Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies

Book 2 Internet Appendices

Chapter 5: Plummet and Ruin (1930—38)

• 5.1 Insull’s Blind Spot: Business-as-Usual
• 5.2 Insull Confessions
• 5.3 Why Pyramiding?
• 5.4 The “Morgan Conspiracy” Theory
• 5.5 Insull’s File Biography
• 5.6 Insull, the New Deal, and Judge Wilkerson
• 5.7 Government Depression and Antidepression Policy and Insull’s Collapse
  
• Bibliography (PDF)

5.1 Insull’s Blind Spot: Business-as-Usual

Samuel Insull was the perennial optimist, having worked his way out of tight spots and scoring success after business success.

Here is a sampling of quotations of his über-optimism:

“A slump or calamity that would be disastrous [for electric utilities] is practically inconceivable” (1929, quoted in Cudahy and Henderson: 59).

“Those who were able to keep their securities and to carry on are, so far as intrinsic values are concerned, just as well off today as they were at the very highest point of the market. It is only a question of time when securities will get back, not to the extraordinary prices that existed, but to a really normal substantial value” (January 8, 1930: 5).

“We are all of us reasonably well off in proportion to our possessions, but none of us feel quite as well off as he or she did the later end of the summer and in the early fall” (January 8, 1930: 4).

“[Abnormal situations happen. They have happened before and they will happen again. When people as a whole lose their heads and their sense of proportion of far as values are concerned, they are just as much bound to come a cropper financially as they are if they lose their heads in business and get a tumble from the top to the bottom. I think most of us largely lost our heads, and we have been trying to get ourselves in hand ever since” (January 8, 1930: 4—5).

And in first quarter 1930, with the Depression nearing a half year, Insull said:

“I think business is reasonably good, considering what we have been through…. I have the same confidence that I have had…. I think business ought to go along pretty well” (February 17, 1930: 13).

In October, Insull reported: “On the whole, the Insull group of properties will show reasonably good balance sheets for 1930” (October 12, 1930: 4).

He added: “Speaking from my own experience in the operation of the properties of the sol-called Insull group, I have the greatest confidence that the conservatively financed utilities the country over will weather the present business depression with great credit to themselves and satisfaction to their owners” (October 12, 1930: 5).

Insull was clearly a victim of the Great Depression, an event that went longer than just about anyone expected. As he stated in retrospect:

I often wonder how much of my failure can be traced to following the policies of Herbert Hoover. Understand, I am not blaming him. His policies happened to be my policies and so I acted upon them. If he had advocated something different I would have been likely to have followed my own judgment. My troubles came from over-estimating the capacity of the United States to come back after the first blow of the depression.

When in 1931 the tide seemed to have turned, I thought recovery had set in. In that I was fooled–and so was the President. I—my companies—spent money as though things were all right. We believed that they were becoming all right. We increased our floating debt and this eventually brought about our bankruptcy. That was the penalty that I paid for helping with recovery and following the advice of the President, but, as I said before, the policies that I followed were my policies and that is why I followed them although they happened to be also the policies of the President. (Quoted in Berry: 28—29. Loyola University of Chicago Archives. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 17. Folder 2.

5.2 Insull Confessions

In early 1929 he told the ladies of the Women’s Information Committee: “That is the trouble we all have to look for, not to get too high an estimate of one’s own capacity.” (January 10, 1929: 5). In the same talk, he recounted how getting fired “took the conceit out of me.” (4) But did it?

A year later, he said in regard to the stock market correction: “When people as a whole lose their heads and their sense of proportion so far as values are concerned, they are just as much found to come a cropper financially as they are if they lose their heads in business and get a tumble for the top to the bottom. I think most of us largely lost our heads, and we have been trying to get ourselves in hand ever since.” (January 8, 1930: 5)

Regarding his poor relations with the New York financial community:

I had heard rumors in New York that one of my main troubles there was that I had not given any considerable amount of my business, either of my operating companies or holding companies or investment companies, to New York banks. That undoubtedly was true. I was engaged in endeavoring to build up Chicago as a financial center and, therefore, gave all of the business that I could influence, that banks and trust companies were engaged in, to the Chicago institutions. (1937: 39)

In his trial testimony, he referred to his total reliance on Chicago as “one of my great mistakes,” adding:

I think that if I had … the same intimate relations in, say, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston banking institutions that I had always had with the main Chicago banking institutions, I think the results in the spring of 1932 when I needed substantial assistance might have been far different instead (United States v. Insull: 4314).

