Maury Klein > Quotes

“The key element, which had escaped Wright but not Insull, was load factor. All customers used their equipment only a fraction of the time, but not all of them at exactly the same time. Given that fact, a single investment in plant could supply many users, any two of whom could always be supplied more cheaply than one alone. It also followed that two competing stations could not serve these same customers as cheaply as one station because of the higher investment cost. Competition would create higher costs in areas of heavy usage and most likely no service in other areas that lacked enough business to pay. Put another way, monopoly was the surest road to driving down costs and rates.34”
― Maury Klein, The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America

“When I want newspaper advertising,” he growled, “I will order it and pay cash.”
― Maury Klein, The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America

“Informed of his death, Ritter recalled something Meyers had told him at their first meeting seven years earlier. "I am like an old hemlock," he said. "My head is still high but the winds of close to a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I have been witness to many wondrous and many tragic things. My eyes perceive the present, but my roots are imbedded [sic] deeply in the grandeur of the past.”
― Maury Klein, Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants

“The game he loved, that America loved, had passed him by, left him enamored more of its past than of its present or future. It had grown younger as he grew older.”
― Maury Klein, Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants

“With the passing of its last marcher, Rube Marquard, the parade vanished into the mists of time, leaving in its wake only memories of the men and deeds gone by.”
― Maury Klein, Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants

“Informed of his death, Ritter recalled something Meyers had told him at their first meeting seven years earlier. "I am like an old hemlock," he said. "My head is still high but the winds of close to a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and Ihave been witness to many wondrous and many tragic things. My eyes perceive the present, but my roots are imbedded [sic] deeply in the grandeur of the past.”
― Maury Klein, Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants