the Seventy-First Congress adjourned on November 22, 1929, less than two weeks prior to the opening session of the regular long session in early December, still haggling over the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. By this time the stock market fell, importers and exporters continued to withhold orders pending the outcome of the tariff bill, obstructing trade. By now Congress had settled into a pattern of parties and factions. The House, controlled by a comfortable majority of conservative and moderate Republicans, usually supported the president. In the Senate, a coalition of western insurgent Republicans and Democrats joined to wield the balance of power. The president and the House were pitted against the Senate in a battle of wills that endured, to the frustration of both Houses and the president, throughout the session. The Progressives, in particular Senator William E. Borah of Idaho, who had demanded a tariff to protect farmers and had successfully prodded Hoover to summon a special session to enact one, became the bill’s most obstinate foe and the president’s harshest critic, joined by other western progressives of dubious party loyalty such as George E. Norris of Nebraska, Smith Brookhart of Iowa, Hiram Johnson of California, and Robert M. LaFollette Jr. of Wisconsin. Some detested the president and plotted his defeat in the far-off election of 1932. Most belonged ideologically in the Democratic Party but would have lost their seniority and committee chairmanships because the Republicans theoretically remained the majority party.
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Notes
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© 2012 Glen Jeansonne
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Jeansonne, G. (2012). The Seventy-First Congress. In: The Life of Herbert Hoover. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137111890_7
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