John A. Riggs - High Tension: FDRs Battle to Power America

Praise for

High Tension

FDRs Battle to Power America

The little known but captivating story of electricity is at the heart of the New Deal. John A. Riggs is the perfect person to tell the tale. The battles between Americas most politically astute president and a powerful industry created the hybrid, public-private electricity system that we know today. The compromises necessary to ensure equity and the public interest while unleashing the energy of private markets can inform the discussion of current issues such as telecommunications, infrastructure, and tax policy.

Walter Isaacson, author of
The Innovators, Leonardo Da Vinci , and Steve Jobs

High Tension vividly tells of FDRs struggle to control giant utility holding companies, build government dams, and electrify rural America. He took on powerful interests and reshaped the electricity system as a novel public-private enterprisea legacy that continues to this day. John A. Riggs tells an important story with relevance today, from reinventing electricity regulation to accommodate new clean energy technology to offering lessons for universal broadband access.

Ernest J. Moniz, US Secretary of Energy, 201317; CEO Energy Futures Initiative

Electricity was the internet of its dayand bringing it to the countryside affected more Americans than any other New Deal program. It was also the source of a bitter struggle between public and private power, full of high tensionthe double entendre title of John A. Riggss lucid and compelling tale. This is a fresh angle of vision on one of the most important and underappreciated stories of the first half of the twentieth century.

Jonathan Alter, author of
The Defining Moment: FDRs Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope

High Tension is an innovative history of the chaos and conniving that created Americas transformative electricity system (judged by the Atlantic to be the greatest invention since the printing press). John A. Riggs has given us a compelling read. Thoroughly researched and gracefully written, it crisply covers the historical panorama of the New Deals hard-won achievements of breaking up the giant utility holding companies and bringing light and power to the vast darkened regions of our nation.

Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Narrative history at its best. Riggs brings FDR to life as he gathers a team of brilliant and eccentric New Dealers to battle for public power, rural electrification, and the abolition of holding companies. The industry fights back with a coalition of stock manipulators and free enterprise proponents led by a remarkable advocate named Wendell Willkie.

Bruce Babbitt, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, 19922000

The story of electrification is the story we must return to, over and over again, to understand what it really means to build a public utility. Our age, like every age, has its essential services, and as John A. Riggs demonstrates, getting it right does not happen by accident, nor without a fight, but demands great political courage.

Tim Wu, Professor, Columbia Law School; New York Times contributing opinion writer; and author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

Electric utilities are fascinating combinations of economics, technology, and politics. Somehow all three have to be kept in harness for utility companies to succeed. Mr. Riggs explores the interplay of these factors in one of the most complex periods in the history of the industry. Good reading for anyone who likes the lights to come on and the computer to work.

John Rowe, former CEO of Commonwealth Edison and Exelon

A valuable resource dealing with a largelyand undeservedlyignored slice of FDRs New Deal agenda, but also of American history and, indeed, of all human progress.

David Pietrusza, author of 1948: Harry Trumans Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America

John A. Riggs gives us a fresh look at the people and politics that brought electricity to virtually all Americans, shaped todays economy, and powered the Arsenal of Democracy that led to victory in World War II. High Tension is a strong reminder of Edmund Burkes eighteenth-century admonition that politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasoning, but to human nature, of which the reason is a part.

Charles B. Curtis, Chairman,
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 197781

The US electric system not only underpins our economy, but also our way of life. Yet most Americans know nothing about its history. This story of a critical era in the development of the US power sector is a riveting tale of inventors, entrepreneurs, politics, legal battles, and shenanigans. The reader will come away with a new appreciation for what we take for granted.

Elizabeth Moler, Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner, 198897, Chair, 199397; Deputy US Energy Secretary 199798, Acting Secretary, 1998

In an engaging narrative, High Tension captures a transformative time in American history with titanic characters, exploring some of the most compelling battles of the early twentieth century with scintillating detail. Its also a book with powerful relevance today, reminding us that the conflict between corporate concentration of power and public interests is ongoing, unresolved, and demands our attention.

John F. Wasik, author of The Merchant of Power: Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis

Copyright 2020 by John A. Riggs

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

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Diversion Books

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www.diversionbooks.com

First Diversion Books edition, November 2020

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63576-732-2

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63576-733-9

Printed in The United States of America

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Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data is available on file.

To Judy,

for lighting my life

Abbreviations

Epilogue

For nearly forty years my vocation has been energy policy, and for even longer my avocation has been history and politics. In late 1990, I read The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power , the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry by renowned energy expert and author Daniel Yergin. It was one of the most informative energy books and one of the most fascinating histories I have ever read.

Upon finishing the book, I invited Yergin to be the initial, scene-setting witness in a two-year series of hearings in the House of Representatives Energy and Power subcommittee, of which I was then the staff director, hearings that led to the comprehensive Energy Policy Act of 1992. I also looked for a similarly informative and readable history of the electricity industry in the United States. I didnt find one, but a seed was planted. Could I unite my avocation and my vocation, as Robert Frost yearned to do, by writing such a book?