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His other engaging traits include a mild manner, great personal modesty, a disarming habit of coupling every declaration with the frank admission that "maybe I am wrong," and a 15-year-old spirit of disillusionment about the possibility of getting anything liberal done for the benefit of mankind. These traits are genuine and at the same time more or less deceptive. Gentle Mr. Norris is not above personalities in debate. Modest Mr. Norris talks as often as anyone in the Senate, and tries to have the last word on every issue. Mr. Norris, who "may be wrong," in nearly every fight finds it impossible to believe that his opponents have honest motives. Disillusioned Mr. Norris never gives up a fight no matter how often it may be lost. He sticks when other Progressives in the Senate waver. All his successes are 'due to the fact that through years of weary waiting, his cocked eye-brow has never grown weary while he watchfully waited for an opportunity to come his way.
For all but one of the major accomplishments of his career, including Nebraska's unicameral system which he believes caps it, George Norris had to wait until after he was 70. Not until 1932 when he had been nearly 20 years in the Senate did events begin to run in his direction. In 1932 he won Congressional approval of the 20th Amendment of the Constitution, ending "lame duck" sessions of Congress. Then he secured passage of the Norris-LaGuardia bill restricting the powers of courts to grant injunctions in labor cases and forbidding them to entertain suits based on labor contracts that forbid workers to join unions. Next year followed TVA, to insure Government operation of Muscle Shoals for which he had been vainly struggling for a decade; the year after Nebraska's unicameral. One other major reform which he still hopes to leave behind him, is an amendment putting an end to the Electoral College and providing for the direct popular election of Presidents.
Mainspring. It is 75 years since George Norris was born on a farm in Sandusky County, Ohio, the youngest of eleven children. A few days before his second birthday his elder brother was killed in the battle of Gettysburg. When he was four his father died of pneumonia. He grew up to support his mother and nine sisters. Since then he has been the only male member of his family although he has married twice (his first wife died in 1901) and has three married daughters. Before he was 24 he had worked his way through college and law school, taught school for seven months near Walla Walla, Washington Territory, and returned from the far frontier to Nebraska. There he was shortly made prosecuting attorney, served three terms, then two terms as district judge.