Part 2 Chapter 10 Summary

LBJ was utterly ruthless in destroying all obstacles in the path to power. In 1949, that obstacle was Leland Olds, Chairman of the Federal Power Commission (FPC), a five-member body that licensed and regulated facilities generating power from natural resources and selling it to the public.

Olds was born in 1890, son of an Amherst professor of mathematics and his prominent Bostonian wife. At summer church camps he saw first hand the evils of industrialization and dedicated himself to a career in social work. In the slums of South Boston, he saw the horrors of the sweatshops and how ill prepared social agencies were to deal with the problems of poverty. He was attracted to the Social Gospel movement, which sought to remind business owners of their Christian duties towards workers. He attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City, was ordained a...