Samuel Insull and the Movement for State Utility Regulatory Commissions*

Forrest McDonald

Business History Review, 1958, vol. 32, issue 3, 241-254

Abstract: 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.

Date: 1958
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