Main entry: Booth, Harry R., 1902-1974.
Title: Papers, 1930-74 (mainly 1959-74)
Size: 45 linear feet (45 boxes)
Accession number: 1975.0009
This descriptive inventory includes:
1. Biographical sketch of Harry R. Booth
2. Description of the collection
3. Materials transferred to other CHS collections
4. Archival information: card catalog headings, provenance,
location designation
5. Container list
Harry B. Booth, lawyer and civic
activist, was born April 19, 1920 in the northern Minnesota mining town of
Virginia. After coming to Chicago in 1920 to study at the Armour Institute of
Technology, he transferred to the University of Chicago where he received a
bachelor’s degree in 1925 and a law degree in 1926. He was admitted to the
Illinois bar the following year. Very early in his career he was attracted to
the field of public utility regulation.
Booth’s earliest mentor in this
field was David Lilienthal, who later gained national prominence when he served
as director of the Tennessee Valley Authority and as the first chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission. Between 1926 and 1931, Lilienthal engaged in private
practice in Chicago. He was retained as special counsel for the City in a
telephone rate case which was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court
and resulted in a $20,000,000 refund to telephone subscribers. Booth served as
Lilienthal’s legal assistant from 1927 to 1931, when Lilienthal became State
Public Service Commissioner of Wisconsin. Booth then set up a private law
practice with Joseph Swidler. During 1928-32, Booth was also employed as
associate editor of the Public Utility and Carrier Services, published
by the Commerce Clearing House, Inc.
In the late 1920s and early
1930s the name Samuel Insull represented to many citizens both the power and
the arrogance of public utility companies. Booth’s first major public interest
utilities case was directed against the Insull-controlled Peoples Gas, Light,
and Coke Company, when, in 1932, he went before the Illinois Commerce
Commission to challenge the company’s practice of substituting cheaper natural
gas for manufactured gas without lowering rates. In this case, Booth acted as
counsel for the Utility Consumers League of Illinois, which he had founded the
previous year with Paul H. Douglas (later U.S. Senator from Illinois), Harold
L. Ickes (later Secretary of the Interior under the Roosevelt Administration),
and others. Booth and his law partner Joseph Swidler were cited for contempt of
court when they subsequently went to the newspapers to expose the ICC’s pliancy
in granting every rate increase ever requested by Insull.
In 1933, Harry Booth began a
14-year period of government service. From 1933 to 1940, having gained the
support of Governor Henry Horner, he worked as counsel in charge of valuation
and rate cases for the Illinois Commerce Commission and as head of its Legal
Division (the last year and a half, July 1939 to December 1940, he was under
the Attorney General’s office). In January 1941, Booth moved to Washington,
D.C. to accept a position as Chief of the Rate Section in the Law Department of
the Federal Communications Commission, but resigned the following year when the
FCC compromised with American Telephone & Telegraph on a proposed long
distance rate reduction program Booth had designed. Soon thereafter, he was
drawn into war work as Chief of the Utilities Branch of the Office of Price
Administration, 1942-1946.
In 1947, Booth left government
service and began the next phase of his career, a private law practice
“specializing in [the] utility and common carrier field, representing
municipalities, consumer and commuter groups in connection with rate and
service matters of various types–anti-trust and other miscellaneous
litigation.” (Vita, Box 1 folder 1).
For about a year, Booth
apparently maintained law offices both in Washington and Chicago before
returning to Chicago permanently in 1949. Over the next twenty-five years, he
was involved in a number of cases in which he took the role of advocate of
consumers and taxpayers. Though he continued to be interested in gas and
electricity company regulation, these were not his primary areas of litigation.
Between 1949 and 1974, his major cases concerned telephone and public transport
rates, leases of public land, and radio station licensing.
In 1950, Booth fought fare
increases proposed by the Chicago Transit Authority, the first of a number of
common carrier rate cases he was to be involved in. In 1953, he won for
pensioners at the Illinois Bell Telephone Company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of
AT&T, his old FCC nemesis), the recognition of vested rights in their
pensions regardless of any increases in social security payments they received.
He also won a similar pension case against the Elgin National Watch Company.
In 1963, booth filed suit
against the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago, charging that
the District deprived the taxpayers of revenue through long-term leases of 50
to 99 years which had been negotiated with Chicago area industries between 1948
and 1961, at rentals well below market values. Booth regarded this as his most
significant case, even though the out-of-court settlement in 1971 did not
result in the kind of rent increases he thought were appropriate.
In 1968, Booth went before the
Federal Communications Commission to fight the sale of WFMT, a Chicago radio
station devoted to classical and folk music, to WGN, which was controlled by
the Chicago Tribune. Booth helped prevent this sale, but he was not as
successful in a similar case before the FCC, a case which proved to be his last
one, the 1973-74 fight against the conversion of WEFM from a classical to a
rock music format.
