ABSTRACT
In the process of reorganizing the House, the Democrats adopted a series of party and institutional reforms that went a long way toward reshaping House politics for years to come and making Oscar Wilder Underwood the first modern House leader of the twentieth century. The Democratic caucus also unanimously chose Underwood to be the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, with responsibility for steering the important tariff legislation through the new Congress. As the first modern House leader in the post-Cannon era, Underwood had to work within a more decentralized and democratic House. Underwood's major contribution to the leadership of the House was that he showed how a new, more democratic House structure could be established and maintained in the post-Cannon Congress. Underwood's leadership of the House also propelled him into contention for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912, along with Speaker Champ Clark and Woodrow Wilson, the progressive governor of New Jersey.
