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

by John F. Wasik and John F. Wasik

Book Overview

A timely rags-to-riches story, The Merchant of Power recounts how Sam Insull--right hand to Thomas Edison--went on to become one of the richest men in the world, pivotal in the birth of General... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 023060952X
• ISBN13: 9780230609525
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Prince of tides

This is business and social history on a grand scale. Chicago-philes will find "The Merchant of Power" especially engaging. Standing at the conductor's platform of author John Wasik's electric light orchestra is English émigré Samuel Insull. Insull's rise from struggling office boy to Thomas Edison's secretary to creator of General Electric, the electricity grid, and the modern metropolis is as interesting as it is obscure. The utilities baron's Depression-induced fall was the opening act for Enron and other combined calamities of industrialism and governmentalism. There really ought to be a movie about Insull. If Edison was king then Insull certainly was the prince of tides industrial and cultural (see p. 12, hardcover edition, 2006). Edison told Insull to "make it go" and the student eagerly responded time and again. It's no exaggeration to say Insull accomplished the societal equivalent of the civil engineering marvel, described by Wasik, of making the Chicago River flow in a different direction. The entrepreneur's unrelenting promotion of electricity usage (p. 136) super-sized appetites, turning the American character default to consumption. This has produced profoundly anti-conservative results from both the environmental and political standpoints. Whether Insull mitigated this by creating lighting systems that enable the Holy Torah to be more easily studied by day and by night is open to question. Our accomplished author, a Bloomberg News columnist, makes yet another vital point when he observes that electrification brought rural and urban America together. This made me wonder if today's widening political divide might be traced to the fact that most farmers and miners no longer themselves bring their products to the central city with the central city becoming more and more dedicated to paper finance and bureaucracies. Is the roundaboutness of advanced capitalism eroding the social glue? The Torah shows us a way out in the commandments to bring first fruits and other produce to be eaten in Jerusalem. Having a week-long farmers market in The Loop would probably do wonders for social harmony. Wasik hits another Frank Thomas-style (G-d love Comiskey Park!) intellectual tater when he describes electrification's/industrialism's lasting legacy. While it lessened drudgery, especially for women, it also acted as a stimulator of demand. This brings to mind a phrase from Ring Lardner's "The Democrats in 1924" - "Yesterday was supposed to be a day of rest and as far as I can see it ain't been no different than all the rest of the days." This is where personal responsibility ought to enter. With apologies to Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the machines but in ourselves. Our author admires John Kenneth Galbraith and does a superb Galbraithian job of explaining how mass production and big government fueled each other (p. 80). Limited government types who doubt this might want to ponder how Insull and others ingrained techno-materialism in the minds

History repeats itself

One of the most striking aspects of this book is the rare coincidence it draws with the current market turmoil with that of the great depression and the exuberance which led it all. The background of this book is set on a character, Sam Insull, who unfortunately got completely buried in the history. His ordinary demeanor, shroud business acumen and stunning entrepreneurship was so remarkable that it made the DOW to melt (to 56 points) in 1929 and forced Fed to institute SEC in 1934. This SEC is the same foundation on which modern financial structure is based and is subject of so much debate. After reading this book, you can almost relate what Obama means when he says, "...this 19th century financial system needs to change to reflect 21st century needs... (Not verbatim)". From the completely other side, this book makes few great points. This book examines two completely different personalities -- one, of an inventor (Thomas Edison) and second an innovator (Sam Insul). And makes it clear that inventions are not innovations. In a subtle manner it also draws a point that certain kind of innovations only leads towards disaster, hence, not all innovations are equal (or good). It tells us innovations can cause "market value" to completely evaporate - in other terms - creative destruction. If you happen to wonder -- what is the structure of our corporate financing and what value it adds to the system, OR how we got into the situations where we are today (with our credit crisis), OR if you really wonder the ingenuity and geniuses of this country (in other words, "land of opportunity") this is surely a book for you (without any pun intended). Based on your gut feel, after you have read this book, you may end up forming opinion about what (and how much) to regulate about the current system. But it will surely give you hope that we will definitely come out of the current crisis, with macho smart and much more confident. You will know that this is not the end of the world and that show-must-surely-go-on. Because, nothing-lasts-forever and history-repeats-itself ;-) Amen! Pradyot Rai The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis

The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard Of

Subtitled: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." Coming across "The Merchant Of Power" by John Wasik, I was intrigued by the title and book jacket, but I half expected this book to be a clever spoof, like a book-bound Zelig. It was hard to believe that one person could have had such an effect on the history of the United States, indeed living a substantial part of his life in New York City, but had been almost erased from history less than a century later. In fact, I Googled Mr. Insull, and found that yes, he did exist, and yes, he was that influential in the modern industrialized America of the late 19th- and early 20th-century. Insull was the business "brain" behind the eccentric tinkerer, Thomas Edison, who comes across as something of an old fool, and in the New York years, Insull was deeply involved in the Edison/Westinghouse/Tesla/AC/DC controversy, and the bitter J.P. Morgan takeover of Edison Electric (which became General Electric). Getting the heck out of Dodge before things got too dicey, he headed west to a primitive outpost on the edge of the American frontier, Chicago. Finally he was able to work his magic without running up against adversaries like Morgan or George Westinghouse; he bought and consolidated several small electric companies that were serving the city and created the complex electric grid that we know today. Part biography, part history, part science (or, electrical engineering, at least) and part gossip, the book illuminates a forgotten man, and a never-to-be-forgotten period of the American story.

Edison Invented, and Insull (Who?) Delivered.

Everyone knows the inspired inventor Thomas Edison. Edison was a classic rumpled genius, driven in his eagerness to invent but sloppy in his other habits. He was devoted to the technical aspects of his gadgets, but he had little head for business or making those gadgets pay. The business of his endeavors was as unkempt as his clothing, but lucky for him, he had a young ally to help get his books in order. Samuel Insull, in contrast to Edison, is barely remembered today, but he had a huge role in making the modern world through the electrical inventions that Edison churned out. He was driven to make electricity pay, and he did so in millions of dollars, using all the dubious financial levers through the 1920's until it all went wrong. In _The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis_ (Palgrave), John F. Wasik, a journalist in business and finance, has told Insull's story, one full of ambition and financial spectacle, and leading to the sort of ruin contemporary readers will recognize in, say, the Enron scandal. Insull was born in London in 1859. He scrambled to improve himself as ever any Horatio Alger hero did, and won his way to New York as Edison's private secretary. His ability to work right through the night and get by on catnaps ingratiated himself to his new boss. As Insull took a firmer grasp of Edison's technological advances, he centered on one in particular, the distribution of electricity that could power the lights and other inventions that Edison had produced. He went on literally to electrify Chicago, using huge generators never imagined before. He initiated the metering of power and other financial innovations, not all of them strictly on the up and up. He actually fled America when the bust of the Depression came, tooling around Europe to avoid extradition. Eventually, he could not avoid coming back and facing trial for fraud. A brilliant defense expounded on his rags-to-riches life story and made credible the idea that although he had brought down thousands of investors, no one had fallen as low as he had himself, and that his financial machinations had been for the purpose of preserving his stockholders' fortunes, failing merely because everything was failing. He was acquitted, but he remained a useful enemy for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's campaign against "big power". Insull may be forgotten, but the foresight of his role in the electrification of America deserves recognition. He was a major influence in the arts, too, but not in the way he would have wanted in promoting the Grand Opera that was fashionable for patronage in his day. Insull did promote the dramatic career of his wife, well beyond her years or capacity. Herman Mankiewicz had started a venomous review of one of her performances in New York, got drunk, passed out on his typewriter, and couldn't finish the review. When it came time to write the script of _Citizen Kane_, Mankiewicz included the inc

He Enabled the Construction of Cities

This is a rags-to-riches-to-rags story. Sam Insull came to the US with $200, got a job with Thomas Edison. Then he basically designed and set up the electric power grid as we know it today. Then through a series of misadventures that he couldn't have forseen he was wiped out. He was tried in court because there was at least a hint of fraud. He was found not-guilty on all charges. Why do we care about such a man -- two reasons: First, he is the one that made it possible that when we turn on the light switch, the overhead light comes on. This convenience is a major part of the reasons for the advances in the world. Not only light, but medical equipment, tools, motors of all types. Second, the collapse of his company attracted the attention of the Federal Government. Because of the way his company collapsed the Government passed all kinds of laws forming the Securities and Exchance Commission, requiring quarterly reports of the financial condition of the company and so on. It's also interesting that this book came out now in the aftermath of all the recent corporate scandals. I guess that there is little that changes in the world.