Reflecting his family's influence and his rural, border-state background, Cannon maintained a lifelong devotion to the Southern Baptist faith and the Democratic Party.

After working as a high school teacher and principal, he served as an instructor of history at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri from 1904 to 1908.

Though he retained a lifelong interest in the American past and wrote several books on family and local history, Cannon deemed the academic life too sedentary.

Starting in the 1920s, she traveled extensively over the back-country roads of northeastern Missouri campaigning for her spouse, while he remained at his congressional desk in Washington, D.C. Cannon eagerly sought elective office, but his first two campaigns, for county school superintendent and state representative, ended in defeat.

When Democrats elected Clark Speaker of the House that year, Cannon found himself near the center of power in Washington.

He supported parity payments to maintain farmers' incomes, low-interest federal farm loans, and soil conservation and flood control projects.

Cannon also played a major role in the establishment of the rural electrification program and in obtaining government funds for agricultural research.

With the notable exception of farm supports, the Missourian primarily gained a reputation as a budget-slashing fiscal conservative, especially after he became chair of the House Appropriations Committee in 1941.

He urged a quick reduction in military expenditures immediately after World War II, denounced foreign aid as waste, and ridiculed the space program as "moondoggle" (the word had been coined by Norbert Wiener[1]).

During an argument in 1945, Cannon punched in the face Representative John Taber of New York, the ranking Republican member of the House Appropriations Committee.

During his 41-year congressional career, he served well his rural Missouri constituents, securing passage of farm supports and funding for local projects that some critics denounced as "pork barrel" politics.

Beyond the scope of legislation, Cannon's publications on congressional procedure have achieved the status of holy writ for successive generations of lawmakers.

His contributions to agricultural and appropriation policies and parliamentary procedure, enhanced by his colorful personality, have ensured him a place as one of the major congressional figures of the twentieth century.