Adams to E. P. Alexander, Nov. 24, 1885, UP, PO, OC, vol. 30.
David T. Canon and Charles Stewart III, "Committee Hierarchy and Assignments in the U.S. Congress: Testing Theories of Legislative Organization, 1789-1946," Midwest Political Science Association, 2002, tables 1 and 2.
Texas and Pacific Railway, Feb. 27, 1875, 43d Cong., 2d sess., H. Rept. 267.
Colton to Crocker, Feb. 24, 1875, Octopus Speaks, 82.
Congressional Record, 43d Cong., 1st sess., Feb. 22, 1875, 1600-1601.
For committee power, Thompson, Spiders Web, 93-96.
Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), 69.
For turnover and Speaker, see Thompson, The "Spider's Web," 71-93.
In the 1870s the percentage of first term members ran at or near 50%,
Nelson W. Polsby, "The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives," American Political Science Review 62 (March 1968), 146.
For Senate, Rothman, Politics and Power, 11-42.
David T. Canon and Charles Stewart III, "The Evolution of the Committee System in Congress," in Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer (eds.), Congress Reconsidered, seventh edition (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2001), 176.
David T. Canon and Charles Stewart III, "Parties and Hierarchies in Senate Committees, 1789-1946," in Bruce I. Oppenheimer, (ed.), U.S. Senate Exceptionalism (Columbus: University of Ohio Press, 2002), 165, 170-71.