Insull referred to the buyout of Cyrus Eaton where he thought he had local financing but ended up having to rely on New York interests as “a very decided mistake,” explaining:

The mistake I made in connection with [the Eaton purchase] … was that I did not arrange either before or just after the purchase was made for the permanent financing of the purchase by the issue of some sort of security and the sale of it (United States v. Insull:4357).

Insull also regretted staying on too long:

I should have retired at fifty or sixty. I could have retired at seventy, but then I would have left others with the sack to hold. I could not do it then, for it would have meant deserting my old employees. If I had gone back to England when I was fifty or sixty I would have been rich, famous, and respected (Quoted in Berry: 12).

5.3 Why Pyramiding?

Why did Insull, so late in his career, create one, then two, investment holding companies that were a pyramid upon his ownership in his major companies? Insull, after all, had once deprecated the practice.

There were several reasons, some unsophisticated and others more sophisticated. Less sophisticated: “You know, just about that time, it was quite the fashion to organize investment companies, so I claim no originality for the act” (May 12, 1930: 22).

There was the family reason: “in order to provide for continuity of management in these great prospects for which I am responsible at this time” (May 12, 1930: 23).

He was careful to note the fairness of inside and outside investors: “Sitting around the table with my brother and my son, we were careful to put in our securities at very considerably below the market price… We do not ask [others] to go in on any other basis than the basis upon which we go in ourselves” (May 12, 1930: 23).

The object of IUI and CSCC was to buy and hold stock (“permanent lodgment,” as Insull put it) in the Big Four: Commonwealth Edison, Peoples Gas, Middle West Utilities, and Public Service Company of Northern Illinois.

I think that some day or another I will pass on and that is getting a start to get my accounts in order, and the overshipment of securities in our various corporations concentrated in one organization so that when the time comes for me to pass over, that I won’t leave too much commotion or turmoil behind me for those who follow. That was the first idea I had in mind when I formed … Insull Utility Investment, Incorporated (January 10, 1929: 3).

An exchange with one small investor was also revealing (February 17, 1930: 14).

Q. “I can’t see the object of the two [investment] organizations…. What is the difference in the objects of the two?” (Maggie Gray)

A. “They are about the same.” (Samuel Insull)

Q. “Why is it necessary to have two?” (Gray)

A. “Because we needed some more money. You need more than one string in your bow when you are playing with such big chips.” (Insull)

The trusts were not for speculative, in-and-out investing:

Insull Utilities Investments, Inc., was formed for the purpose of acquiring securities in [the Insull] companies. It was not formed as a trading company. It was formed with the definite object of buying and keeping considerable securities, such as the Commonwealth Company, The Peoples Gas Light & Coke Company, the Public Service Company, the Middle West Utilities Company, and its subsidiaries, and the Midland United Company (Insull, (February 17, 1930: 5).

We do not aim at controlling any of those companies. It would take entirely too much money to make any such effort, but we do aim to have a very large interest in those companies (February 17, 1930: 5)

“We do some trading through our subsidiary, Insull, Son & Company, but our main object is to buy and hold securities of the Insull Group” (February 17, 1930: 5).

We thought it would take some considerable time to develop [IUC], but, partly owing to the circumstances of the last year, we have had to develop it very rapidly. The trouble in the stock market last fall compelled us to purchase a great many securities that we otherwise would probably have postponed buying for a year or so. The refinancing of the Middle West Utilities Company was another reason for our making additional purchases” (February 17, 1930: 5).

It was necessary during the panic that care should be taken to try to protect the interests of stockholders by easing the market by taking securities from time to time as they were offered in the market. Our operations have been very large as a result (February 17, 1930: 6).

As I said before, it was necessary to make purchases of securities in order to steady the market from time to time … in the interest of protecting our shareholders. (Insull, February 17, 1930, pp. 5—6).

5.4 The “Morgan Conspiracy” Theory

According to Forrest McDonald’s biography, Insull was brought down not by his own shortcomings but by the deliberate action of the House of Morgan. Yes, Insull had made mistakes, but they would not have been fatal had the Morgan bankers not exploited them in order to crush Insull.

The motive for crushing him, according to McDonald, was an attempt to monopolize the nation’s utilities.

