Samuel Ferguson

Background

He was the first of the four children of Henry Ferguson Emma Jane (Gardiner) Ferguson, was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where his father was rector of Christ Church. His paternal grandfather, John Ferguson, was a New York banker; his maternal grandfather, Frederic Gardiner of Gardiner, Maine, was a prominent religious educator.

Due to journeys for his father's education and for his mother's health, he had traveled in Europe and Australia by the age of eight. His sister was to credit constant early travel for his childhood insecurity and later shyness.

Education

In 1893 his father accepted the post of professor of history at Trinity College, and the family settled in Hartford, Connecticut Ferguson attended Hartford Public High School and Trinity College.

His dislike of the classics and the influence of an outstanding teacher at Trinity, William L. Robb, led him to take the B. S. in electrical engineering in 1896. Postgraduate work followed at Columbia University School of Mines, under another influential teacher, Michael I. Pupin. Ferguson graduated in 1899 with both the E. E. and M. A. degrees, having received extensive laboratory experience in electrical testing.

Late in 1899, after a few months with the Stone and Webster Engineering Company, he joined the test department of General Electric in Schenectady, New York.

Career

In 1902 he joined GE's new research laboratory, working on a mercury-arc rectifier for battery charging. He soon learned that his main talents were administrative, not technical. As the lab's administrative engineer from 1904 to 1912, he overcame some of his early shyness and blossomed as a diplomatic young man of few words and sound judgment.

In 1912, Austin C. Dunham retired as president of the Hartford Electric Company (HELCO), which he had guided since its founding in 1882. Ferguson accepted the offer of a HELCO vice-presidency, and returned to his home city and to the company that he had served briefly in 1893 as a lineman and in 1898.

The primary policy of his forty-four years at HELCO was an effort to gain the technological advantages of size without paying the penalties of unsound growth. This meant avoiding outside control, whether from a private holding company or from the federal government, and close personal attention to the needs and complaints of consumers.

Ferguson's early role was mainly technical. His work was capable, rather than creative; of HELCO's thirteen self-proclaimed "technical firsts, " only one was achieved while he was with the company.

His ambition, however, remained bounded. Born socially and financially secure, he was able to avoid the temptation to empire building that proved Samuel Insull's downfall. His early problems at HELCO were local ones. He led an unsuccessful utility-company resistance to the state public utility commission's taxation policies (1916), while reconciling company policies with state regulation.

After World War I, his progressive side emerged. While other utility leaders were condemning Ontario's public power experiment, he learned from it the "two-part rate" idea. A pioneering step in 1921, this method of encouraging power use by a rate that declines with increasing usage is standard today. Another bit of administrative pioneering followed (1920 - 1925): the Connecticut Power Exchange was an early effort at regional power supply.

A typical Ferguson touch was to set up the exchange as a gentleman's agreement rather than as a contractual arrangement. As Ferguson emerged as a regional, and then a national, power spokesman, the problem of the holding company increasingly occupied his time.

In 1935 he fought the Wheeler-Rayburn Holding Company Act, which he considered an attack on free enterprise and a betrayal of an earlier power policy compromise that he had helped to arrange. For the rest of his career, he opposed the growing power of the Federal Power Commission.

By 1940 his former progressivism seemed conservative, but Ferguson was never reactionary.

Ferguson retired as president of HELCO in 1935, but the personal problems of his successor forced him to resume the office in 1939. His final retirement to board chairman came in 1946.

He died on February 10, 1950, of a heart attack suffered while on vacation at Lake Wales, Florida, and was buried in Schenectady.

Achievements

• In 1920, he personally arranged HELCO's purchase of the Connecticut Power Company, blocking expansion of the Stone and Webster group. After becoming president of HELCO in 1924, he repeatedly refused offers and countered the efforts of the Mellon and Morgan-Bonbright interests. Yet he did not oppose holding companies in principle--they had value when properly used, he said. This middle road was hard to defend. Twice in 1933 he took the public platform to answer charges--he preferred to call them "misunderstandings"--that HELCO was a puppet of the "power trust. "

Works

More photos

• book

  • Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Sc...)

  • The Remains of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, the Confessio and Epistle to Coroticus (Classic Reprint)

    (I ntroduction, I haye to thank the Council of the Royal I...)

Religion

By 1940 his former progressivism seemed conservative, but Ferguson was never reactionary.

He served as a vestryman of St. John's Episcopal Church, in Hartford.

Views

He sincerely sought to supply the public with reliable, low-cost power; his many speeches (none ghostwritten) were an honest attempt to educate the public in the complexities of utility regulation.

In all he brought to a highly technical business environment the home-centered virtues of a simpler age.

Personality

He lived comfortably but never lavishly, sharing his main pleasures, such as fishing and bridge, with his son, Samuel, Jr. , and his three daughters.

He always came home for lunch.

Connections

On November 3, 1903, he married Ellen Margaret Price, the daughter of a Union College professor.

Wife:

Ellen Margaret Price

Grandfather:

John Ferguson

maternal grandfather Frederic Gardiner father Henry Ferguson mother Emma Jane (Gardiner) Ferguson

Son:

Samuel Ferguson , Jr.

References

• Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of his day (v.1)