Harry Booth died December 9,
1974 in Chicago, leaving his wife, Sylvia Whalley Booth, whom he had married in
1934, and two grown daughters, Susan and Alice. A newspaper article on Booth
written in 1963 described him from the viewpoint of his opponents as a “gadfly,
a troublemaker, a misdirected knight on a white horse.” His daughter, Alice,
fondly called him “Harry Booth Quixote” in a paper she wrote for a college
class in 1965. But no one questioned his sincerity or his single-minded,
life-long commitment to the cause of defending the tax-and rate-paying public
against the big utilities.
Description of the
Collection:
The Harry R. Booth papers
consist primarily of legal papers for specific public interest cases in which
Booth was involved. The cases are mainly concerned with telephone and mass
transit rates, with leases of publicly owned lands, and with the licensing of
radio stations. Dating between 1950 and 1974 for the most part, the files
include briefs, motions, and other routine documents, but very few affidavits
or depositions. A certain amount of related correspondence, memoranda, and
publications are also found in the case files, but the vast majority is legal
documents. The most valuable part of the collection is also the smallest
portion (6 out of 45 boxes): the personal and correspondence files. They
concern litigation, background material for cases such as newsclippings and
publications, politics, and some personal and family matters. (Files concerning
Booth’s routine private practice as a lawyer handling divorces, estates,
bankruptcies, small civil suits, etc., have not been retained for historical
research.)
The collection is divided into 2
series:
Series 1. Personal and
Correspondence Files, 1930-1974 (Boxes 1-6)
Series 2, Litigation, ca.
1950-1974 (Boxes 7-45)
Series 1. Personal and
Correspondence Files, 1930-1974 (Boxes
1-6)
Series 1 consists of personal
and professional letters received by Harry Booth and some carbon copies of his
replies, fragmentary manuscript drafts of his autobiography, and some family
papers. It is made up of two subseries, subseries I, Personal Files, and
Subseries 2, Correspondence Files.
Subseries 1 includes vitae, news
clippings related to Booth’s career, scattered published and unpublished
writings by Booth and drafts of his autobiography, lists of cases he was
working on at varies dates, and materials relating to his family. There is also
information on two consumer groups which Booth founded: the Utilities Consumers
League of Illinois of the 1930s, and the Utilities Users League of the 1960s.
Subseries 2, Correspondence
files, is arranged mainly by year from 1930 to 1974. It deals chiefly with
litigation and is similar to correspondence which remains in the litigation
files (Series II) since much of it is related to specific cases found there.
Some of the most interesting correspondence is from the1930s with such notable
figures as David Lilienthal, Paul H. Douglas, and Harold L. Ickes. Also of
special interest are files on the Nationals Lawyers Guild Committee on Public
Utilities, 1939, of which Booth was chairman, and correspondence of the 1972
Presidential election campaign, in which Booth supported the Democratic
candidate, George McGovern. A few files of Booth’s pre-1950 cases are also
found here.
Series 2, Litigation, ca.
1950-1974 (Boxes 7-45)
The litigation files in Series 2
contain legal documents and some correspondence, memoranda, news clippings, and
publications relating to Booth’s public-interest cases. The files have been
roughly sorted by type of case: telephone, commuter railroads, Metropolitan
Sanitary District, radio station licensing, etc. Within these broad categories,
however, there is no particular order
The largest single category is
material about telephone companies. Measuring twelve feet, it involves pensions
for Illinois Bell workers as well as other cases involving AT&T or its
wholly-owned subsidiaries, especially Illinois Bell Telephone Company, and
information regarding rates and rate structures. Midwest Telephone, which
serves a small segment of suburban Chicago, is also mentioned at some length in
a particular case: Margie Bridals vs. Midwest Telephone.
There are eight feet of material
involving lands leased by the Metropolitan Sanitary District (MSD). Booth sued
MSD and some of its lessees (apparently the initial investigation of the
situation had been made by Booth in conjunction with the Sun-Times which
ran the story as an expose) and a series of cases followed, some of which
continued after Booth’s death. Three cases in particular are well represented
in these files: Booth vs. Lemont (later Ceco), Booth vs. General Dynamics, and Gendel
vs. North American Car.
There are four feet of material
regarding radio stations, most of it revolving around the purchase or proposed
purchase of classical music stations WFMT and WEFM and announced plans of the
owners to change the stations’ formats. The WFMT case occurred first (beginning
in 1968). Most of the material, however, comes from the WEFM case.
While Booth’s early interest in
regulation of gas companies is documented through news clippings and
correspondence in Series I, subseries 2, the 4.5 feet of material on gas
companies in Series II involved primarily rate cases and background material
for People’s Gas and Northern Illinois Gas. Booth seems to have maintained a
continuing interest in this area although it was not his major area of activity
after World War II.