Morgan set out to end the rivalry by bringing the entire electric and gas utility business under the control of a single, Morgan-dominated super-holding company. The United Corporation was to be in the utility industry what American Telephone and Telegraph was in the telephone industry. . . . The United Corporation was the most ambitious venture ever undertaken by Morgan. Its capitalization would be twenty times that of United States Steel (McDonald: 249—250).

Obviously, any such monopoly would have to absorb Insull’s empire. “Standing outside [the Morgan empire] were three major groups and a handful of minor ones. The major groups were the Insull group, the Byllesby (Standard Gas and Electric) group, and the Doherty (Cities Service) group. By the middle of 1928 the latter two had ceased to count” (ibid.: 250).

In McDonald’s telling, the House of Morgan acquired the weapon needed to crush Insull as the result of Insull’s purchase of Cyrus Eaton’s stock. Illinois insurance man Donald R. McLennan had urged Insull to buy the stock and had assured him that Continental Bank would finance the purchase. “Then after Insull had agreed to buy . . . it developed that the Continental could not finance the entire purchase, not could other Chicago banks” (McDonald: 289). Insull was compelled to borrow $20 million from the New York bankers whom he had long shunned and even scorned (ibid.).

As collateral, the New York banks took voting stock in Insull’s two investment trusts: the Insull Utilities Investment Company and the Corporation Securities Company of Chicago. This meant that, if they could drive down the price of those two stocks, they could demand ever more collateral against their loan—in the form of ever more voting stock. And that was precisely what they proceeded to do, according to McDonald. Fighting to keep the stock up was Fred Scheel, “Insull’s security salesman par excellence.” (ibid.: 292). But then in September 1931, England went off the gold standard and the stock market collapsed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 31 percent, with this month (November 2011) being the worst in the entire history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. “From Christmas, 1931, onward, the New York bankers were in the saddle” (McDonald: 295—96).

Yet instead of using their voting control to simply taking over the Insull companies, the bankers first wished to strip Insull of his hometown reputation, so that they might appear in the form of corporate rescuers rather than raiders. To that end, they forced Insull to accept an auditor (Arthur Andersen & Co.) who changed his companies’ accounting method from the one customarily used by utilities (a retirement reserve system) to one used by industry (a straight-line depreciation system).

By means of that simple bookkeeping switch, the auditors rendered Middle West Utilities insolvent and indeed proclaimed that it was “a worthless pile of paper” that had never made a profit. Such apparent malfeasance, opined McDonald, “provided the New York bankers with an excuse for anything they chose to do” (ibid.: 297). What they chose to do, in April 1932, was refuse to renew a $10 million note of Middle West Utilities, sending it into receivership.

The end came two months later. Three of the operating companies had, jointly, some $60 million in notes coming due. The New York bankers, according to McDonald, persuaded the Insull companies’ outside directors to demand Insull’s resignation on the argument that such a large amount of credit would not be forthcoming with Insull still in charge (ibid.: 302). Stanley Field confronted Insull with the demand, and Insull resigned on June 6, 1932.

Is McDonald right about Insull’s destruction at the hands of the Morgan banks? Most reviewers of his book thought not. Otis Pease, writing in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly, asked: “Was not Wall Street really more right than wrong to withhold further credit from a man whose judgment had already proven faulty, but who still insisted he could cope with an economic crisis plainly beyond his own power to solve?” (Pease: 176).

Another dissenter was Ralph Hidy, editor of the Harvard Studies in Business History (1962—1971) and theBusiness History Review (1962—1955). Hidy reviewed McDonald’s Insull for the Journal of Economic History in 1963, and, as regards the great Morgan conspiracy, he saw a power struggle, not a conspiracy, writing: “That Insull was a pawn in a fight for power between Chicago’s investment bankers led by Halsey, Stuart & Company, and New York’s group led by Morgan & Company, the biographer apparently never perceives” (Hidy: 372).

The distinguished business historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr. also rejected McDonald’s interpretation, saying that “[McDonald’s] story of Insull’s downfall would have been more believable if he had given the depression and the inherent structure of utility holding companies more, and the bankers less, credit for Insull’s fall. After all, in the spring of 1932 the bankers had a great deal more to think about than breaking Insull” (Chandler: 146).

Reviewers, of course, have not nearly as much information to interpret as the authors of the books they review. Thus, whether McDonald’s theory of a Morgan conspiracy stands up to historical analysis will not be determined until another eminent historian revisits the question of Insull’s rise and fall in light of the House of Morgan.

