INTRODUCTION In 1798 the United States House of Representatives was not quite 10 years old and some of its members hadn’t yet learned good manners THE U S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Heated debates were common One day Vermont representative Mat thew Lyon spat tobacco juice in the face of Connecticut’s Roger Gris wold Griswold stayed calm at the time But two weeks later Griswold saw Lyon alone at his desk and clubbed him with a hickory cane Lyon grabbed a pair of iron fireplace tongs and whacked Griswold Soon other members of the House were shoving and hitting one another with sticks on the House floor and in the hallways Such physical as saults and even duels with pistols marked government by the peo ple in the early days Today neither guns nor tobacco juice are allowed in chambers But there are still plenty of fights as parties battle one another over legislation using words as their weapons 4
Griswold attacked Lyon after the House voted not to expel Lyon for the spitting incident
NUMBER OF REPRESENTATIVES PER STATE 1789 The GREAT COMPROMISE stated that the House should have 1 representative for every 30,000 people 8 PENNSYLVANIA 6 NEW YORK 10 VIRGINIA 5 NORTH CAROLINA 5 SOUTH CAROLINA 3 GEORGIA 1 DELAWARE 4 NEW JERSEY 8 MASSACHUSETTS 6 MARYLAND 1 RHODE ISLAND 5 CONN 3 NEW HAMPSHIRE
CHAPTER NO_ 1 BUILDING THE HOUSE THE U S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES W hen the delegates to the Constitutional conven tion in 1787 were designing the government of the new country they started with the group of elected lawmakers It was crucial to begin there because they wanted to make sure that laws would be made by representatives of the people rather than by a single executive But what exactly should that lawmaking body look like William Patterson of New Jersey suggested one made up of a rep resentative from each state The state government would choose its own representative This would ensure that all states had equal say in the decision-making process Of course states with big populations such as Virginia objected They were growing quickly and thought they deserved more representation in keep ing with their larger populations Edmund Randolph of Virginia 7
