inst the Speaker of the House Joe Cannon (Republican). The Republican party then became fractured, half of them sided with Roosevelt and the other half sided with Taft. Many Republicans became angry with Joe Cannon because he was blocking all progressive legislation and decided to join the democrats and stripped Cannon of his powers. These events led to a shift in power to the committee's and their chairs.
             The development of committee's has played a major role in the shift of power away from party leaders. Committee's were designed to specialize in certain areas in order to provide expertise in policy making. These committee's were remarkably efficient because in the original assembly the Congress as a committee of the whole, they did this because there was a low membership. This system proved to be very inefficient because they could evaluate one bill at a time. After the revolt against Joe Cannon, the Speaker of the House was reduced to be reduced to acting as a broker and working out deals with committee chairs. The importance of committee's in Congress may have been best explained by Woodrow Wilson when he said "Congress on the floor is Congress on display", "Congress in committee's is Congress at work" and "Congressional government is government by standing committee." Basically meaning the floor is for show and in the committee's is where all the important work gets done. The shift in power from party leaders to committee's originally presented itself as a positive change because committee's have a wide range of functions in Congress. For example, the ad-hoc committees, which are designed for a specific purpose and bring detail to policy making. Standing committee's carried a great deal of power for the early part of the 20th century, but power began to shift into another type of Congressional structure is the middle of the 20th century...