Samuel Insull Research Articles

A Thread Connecting the Three Giants: Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull and Yasuzaemon Matsunaga

A Thread Connecting the Three Giants: Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull and Yasuzaemon Matsunaga

The End of Coal-Fired Power Generation in Chicago [History

The war of the currents between Thomas Edison and George West inghouse didn't end in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, when Westinghouse received the contract for producing the electricity to illuminate the entire exposition using his doublestopper light bulbs powered by ac. Edison, being a strong advocate and main promoter for the generation and transmission of power using dc, continued to develop and expand its use in large cities with steam powered, coalfired, central powergenerating stations. These stations initially utilized dc generators driven by reciprocating steam engines. On 17 December 1880, he established the Edison Illuminating Company to build his generating stations, beginning with projects in New York City. To provide support for his business interests, he hired a young, businessminded gentleman from England as his personal secretary. This gentleman was Samuel Insull, who would become directly involved in all matters related to Edison's power companies [2], [3].

The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority by John Williams

Reviewed by: The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authorityby John Williams T. Robert Hart The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority. By John Williams. River Books. ( College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 265. $36.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-341-7.) In 1934 the Texas legislature granted the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) the right to dam one of the Lone Star State's most deadly and unpredictable rivers in order to control, store, and use its water to generate electricity. For centuries, the Colorado River had alternated between drought and flood stages, and efforts to control it had failed. In 1900 the Austin Dam had been swept away before a crowd of spectators who had gathered to watch raging [End Page 738]waters that eventually caused millions of dollars in property damage. John Williams describes the next three decades as an "Era of Frustration," when politicians and businessmen, including utility magnate Samuel Insull, tried unsuccessfully to dam and develop the Colorado. The frustration ended with the coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, growing public support for large dams, and the persistence of Congressmen James Paul Buchanan and Lyndon B. Johnson who advocated federal funding. By the end of World War II, the LCRA was selling power and expanding its customer base from towns to farms, and the people of rural Texas began to invest in modern appliances for the first time. These early days were marked by success and celebration, but they would be short-lived. For the next four decades the LCRA turned its attention to monitoring water quality, managing recreational activity on its famous Highland Lakes, and eventually shifting to natural gas, coal, and oil to produce electricity. The authority's challenges testified to the difficulty that comes with controlling nature. Williams tells this story with intimacy and with an authoritative voice in The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority. Relying largely on the LCRA corporate archives, Williams takes readers into the boardrooms and offices of the men who directed the power company's operations since the 1930s. The LCRA photographs he uses copiously throughout the book also bring to life the construction of the dams and capture the scale of the authority's development on the Colorado River. For former employees of the LCRA and for residents of Central Texas, this book should evoke vivid memories of Texas's reluctant embrace of modernization. Social and cultural historians will find Williams's account useful for its discussion of the LCRA's campaign to demonstrate the practicality of electricity for farmers and the emergence of recreational culture on the Highland Lakes. In these two sections especially, the author places this local project into a broader regional context. In other parts of the book, however, Williams dwells too long and too often on the administrative history of the LCRA, which will prove tedious for a general audience. This is a company history in the traditional sense—much of the narrative revolves around the policies and internal politics of various administrators—but it is thoroughly researched and offers a revealing look into the management of water and the production of energy in the twentieth century. T. Robert Hart University of North Carolina Wilmington Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

“A Nation-wide Chain within 60 Days”: Radio Network Failure in Early American Broadcasting

Numerous failed attempts to develop new national commercial broadcasting companies occurred during American network radio's first decade. These unsuccessful endeavors raise important questions concerning barriers to entry faced by entrepreneurs seeking access to the nation's airwaves. This article examines three such cases in order to develop a more detailed understanding of alternatives, contingency, and historical inevitability in broadcasting history. It reveals the complex intertwining of multiple variables required for success. Because the examples involve one of the United States’ most popular radio entertainers (Ed Wynn), one of the nation's wealthiest citizens (Samuel Insull), and one of the industry's pioneering executives (George McClelland), they are not representative. These are exceptional cases, yet they all failed despite possessing significant advantages unavailable to others.

