# Early 20th century arguments re: US House of Reps apportionment; why 435?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-arguments-re-us-house-of-reps-apportionment-why-435/764771
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 2, 2016, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-arguments-re-us-house-of-reps-apportionment-why-435/764771 "2016-09-02T13:00:44Z")
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### Author: ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2016, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-arguments-re-us-house-of-reps-apportionment-why-435/764771/1 "2016-09-02T13:00:44Z")

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The Apportionment Act of 1911 set the number at 435. The 1929 Act established the process for allocating seats after a census. This was made automatic in 1943.

I’m curious about actual contemporary arguments for and against setting and keeping that limit ca. 1900 to 1955 (or earlier, if anyone knows about the 1843 decrease.) What were they? Was it at all contentious? Angry debates on the Hill? Rants in newspapers? It’s possible we won’t find much of anything. 435 was sort of a status quo number at the time, and we (mostly) stopped adding states. I’m guessing that most previous increases roughly kept the number of reps from old states constant while adding seats to new states. But I haven’t actually checked each year yet.

I’m not interested in modern arguments for more or fewer reps, which we see from time to time, nor in actually arguing the number.

References:

> **[United States congressional apportionment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment)**
>
> United States congressional apportionment is the process by which seats in the United States House of Representatives are distributed among the 50 states according to the most recent decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. Each state is apportioned a number of seats which approximately corresponds to its share of the aggregate population of the 50 states. Every state is constitutionally guaranteed at least one seat in the House and two seats in the Senate, regardless of T...

> **[Apportionment Act of 1911](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911)**
>
> The Apportionment Act of 1911 (Pub. L. 62–5, 37 Stat. 13) was an apportionment bill passed by the United States Congress on August 8, 1911. The law initially set the number of members of the United States House of Representatives at 433, effective with the 63rd Congress on March 4, 1913. It also included, in section 2, a provision to add an additional seat for each of the anticipated new states of Arizona and New Mexico (which happened in 1912), bringing the total number of seats to 435.
> To ...

> **[Reapportionment Act of 1929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929)**
>
> The Reapportionment Act of 1929 (ch. 28, 46 Stat. 21, 2 U.S.C. § 2a), also known as the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, is a combined census and apportionment bill enacted on June 18, 1929, that establishes a permanent method for apportioning a constant 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives according to each census. This reapportionment was preceded by the Apportionment Act of 1911 and took effect after the 1932 election meaning that the House was never reapportioned as a resul...

> **[Why is our House of Representatives fixed at 435 members?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=602272)**
>
> As a political science graduate, and someone who’s concerned about voting rights and disenfranchisement, I am curious as to why the number of Representatives is fixed at a seemingly arbitrary 435 members. I remember that the formula for...