Judges are on the take, cops beat up unionists, the utilities and railroad magnate Samuel Insull perhaps the biggest crook of all.

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It was Edison's financial clerk, Samuel Insull, who thought of creating a central plant that powers an entire region, turning electricity into a utility and vastly dropping its price.

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But its most fascinating character is Samuel Insull, the British-born, longtime assistant to Edison, who went on to found what was once the nation's largest investor-owned public utility, Commonwealth Edison, and became immensely wealthy.

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