When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America (review)

Reviewed by: When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America Thomas J. Misa (bio) When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America. By David E. Nye. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010. Pp. x+291. $27.95. David Nye provides us a much-needed historical review and cultural appraisal of “blackouts” in twentieth-century America, focused on the notable New York City experiences with the blackouts of 1965 and 1977 as well as the great Northeast blackout of 2003. Complementing his numerous earlier books on the presence of technologies in American culture, including his prizewinning Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (1990), this book considers the punctuated absence of electricity. Since blackouts are “breaks in the flow of social time,” as he suggests, [End Page 404] examining a series of them “reveals much about the trajectory of history” (p. 3). He uses these notable and unpredictable events, much like a succession of world’s fairs, as a lens to consider the taken-for-granted quality of electricity in modern American society. Unplanned disruptions to electricity service were common in the pioneering Edison era, as Nye reminds us. The construction of large, regional electricity grids created the possibility of a widespread, geographically extended, abrupt “blackout” (the term originated in 1947). Over time, Americans became more and more dependent on the reliable and continuous supply of electricity delivered at affordable prices. At the core of this technological vulnerability, then, rests Samuel Insull’s engineering and economic logic of wiring together diverse users and far-flung regions to counterbalance distinct load profiles and offset financial risks. Through the very process that enhanced operating and financial efficiencies, the electric grid also created the possibility of large-scale failures. Charles Perrow’s notion of “normal accidents” lurks in the text (pp. 32, 208). For the most part, Nye structures his material chronologically, emphasizing the distinct experiences and varied causes of blackouts during World War II, the accident of the 1965 Northeast regional blackout, the ominous breakdown of social order during the 1977 New York City blackout, the rise of rolling blackouts during the 1990s, the troubled deregulation of California’s power system (which led Enron’s energy traders to great heights of shenanigans), and the rare instances of terrorists targeting electric grids since the 1990s. Indeed, at least initially, many people in the dark presumed that terrorists were behind the 2003 blackout that plunged much of the eastern third of the United States and Canada (linked by the Eastern Interconnection). Instead, mundane errors in equipment and management were the root cause of this latter failure. His final chapter—“Greenout?”—explores environmentalists’ strategic use of shutting off electricity. But he does not much consider the recent “smart grid” discussion that aims to dodge his “unavoidable choice” between blackout and greenout (p. 232). Several of these episodes are treated in Richard Hirsh’s Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Electric Utility System (1999) and Phillip F. Schewe’s The Grid (2006). Nye summarizes the complex “causes” for the key blackouts, but he does not attempt anything like the detailed technical and political analysis for the Europe-spanning November 2006 blackout presented by Erik van der Vleuten and Vincent Lagendijk in Energy Policy 38 (2010): 2042–62. What really distinguishes Nye’s book is his deep, yet never heavy-handed, engagement with cultural analysis and cultural theory. Nye’s earlier books, especially Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American Culture (1997), are justly acclaimed for mingling cultural theory with rigorous historical research. The same is true here. Neither does he mechanically “apply” theory nor simply use historical [End Page 405] “examples” to support theory. Rather, he tells multilayered stories, first adding some wrinkle that challenges preconceptions, then deftly dropping in a nugget of Victor Turner on “liminal” space and time (pp. 82–84) or Michel Foucault on “heterotopia” (pp. 95–97) or J. B. Jackson on “vernacular landscapes” as the human-made spaces that serve as “infrastructure or background for our collective existence” (p. 130) that helps you think through the puzzle. There are also apposite quotations from films and works of...

The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis (review)

Reviewed by: The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis ZAchary M. Schrag (bio) The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis. By John F. Wasik . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. x+270. $24.95. Samuel Insull's life was a tragedy in three acts. In his youth he embodied the Horatio Alger tale of a young man of humble origins whose pluck and talents gain the notice of a great man—in this case Thomas Edison—and propel him to prosperity. In his prime he was a grand tycoon, amassing millions of dollars by electrifying the American Midwest and spending them impressively on himself and various philanthropies. Finally, in his old age, Insull and his companies went bankrupt, taking down hundreds of thousands of stockholders and becoming symbols of the abuses of capitalism that had opened the door to the Great Depression. Insull's story has been told before, most notably in Forrest McDonald's 1962 biography Insull (recently reissued) and Harold Platt's The Electric City, as well as in Thomas Hughes's Networks of Power and American Genesis. In The Merchant of Power, author John Wasik, a business journalist, acknowledges his debt to these previous works, particularly McDonald's. Although he has explored archival sources himself, Wasik does not take issue with existing interpretations or advance any explicit thesis of his own, making unclear the purpose of this book. McDonald does a far more thorough job of explaining Insull's complex financial maneuvers and his family life, while Platt presents a much superior account of Insull as the master salesman of central-station electric service who made Chicago the premier electrified city of the early twentieth century. Wasik does contribute some details of Insull's personal life and image. We suffer the stress of Insull's early career, admire his elegant clothing, and learn that, not long after Insull's death in 1938, director Orson Welles handed his makeup artist a photograph of Insull to show how he wanted to appear in the title role of Citizen Kane. Wasik also provides context by describing events that took place around the same time as milestones in Insull's career, though occasionally these become distracting lists of trivia. Also [End Page 218] distracting are frequent dangling participles, awkward metaphors, and anachronistic slang. The most vivid passages in the book describe the "Insullania Sites" Wasik visited, including Insull's villa north of Chicago and the opera house he opened just eleven days after the 1929 stock-market crash. Wasik writes in his notes that he "saw firsthand the amazing network of power that Insull created," and that "it was not until I visited some of Insull's homes that I started to appreciate his personality, influence, and legacy" (p. 251). Had he followed his apparent urge to write a travel narrative, following Insull's footsteps across Europe and the United States, he might have produced a more original book. As it stands, The Merchant of Power may introduce Insull to readers not familiar with the tycoon. But those who want to understand Insull's achievements and failures will be better served by other accounts. ZAchary M. Schrag Dr. Schrag, assistant professor of history at George Mason University, is the author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (2006). Copyright © 2007 The Society for the History of Technology

From Edison to Enron

Kenneth Lay's secret partnerships and deceitful accounting certainly hurt Enron's investors, customers, and employees and tarnished his reputation, even if he's not found guilty of any crime when he goes to trial in January. Yet like Samuel Insull a century before him, Lay's trial probably won’t stop the revolution he advanced within the power industry.

Modeling, Diagramming, and Early Twentieth-Century Histories of Invention and Entrepreneurship: Henry Ford, Sherwood Anderson, Samuel Insull

The historical narrative arguing that independent artisans were increasingly transformed into mere tenders of complicated machinery during the second half of the nineteenth century, leading ultimately to Henry Ford's minute division of labor in the assembly line, is both conventional and well known. Technology became more complex, its inner workings were less self-evident or easily comprehensible, and the material conditions of production, exemplified by modern factories built around a division of labor, became too large and systematic to be understood from the viewpoint of a single worker selling his or her labor. And, while industry was imagined more and more as an intricate system at the turn of the twentieth century, American society, analogously, under the increasing pressure of urbanization and immigration, came to be regarded as too complex to be understood from a single viewpoint. Exposés, for instance, on “how the other half lives,” to quote the title of Jacob Riis's famous book, attest both to the yearning and to the perceived inability to understand society as an entirety.This article suggests and examines the ways in which two older forms of imagining large systems, specifically, the methods of model-making and diagramming, were rearticulated at the turn of the twentieth century in response to a perceived greater complexity of both technology and American society. Models and diagrams are necessary when it seems that one can no longer envision a large system; they literally provide an imaginative site for a complex system. To understand the social roles of diagramming and model-making, I detail the ways each was imagined and deployed in the cultural history of invention and entrepreneurship in the early twentieth century.

Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Utility System

The electrical utility industry has undergone a revolution in the last thirty years. Before the 1970s utility companies enjoyed a “natural monopoly.” Recently, however, the advocates of a free-market system have challenged the old ways. Exploring this radical change is the purpose of Richard F. Hirsh's book. Power Loss unravels the mysteries of deregulation, a concept that took center stage with the California energy crisis of 2000–2001. In reviewing the growth of the electricity industry, Hirsh illustrates how pioneers such as Samuel Insull embraced the concept of a “natural monopoly,” in which utilities agreed to give pricing power to state regulatory commissions in exchange for freedom from competition, sympathetic treatment, and a reasonable profit. It was a comfortable system for the “power elites.” In the 1970s, however, events conspired to shake the edifice of monopoly, resulting in the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA). Section 210 of this complicated act opened the door to co-generation and the development of renewable energy technology. In essence, the section allowed a business or a small entrepreneur to produce electricity, and it required the utility company to purchase that power at a fair price.

Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1912–1936: Transforming Tradition by Sally A. Kitt Chappell

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 203 events, but an exhaustive list of patents with a sampling of patent drawings and specifications of the first Ferris wheel make for an extremely interesting section. Notes and references conclude this delightful excursion. It is unfortunate that an otherwise fine book is marred by a case of sloppy proofreading. These errors tend to detract from the work’s scholarly authority. There is no excuse for the likes of, “Graydon, a retired United State Navel Officer” (p. 95). Not only are letters transposed, but in speaking of the Columbian Exposition wheel we are left to wonder what the author meant: “The design of the wheel involved 36 panels, each consisting of the inner and outer clouds” (p. 58). Is the word “cloud” some esoteric technical term? Should it be inner and outer chords, a term familiar to an engineer but probably not to the average reader? Despite nicely detailed biographical sketches of key players and discussion of the business itself, there is a dearth of technical details regarding the industry and product. Questions concerning the materials used, size of the industry, number of workers, fabrication techniques, interchangeability, and standards all come to mind but go unanswered. William Worthington Mr. Worthington is with the Division of Engineering and Industry at the National Museum of American History. Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1912— 1936: Transforming Tradition. By Sally A. Kitt Chappell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Pp. xxv + 325; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $65.00. What is the value of an exhaustive study of a mainstream architec­ tural firm? In Sally Kitt Chappell’s capable hands the answer is a contribution to knowledge and a standard against which to measure any monograph on a single firm. The story she tells is of the slow polishing of familiar forms, how a traditional firm produced archi­ tecture for new use from old forms. The four sections of the book represent four slightly different approaches to the same material, the architecture of Graham, Ander­ son, Probst and White. The place of individual structures in the context of the city and their function in the civic life constitute the theme of part 1. Five building types are identified and ranked as the values of City Beautiful planning, the special contribution of the firm’s mentor, Daniel Hudson Burnham. In the highest category were public build­ ings serving a primarily public function within a grouping of civic buildings, such as the Washington Post Office Building as part of the Union Station complex, or the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium as part of the cultural heart of Chicago. 204 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Railroad stations were complex organizations of public spaces designed to express the glamour of travel and including areas for technicaljobs and commercial offices. Their relationship to the urban fabric, Chappell suggests, was to be a stimulus for growth. Depart­ ment stores were developed by Burnham, Ernest Graham, and Pierce Anderson in the image of an idealized city with each part bearing a meaningful relation to the whole, “hierarchically organized.” Each of their department stores contained gathering or civic spaces, transpor­ tation cores, avenues, and restaurants. Light industrial buildings, articulated in a cladding of red brick with terra-cotta trim, like Chicago’s Western Telegraph Building (1917—19), were of unusually high architectural standards for struc­ tures near the bottom of the urban hierarchy. At the bottom were factories and warehouses which, Chappell shows us, could be expres­ sions of a technical or social transition/change. The Butler Brothers warehouses, Chicago (1912 — 13 and 1917—22), were designed as a visual transition between the dignified semipublic architecture of the area around Union Station and the light industrial area anticipated to its south. They retained the traditional commercial office building formula of three parts—base, shaft, and cap—while the cladding was articulated in the materials of nearby industrial buildings. The power inherent in the giant electrical generating plants envisioned by Samuel Insull, president of the Chicago Edison Company, was dra­ matically yet subtly expressed in the step-massing of the State Line Generating Station in Hammond, Indiana (1929-34), with its trium­ phal arches picked...

Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America ed. by Joel A. Tarr, Gabriel Dupuy

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 299 terminology. The all-important maps are nearly illegible, and the evidence they summarize is never sufficiently explained to those of us who are not urban engineers. More serious is the pervasive hyper­ bole: “reduction in artisanal activity brought the Western city to the antechamber of death” (p. 137). This quotation suggests another problem, the implication that this comprehensive schema of urban development for the Paris basin is applicable to “the West” as a whole. Only in the conclusion do we discover that the urban microclimate i¥i England and Holland and hence their industrial technology were “totally different” from that of “French cities” (p. 227). And in the end we are left hanging between two models of causation, the one starting with mentality, the other with military and industrial technol­ ogy. Still, what Guillerme does provide is an immensely provocative new look at old cities and especially the changing dialectic of water, economic activity, and technological change. Reed Geiger Dr. Gek;er is an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware. He has completed a study of the origins of the canal age in France and is beginning work on a political, economic, and technological comparison of the canals in England, France, and the United States. Technology and the Rise ofthe Networked City in Europe andAmerica. Edited by Joel A. Tarr and Gabriel Dupuy. Philadelphia: Temple Univer­ sity Press, 1988. Pp. xix + 339; illustrations, tables, notes. $34.95. -This book is a collection of historical analyses of the creation of networks of infrastructure capital and associated technology in Euro­ pean and American cities, mostly in the critical period from mid-19th century to mid-20th century. On the whole, it is a valuable collection lor a wide variety of readers, including historians who specialize in particular countries or in public works, and also scholars in engineer­ ing and the social sciences who want to learn about a subject new to them. There is a strong emphasis on international comparisons. The authors make extensive references to the literature, so the book will be a long-lived and versatile piece of capital. The sixteen essays, seven by French scholars, were originally published in French in Les annales de la recherche urbaine in 1984, but some have been revised for this English-language edition. They are organized into five parts: transportation; water systems; waste dis­ posal; energy, heat, and power; communications. There is, unfortu­ nately, no essay on all the major networks in a single large city. Of course the essays vary in style, interest, and relative emphases on overview and on details. Many authors do very well indeed in keeping a broad perspective, offering stimulating hypotheses and presenting essential facts, all in the same essay. Some do seem to get lost in the 300 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE pipes and miss the network, to alter the usual metaphor of trees and forest. Major themes include: international technology diffusion; the effects of different government institutions and “styles” on interna­ tional differences; the role of key people (such as Samuel Insull in Harold Platt’s essay on electrification of Chicago); the rise of “profes­ sional expertise”; and—a theme that I especially appreciated—the frequent importance of network accessibility and of financing in general national strategies (not always explicit) to allocate society’s resources between income classes. It is a pity that one cannot say much more, in a short review; about some of the important essays. John McKay and Anthony Sutcliffe, in essays on urban transit, are especially successful in putting the details in a wider framework of political economy, vested interests, and aesthetic and other attitudes. (Dominique Larroque also stresses opposition of class interests in a study of transportation in Paris.) Roselyne Messager has an interesting explanation of why municipal­ ities are more involved in utility management in Germany than in France and nicely relates it to the greater use of district heating in Germany. Seymour Mandelbaum offers a stimulating interpretation of why communications are something of an exception in the picture, in the sense that specialized urban polities have not developed around communications as they have around other networks. He suggests that...

Engineers and Economists: Historical Perspectives on the Pricing of Electricity

Engineers and Economists: Historical Perspectives on the Pricing of Electricity WILLIAM J. HAUSMAN AND JOHN L. NEUFELD The history of' the electric utility industry in the United States is in large part the story of how engineers and businessmen responded to the numerous organizational and technological problems associated with the generation and distribution of electricity.1 A particularly com­ plex problem faced by the industry was the seemingly prosaic com­ mercial issue of how to price the product. Although physical measures of electrical energy were developed quite early, the technological and economic characteristics of electricity generation and distribution were such that the establishment of a single, uniform price charged all customers under all conditions would have been disastrous for the utility. Electricity rate structures were important on a broader scale because they were a major factor influencing the diffusion of electric power, the pattern of electricity consumption, and the efficiency of energy use. As one contemporary engineer noted regarding the cost of power, “Some industries are absolutely dependent for their exis­ tence upon the possibility of obtaining cheap enough power to enable the product to compete with something else, which may possibly be a natural product (either the same or a substitute).”2 In the early days of electric power, firms in the industry faced severe competition both from other electric utilities and from alternatives to centrally generated electricity, including gas and, especially important, the generation of electricity by large consumers in “isolated plants.” By 1910 many electric companies had consolidated into local monop­ olies, although competition with gas utilities and isolated plants ofDr . Hausman is professor of economics at the College of William and Mary; Dr. Neufeld is associate professor of economics at the L’niversitv of North Carolina at Greensboro. 'They thank the Technology and Culture referees for their helpful comments. 'For an excellent discussion of this process, see Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880—1930 (Baltimore, 1983). ^Charles E. Lucke, “Power Costs,” Transactions of the American Electromechanical Society (1907), p. 339.©1989 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/89/3001 -0001 $01.00 83 84 WilliamJ. Hausman andJohn L. Neufeld fered a continuing challenge. Under these circumstances, the structure of rates was a major determinant of the profitability and ultimate success of an electric utility and of the industry as a whole. The po­ tential for abusive pricing practices, however, was one of the factors leading to demands for state regulation of electric utilities. The problem of devising actual rate structures fell initially to the engineers and businessmen in the forefront of the new industry. The discussion this problem stimulated is well recorded in the engineering and trade journals of the time.3 Its significance can be seen in part from the statements of Samuel Insull, the individual who was perhaps most responsible for developing the organizational and technological structure of the modern industry.4 In 1898 Insull remarked in a dis­ cussion about pricing, “I devote more of my time to it than to any other one subject connected with our business.”5 He noted in 1910 that the use of proper rate structures “may possibly have had as much to do with reducing operating costs and reducing interest and de­ preciation costs as have the wonderful work of the inventors and the marvelous skill of the engineers.”1’ Insull’s words fail to reflect the fact that it was engineers who were largely responsible for the pricing developments he lauded. It was not until the end of the first decade of the 20th century, when the electric power industry was being brought under the umbrella of state regulation, that economists began to focus their attention on the issue of electricity pricing. From the beginning, they tended to ap­ proach the industry as a case study for the application of theoretical pricing principles. Although substantial work had already been done on this problem by engineers, economists brought a new perspective to the issue. The relationship between economists and engineers on such commercial issues as pricing parallels the relationship between scientists and engineers on many scientific issues. Economists generally worked from an overall theoretical framework...

Harold L. Ickes and the National Park Service

In 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to balance his cabinet by nominating supporter to be secretary of the interior. Senators Hiram Johnson of California and Bronson Cutting of New Mexico both turned him down, preferring to remain in the Senate.' Roosevelt then turned to Harold LeClair Ickes, an independent Republican lawyer from Chicago. Ickes would serve as secretary of the interior from 1933 to 1945, longer than any man before or since. His responsibilities included the National Park Service, which-except for certain of its personnel -prospered under the leadership of this complex and colorful figure. Born in 1874, Ickes spent his first years in Pennsylvania but moved to the midwestern metropolis during his youth. As reporter for the Chicago Record, he covered Republicans in the 1900 election and became particular admirer of vice-presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt. He worked actively in Roosevelt's 1912 Bull Moose campaign, reverted to regularity on behalf of Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, but then supported every Democratic presidential candidate during the 1920s. At home in Chicago he battled Samuel Insull and the colorful Mayor William H. Big Bill Thompson. His tireless and uncompromising advocacy of reformist principles and his facility for verbal attack made him almost the incarnation of lonely, righteous, and inextinguishable pugnacity. When Ickes finally found himself on the winning side of presidential campaign in 1932, he thought first of becoming commissioner of Indian affairs; then he resolved to shoot for the top position in the Interior Department. He was not from the western states that traditionally supplied secretaries of the interior, and he had no personal familiarity with his successful candidate. He made his interest known to FDR through mutual acquaintances, however, and eagerly accepted the post upon his call to Roosevelt's Hyde Park home.2 The new secretary of the interior was a remarkably complex and profoundly suspicious man who thrived on

The Electrification of America: The System Builders

Isaiah Berlin in Hedgehog and the Fox quoted the Greek poet Archilochus, wrote, The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. This essay on the Electrification of America is about hedgehogs. Sir Isaiah describes them as those who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate. Foxes, in contrast, pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory. Berlin categorizes Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust among the hedgehogs.1 I want to add Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull, and S. Z. Mitchell.

