r of it.
The right of the Speaker to appoint this committee was also taken
away. When the Democrats came into control of the House in 1911, they
completed the dethronement of the Speaker by depriving him of the
appointment of all committees.

The old system had not been without its advantages, when the power
of the Speaker and his small group of associate party leaders was not
abused. It at least concentrated responsibility in a few prominent
members of the majority party. But it made it possible for these few
men to perpetuate a machine and to ignore the desires of the rest of
the party representatives and of the voters of the party throughout the
country. The defeat of Cannonism put an end to the autocratic power
of the Speaker and relegated him to the position of a mere presiding
officer. It had also a wider significance, for it portended the division
in the old Republican party out of which was to come the new Progressive
party.

When the mid-point of the Taft Administration was reached, a practical
test was given of the measure of popular approval which the President
and his party associates had achieved. The congressional elections
went decidedly against the Republicans. The Republican majority of
forty-seven in the House was changed to a Democratic majority of
fifty-four. The Republican majority in the Senate was cut down from
twenty-eight to ten. Not only were the Democrats successful in this
substantial degree, but many of the Western States elected Progressive
Republicans instead of Republicans of the old type. During the last two
years of his term, the President was consequently obliged to work with
a Democratic House and with a Senate in which Democrats and Insurgent
Republicans predominated over the old-line Republicans.

The second half of Taft's Presidency was productive of little but
discord and dissatisfaction. The Democrats in power in the House were
quite ready to harass the Republican President, especially in view
of the approaching Presidential election. The Insurgents in House and
Senate were not entirely unwilling to take a hand in the same game.
Besides, they found themselves more and more in sincere disagreement
with the President on matters of fundamental policy, though not one of
them could fairly question his integrity of purpose, impugn his purity
of character, or deny his charm of personality.

Three weeks after Taft's inauguration, Roosevelt sailed for Africa,
to be gone for a year hu