George Norris

George Norris (1861-1944), U.S. senator and reformer, known as the creator of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

George William Norris was born July 11, 1861, in Sandusky County, Ohio, and educated at Baldwin University (now Baldwin-Wallace College) and the Northern Indiana Normal School. He settled in Furnas County, Nebraska, in 1885, and entered the practice of law; from 1895 to 1902 he was judge of the 14th Nebraska District Court. From 1903 to 1913 he was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. During this period Norris was the leader of the group of congressmen who, by effecting a change in the House rules in 1910, ended the arbitrary rule of the Speaker of the House in a House revolt against Joseph Gurney Cannon. In 1912 Norris was elected to the U.S. Senate. For some years he was a member of the midwestern isolationist bloc that opposed the entry of the United States into World War I and later attacked the Versailles Treaty.

Norris favored federal regulation of public utilities and led a campaign that culminated in 1933 in the passage of the act that he wrote, creating the Tennessee Valley Authority. The first TVA dam to be completed was named for him. Among other laws or acts sponsored by Norris are the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, popularly known as the Lame Duck Amendment, and the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932, by which the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes was restricted. Norris's disregard for the limitations of party politics, as shown by his support for many policies initiated under the New Deal program, eventually deprived him of the support of the Republican Party. In 1942, when he sought reelection as an Independent, he was defeated by the regular Republican candidate. Norris was the author of an autobiography, Fighting Liberal (pub. posthumously, 1945). He died September 2, 1944, in McCook, Nebraska.