Losses to the Public in The Insull Collapse: 1932-1946

The purpose of this study is to trace the disposition of stockholder securities and to estimate the losses incurred by investors as a result of the collapse of Samuel Insull's utility complex.

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:The Offenders. By Giles Playfair and Derrick Sington.Evidence. By Rupert Cross, m.a., b.c.l., Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.The Constitutional Law of Great Britain and the Commonwealth. By O. Hood Phillips.Leading Cases in Constitutional Law. By O. Hood Phillips.Foa's General Law of Landlord and Tenant. Eighth Edition. By H. Heathcote‐Williams, m.a., q.c., with E. Dennis Smith, ll.m., Ronald Bernstein, b.a., and Christopher Priday, b.a.International Law. Volume 1. International Law as applied by International Courts and Tribunals: Part I. By Georg Schwarzenberger, ph.d., Dr.Jur.Bilateral Studies in Private International Law: No. 8, American‐Australian Private International Law. By Zelman Cowen.The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandeis. By Alexander M. Bickel, with an Introduction by Paul A. Freund.Battles at the Bar. By K. L. Gauba.Constitutional Developments in India. By Charles Henry Alexandrowicz, Professor of International and Constitutional Law at the University of Madras.The Supreme Court and Judicial Review in India. By Sri Ram Sharma, Director, Institute of Public Administration, Sholapur.Notable American Trials. By Francis X. Busch. (1) Guilty or not Guilty? The Trials of Leo Frank, D. C. Stephenson, Samuel Insull, Alger Hiss. (2) Prisoners at the Bar. The Trials of William Haywood, Sacco and Vanzetti, Loeb and Leopold, Bruno Hauptmann. (3) They Escaped the Hangman. The Trials of Caleb Powers, Halbert Patrick, Frances Hall, Hans Haupt. (4) Enemies of the State. The Trials of Mary Eugenia Surratt, Alphonse Capone, The Rosenbergs; The Teapot Dome Cases.Das Schweizerische Patentrecht. Kommentar zum Bundesgesetz betreffend die Erfindungspatente vom 25. Juni 1954. Dr. Rudolf E. Blum and Dr. Mario M. Pedrazzini.Securities for Bankers' Advances. By James Milnes Holden, ll.b., ph.d., a.i.b., Barrister‐at‐Law.Overseas Trade Corporations. By David R. Stanford, m.a., ll.b., of the Middle Temple, Barrister‐at‐Law.Plain Tales from the Courts. By W. J. Dobie, ll.d.Copyright and Film. By Åke lögdberg, Professor of Law at the Lund University, Sweden.The Elements of Estate Duty. By C. N. Beattie, ll.b., Barrister‐at‐Law.

Samuel Insull and the Movement for State Utility Regulatory Commissions

It was one of history's sardonic pranks that the forces deriding business efficiency and clamoring for regulation made Samuel Insull a favorite scapegoat. He had built his early electric system in Chicago with vision, administrative and political skill, and a conspicuously advanced concept of public relations. Insull espoused the “natural monopoly” principle, but he shocked contemporaries by insisting upon the corollary necessity for public control. He fought hard and effectively for state regulation, not as a radical theorist hut as a realist with a record of public service unsurpassed in the infant electric utility industry.

The Extradition Case of Samuel Insull, SR., in Relation to Greece

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Decision on the Application of the United States of America for the Extradition of Samuel Insull, SR .

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International Law Problems in the Extradition of Samuel Insull

International Law Problems in the Extradition of Samuel Insull