5.5 Insull’s File Biography

The following official biography of Samuel dates from the mid-1920s and is contained in Loyola University of Chicago Archives (Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 73. Folder 3).

Insull, Samuel, Chairman or President of numerous public-utility corporations including Commonwealth Edison Co., The Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co., Chicago Rapid Transit Co., Public Service Co. of Northern Ill., Middle West Utilities Co., Midland Utilities Co. and Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee R.R. Co.; also Chairman, Insull, Son & Co., Inc., Chicago and Insull, Son & Co, Ltd., London, England.

Chicago offices, 72 West Adams St. and 122 So. Michigan Blvd.

Born in London, Nov. 11, 1859. Son of Samuel and Emma Short Insull. Educated private schools in England; Sc.D. Union College of Schenectady, 1917; LL.D. Northwestern University, Chicago, 1925; LL.D. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Ind., 1926.

Married Margaret A. Bird 1899; one son, Samuel, Jr., also a public-utility executive.

Has been connected with electricity-supply utility since 1881, when he came to the United States as private secretary for Thomas A. Edison, having been connected with Mr. Edison’s interests in England two years previously. Had full charge of Mr. Edison’s business affairs for many years, representing him in establishment of Electric Tube Co., Edison Lamp Co. and Edison Machine Works; in 1886 established for Mr. Edison Schenectady Works of last named concern; in 1889 Second Vice-Pres. of newly formed Edison General Electric Co.; in 1892 for short time second vice-Pres. Of newly formed General Electric Co., resigning to come to Chicago as Pres. Chicago Edison Co., July 1, 1892; also Pres. Commonwealth Electric Co., 1898, combining the two companies to form present Commonwealth Edison Co. 1907.

Pioneered in many modern phases electricity-supply development, such as regulated monopoly, massing production and interconnection, low rates for service, earning public good will, and economy of operation by very large units; established first all-steam-turbine generating station in the world (Fisk St. Station, Chicago, 1903). Established Public Service Co. of Northern Ill. 1911, Middle West Utilities Co. 1912, Midland Utilities Co. (as Public Service Investment Co.) 1923; Chairman of Broad, The Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co., 1913, and Pres. 1919, rehabilitating this company; Chairman of Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee R.R. Co. since organization 1923 and Chicago Rapid Transit Co. since organization 1924, but connected with both properties several years before those dates; Director Chicago City Connecting Railways Collateral Trust.

Active in movement, dating 1921, to preserve Grand Opera for Chicago; Pres. Chicago Civic Opera Co. Trustee St. Lukes Hospital; Chairman of Committee that in 1923 raised $2,500,000 for 19-story annex.

Founded Franklin Medal (1914) to reward workers in physical science and Insull Medal (1922) for savers of human life by resuscitation from electric shock. In 1917 and 1918 devoted himself to war work; Chairman of State Council of Defense of Illinois, organizing state-wide team work for winning the war. Among others, member of Chicago, Commercial (Pres. 1921) and Chicago Athletic Clubs of Chicago, Engineers and Metropolitan Clubs of New York, and Devonshire, Reform, Royal Automobile and American Clubs of London. Member National Electric Light Assn. (Pres. 1898); Assn. of Edison Illuminating Companies (Pres. 1897); fellow American Institute of Electrical Engineers; member (British) Institution of Electrical Engineers and Royal Institution of Great Britain. Congregationalist. Republican.

Has delivered hundreds of public speeches; author of “Public Control and Private Operation” (1899), “Central-Station Electric Service” (1915) and “Public Utilities in Modern Life” (1924) as well as numerous pamphlets. Interested in practical farming and improved breeds of stock. Residences, 1100 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago and Hawthorn Farms, Lake County, Ill.

5.6 Insull, the New Deal, and Judge Wilkerson

Judge James Herbert Wilkerson, the presiding judge at Samuel Insull’s first and greatest trial, likely played a far greater role in the resulting verdict of “not guilty” than Insull biographer Forrest McDonald’s view of the judge as neutral implies.

During the trial, Wilkerson made four key rulings (Bradley: 207, 209, 213). Scholars and lawyers may argue about whether his rulings were justified legally, but the fact is that all favored the defense. McDonald, however, fails to note that Wilkerson had personal reasons to favor the defense, and his discussion therefore stretches to find other explanations. For example, to explain Wilkerson’s key pro-defense ruling (allowing Insull to tell his whole rags-to-riches story), McDonald says “Wilkerson himself was so wrapped up in the story that he waved aside [the prosecution’s] objections” (McDonald: 330—31). That is unlikely. As a member of Chicago’s professional class for forty years, and a chairman of Illinois’ Public Utilities Commission for two years (1919—21), Wilkerson surely knew Insull well and knew the Insull story. He wanted the jury to know it, and well.

Wilkerson is mentioned just two times by McDonald, and his chairmanship of the state Public Utilities Commission is not one of them. Wilkerson is mentioned as the judge at Insull’s trial, and, without any connection by McDonald, he is earlier (p. 258) mentioned as the federal judge who in 1928 set up a panel of distinguished Chicago citizens to study the city’s transportation situation. What came out of his committee was: “a plan almost identical to the one proposed earlier by Insull” (McDonald: 258). Moreover, “carrying out the plan involved giving a blank check . . . to Samuel Insull” (ibid.: 259).

No less important, one group was vehemently opposed to the plan of the judge’s committee: “a group of intellectuals and perennially unsuccessful reformers” (ibid.). Among these were “Harold L. Ickes, whose antipathy for Insull dated from Insull’s refusal to give him an important job with the State Council of Defense, and Donald Richberg, whose antipathy to Insull dated from his run-in with Insull in the rate suit against Peoples Gas Company” (ibid.).

In 1932, Insull enemies Richberg and Ickes became advisors to presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Roosevelt made their old enemy Insull a principal target in his campaign. When Roosevelt won, Ickes became Secretary of the Interior, and Richberg rose to such power that he was dubbed “the assistant president” (Bradley: 197). Two years later, Judge Wilkerson would preside over the New Deal’s showcase trial against Insull. The question must be asked: How could Judge Wilkerson’s earlier encounter with these two opposed forces not have shaped his perceptions of them?

Indeed, following their 1928 encounter in the matter of Chicago’s traction system, Wilkerson acquired infinitely more reason to dislike Donald Richberg. In 1922, Wilkerson had issued an injunction against a national strike by several railroad unions, and the unions never forgot it. Neither did their lawyer in the dispute, Donald Richberg (Vadney: 93).

In January 1932, two and a half months after Wilkerson had sentenced Al Capone to prison, President Hoover nominated Wilkerson to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (“Hoover Names Wilkerson to Appeal Court”). But despite his hero status in Chicago, Wilkerson was strongly opposed by Richberg when he came up for Senate confirmation (Vadney: 93). Apart from rehashing the old anti-labor charge, Richberg said that “Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson was party to a scheme to ‘deliver the people’s traction rights to the Insull interests’” (“Richberg Tries New Attack to Bar Wilkerson”).

Richberg’s campaign against Wilkerson was successful. With bitter reluctance, on December 1, 1932, Wilkerson asked President Hoover not to resubmit his nomination to the Senate, and he returned to his district court seat, from which perch he presided over the Insull trial (Hoover). Under the circumstances, Judge Wilkerson was not likely to be stampeded by the New Deal’s 1934 prosecution of Samuel Insull, the arch-enemy of both Donald Richberg and Harold Ickes.

Indeed, if he needed a more recent motive, just months before the trial opened, the Chicago Tribune reported on page one (May 25, 1934) that U.S. Congressman James Simpson Jr. of Illinois claimed “Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes is bringing pressure on the house judiciary committee in an effort to force the impeachment of Judge James H. Wilkerson” (“Charges Ickes …”).

One can only speculate on Wilkerson’s objectivity or lack thereof. But we know for sure that he influenced the trial in four ways favorable to the defense, each of which is described in Edison to Enron (Bradley: 207, 209, 213).

5.7 Government Depression and Antidepression Policy and Insull’s Collapse

Government intervention fostered an artificial boom in the 1920s that necessitated the painful contraction of late 1929 forward. As explained by Austrian-school economists (F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Gottfried Haberler, and Lionel Robbins), inflationary monetary policy by the Federal Reserve Bank (est. 1913) fostered an unsound business boom in the 1920s (Ebeling: 206—212; 229—233). Easy money meant good times for practically all.

With the onset of the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover tragically resorted to government intervention, not to mention government suasion (see chapter 5, Ebeling: 183—84). Economist Steve Horwitz identified Hoover, not FDR, as “the father of the New Deal”:

Politicians and pundits portray Herbert Hoover as a defender of laissez faire governance whose dogmatic commitment to small government led him to stand by and do nothing while the economy collapsed in the wake of the stock market crash in 1929. In fact, Hoover had long been a critic of laissez faire. As president, he doubled federal spending in real terms in four years. He also used government to prop up wages, restricted immigration, signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, raised taxes, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation—all interventionist measures and not laissez faire. Unlike many Democrats today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisers knew that Hoover had started the New Deal. One of them wrote, “When we all burst into Washington … we found every essential idea [of the New Deal] enacted in the 100-day Congress in the Hoover administration itself” (1).

FDR then added intervention to intervention in the vain quest to engineer recovery. Government do-nothing or do-little policy which had ended previous U.S. downturns—such as that in 1920—21—went untried (Ebeling: 207—208).

Forrest McDonald noted, in the case of Chicago and Great Man Insull:

Between 1924 and 1927 virtually every old pro in the Chicago banking community died, leaving the banks in the hands of persons whose lack of seasoning prepared them ill for the financial storms ahead. Assuming command during the expansionist fever of the late twenties, they began throwing money at everyone who seemed prosperous; Insull they deluged with easy credit, begging him to accept it, for any purpose (278).

McDonald also relates the story of how the head of Continental Bank offered to lend the Insulls more than the legal limit by inviting the Insulls to create a new corporation (278).

“Insull had such good credit that the financial community caught its breath in time to snap up virtually every issue,” noted John Hogan in his history of Commonwealth Edison Company (151). This turned out to be bad for Insull and the general economy when boom turned to bust.

Bibliography: Chapter 5 Internet Appendices

Berry, Burton. Notes from Insull Conversations (copyright 1962 Samuel Insull Jr.). Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 17. Folder 2.

Bradley, Robert L., Junior. Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies. Salem, MA: Scriveneer Publishing, 2011.

Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. Review of Insull. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 50, no. 1 (June 1963): 144—47.

“Charges Ickes Behind Move to Oust Wilkerson,” Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1934.

Cudahy, Richard, and William Henderson. “From Insull to Enron: Corporate (Re)Regulation After the Rise and Fall of Two Energy Icons.” Energy Law Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1, 35—110.

Ebeling, Richard. Political Economy, Public Policy, and Monetary Economics: Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Tradition. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Hidy, Ralph. Review of Insull. Journal of Economic History 23: 371—73.

McDonald, Forrest. Insull. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1962.

Hogan, John. A Spirit Capable: The Story of Commonwealth Edison. Chicago: Mobium Press, 1986.

Hoover, Herbert. “Letter to Judge James H. Wilkerson Accepting His Request Not To Resubmit His Nomination to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals,” December 6, 1932. www.presidency.ucsb. edu/ws/index.php?pid= 23375

“Hoover Names Wilkerson to Appeal Court,” Chicago Tribune, January 13, 1932.)

Horwitz, Stephen. “Herbert Hoover: Father of the New Deal,” Cato Briefing Paper, September 29, 2011, athttp://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13719.

Insull, Samuel. Address of Samuel Insull to the Women’s Information Committee Meeting, Chicago, Illinois. January 10, 1929. Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 22. Folder 3. (1929a)

———. Address of Samuel Insull at the Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Commonwealth Edison Company, February 25, 1929. Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 22. Folder 3. (1929b)

———.. Address of Samuel Insull to the Edison Club, Chicago, Illinois. January 8, 1930. Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 22. Folder 4. (1930a)

———. . Address of Samuel Insull to Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Insull Utility Investments, Chicago, Illinois. February 17, 1930. Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 53. Folder 3. (1930b)

———. Address of Samuel Insull at the Annual Banquet of the Chicago Stock Exchange, May 12, 1930. Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 22. Folder 4. (1930c)

———. Press release. October 12, 1930. Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 49. Folder 1. (1930d)

———. . “Transcript of Questionnaire of Mr. Samuel Insull, Corporation Securities Co. Directors’ Suit, 1937. Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. Samuel Insull Papers, 1799—1970. Box 52. Folder 11.

McDonald, Forrest. Insull. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Pease, Otis. “Portrait of a Gaudy Tycoon.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 54, no. 3 (October 1963): 174—76.

“Richberg Tries New Attack to Bar Wilkerson,” Chicago Tribune, May 7, 1932.

United States vs. Insull et al., Vol. IV, pp. 3632—4932 (October/November 1934).

Vadney, Thomas A. The Wayward Liberal: A Political Biography of Donald Richberg Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1970.