This book by John F. Wasik is an ideal follow up to the one by Petr Beckman about the best way to produce electrical power, because it is an excellent reference to understand how electricity became so important in our lives. The book tells the remarkable story of Samuel Insull, who escaped an impoverished childhood in England by travelling to America to become the trusted secretary of Thomas Edison. His willingness to work tirelessly combined with his ethical nature endeared him to Edison. He became Edison’s accountant and marketer responsible for finding investors. He had to be aggressive and creative in the constant search for money, because Edison was often on the verge of being broke. Edison arranged to lay the power lines to light Wall Street, but he did not have a method for measuring electrical usage. He made his profits selling light bulbs.

Insull eventually split from Edison’s endeavors, moved to Chicago, and built an empire with power generating capacity and a power grid to light Chicago and other metropolitan areas. He saw everyone without electricity in their homes as a potential new customer. (Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit mocks the residents of Floral Heights and their desire to keep up with the neighbor’s most recent electrical purchases.) Insull built General Electric with financing from J.P. Morgan, and marketed electrical appliances. He became a very wealthy man, which set him up to lose massively in the Depression.

Insull pioneered “massing production,” which was later shortened to “mass production” by Henry Ford. His plants made generators and distribution systems, and he developed and implemented the idea of the government regulating electrical rates.

Insull’s investments grew in value at an astonishing rate along with his ability to market the idea that electrical appliances were needed in every home. His wealth attracted powerful enemies, but the stock market crash in 1929 added more. The list of enemies included Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR actually began his 1932 campaign for the Presidency with a speech crusading against the “Insulls and Ishmaels of the world.” Insull poured everything he had into trying to save his companies when the markets collapsed, but that only succeeded at driving him into personal bankruptcy. Arrest warrants were issued for him, and he escaped to Greece for a time. He was eventually captured, returned, and tried with the full force of FDR’s Justice Department against him. The jury found Insull and his codefendants innocent.

Insull’s legacy is both our dependence on electricity and the numerous New Deal laws governing securities. The “…Federal Security and Exchange Act was reared on the ashes of the Insull empire.” The central Citizen Kane character was made to look like Insull.

Footnote: There was a planned community named “Westchester” that was to be a suburb of Chicago, and everything, including street lights, was in place for the construction of homes. The Depression resulted in the end of the development, but the street lights were lit thorough the 30’s and into the 40’s. The area was known locally as “…the best lit prairie in the Midwest.”