This reapportionment was preceded by the Apportionment Act of 1911, which established the 435-seat size, and followed nearly a decade of debate and gridlock after the 1920 Census.

[1] The 1929 Act took effect after the 1932 election, meaning that the House was never reapportioned as a result of the 1920 United States Census, and representation in the lower chamber remained frozen for twenty years.

It merely established a system in which House seats would be reallocated to states which have shifts in population.

The Reapportionment Act of 1929 allowed states to draw districts of varying size and shape.

With but one exception, the Apportionment Act of 1842,[5] Congress enlarged the House of Representatives by various degrees following each subsequent census including 1913, by which time the adjusted membership had grown to 435.

In 1842, the House was reduced from 242 to 223 members by the incoming Whig Party, which had ousted the Jacksonian Democrats.

In 1842 the debate on apportionment in the House began in the customary way with a jockeying for the choice of a divisor using Jefferson's method.

On one day alone, 59 different motions to fix a divisor were made in a House containing but 242 members.

But the Senate had tired of this approach and proposed instead an apportionment of 223 members using Webster's method.

In the House John Quincy Adams urged acceptance of the method but argued vehemently for enlarging the number of members, as New England's portion was steadily dwindling.

This allowed political parties in control of a state legislature to draw district boundaries at will and to elect some or all representatives at large.