There are four feet of material
regarding electric utilities, primarily Commonwealth Edison. Once again the
main interest is in rate cases, with some background material kept on other
companies, probably for comparison with Commonwealth Edison. Electric utility
regulation does not appear to have been one of Booth’s major areas of
litigation after 1945.
Mass transit material amounts to
about four feet, three-fourths of which concern commuter railroads serving
suburban Chicago and one-fourth the CTA. Most of the information involved
either rate increases or service cuts. Documentation is best for two cases
about suburban railroads: the Illinois Central and the Chicago, Aurora &
Elgin. The CA&E case involved proposed service cuts, including the
elimination of some train stops.
Finally, there are approximately
two feet of litigation material concerning various subjects. These include nine
cases or groups of cases. 1) Hoffman vs. Northwestern University was a suit
about the tax status of property owned by Northwestern and other private
Illinois schools, which enjoyed a tax exemption despite having been leased for
commercial purposes. 2) Kearney vs. Chicago Board of Education is concerned
with the leasing of Board land to private enterprise, and appears to be similar
to the MSD cases. 3) Kandl vs. Urse involved two persons who were committed to
the state mental hospital, allegedly without due process. 4) Butler vs. Timothy
Christian is an interpretation case involving the refusal of a Dutch Reformed
school in Cicero to allow the children of Black co-religionists (apparently
there was a black congregation just inside the Chicago border that shared
communion with the Dutch Reformed group) to attend their school. The case is
interesting because Booth, a liberal Democrat, served as counsel for the
school. 5) Fried vs. Korzen represents one of Booth’s successes in his later
years. The case implemented a law which allowed the city to auction off land
obtained for failure to pay back taxes rather than sell the land for the amount
of taxes owed. Frequently the back tax was so much that no one was willing to
pay it, but the land could be returned to the tax rolls if it was auctioned for
a lower price. 6) The Elgin National Watch case involved employee pensions and
is probably similar to the litigation concerning the pensions of telephone
employees. 7) Southwest Council of Civic Organizations vs. City of Chicago
involves the resumption of commercial passenger air service at Midway Airport
and the effort of community groups to stop that resumption. 8) Fried vs.
Danaher involves the repayment of a $50 jury fee which was levied and paid in
advance by those seeking a jury trial but not refunded should the jury trial
not be held. 9) Barnes vs. Barnes and two other cases involve questions of
civil liberties. The Barnes case concerns illegal search (search without
warrant) and alleged physical abuse of a person in his home by the Chicago
police.
Materials Transferred to
Other CHS Collections
Three photographs and one
negative were transferred to the Prints & Photographs Collection. One
photograph is of the Northwest Armory being torn down, June 1, 1939, and
another is a portrait of Paul J. Raver inscribed to Booth.
Archival Information:
Card Catalog:
The following headings were
placed in the card catalog.
Main entry: Booth, Harry R.,
1902-1974.
Subject entries:
1. American Telephone and
Telegraph Company.
2. Chicago. Board of Education.
3. Chicago. Sanitary District.
4. Chicago Transit Authority.
5. Discrimination in Education.
Chicago Suburbs.
6. Electric Utilities. Chicago.
7. Electric Utilities. Illinois.
8. Elgin National Watch Company.
9. Family.
10. Gas Companies. Chicago.
11. Gas companies. Illinois
12. Illinois Bell Telephone
Company.
13. Illinois Commerce
Commission.
14. Illinois. Politics and
Government.
15. Insane. Hospitals
16. Insull, Samuel, 1859-1938.
17. Land. Taxation. Chicago.
18. Land. Taxation. Chicago
Suburbs.
19. Liberty.
20. Midway Airport, Chicago.
21. Monopolies.
22. Negroes. Chicago.
23. Northwestern University.
Evanston, Illinois.
24. Pension.
25. Presidents, U.S. Election,
1972.
26. Radio Broadcasting. Chicago.
27. Railroad Lines. Chicago,
Aurora, & Elgin.
28. Railroads Lines. Illinois
Central.
29. Railroads.
30. Schools. Private. Chicago
Suburbs.
31. Telephone.
32. U.S. Federal Communications
Commission.
33. U. S. Politics and
Government.
34. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-
Added entries
1. Douglas, Paul Howard,
1892-1976.
2. Horner, Henry, 1879-1940.
3. Ickes, Harold LeClair,
1874-1952.
4. Lilienthal, David Eli, 1899-
5. National Lawyers Guild.
6. Swidler, Joseph
7. Utilities Consumers League of
Illinois.
8. Utilities Users League.
Provenance:
This collection was a gift to
the Chicago Historical Society by Mrs. Sylvia Booth in 1975.
Accession number: 1975.0009
Location:
Collection: Harry R. Booth
papers.
This inventory by:
Mary E. Janzen
Frank Boles
Richard Popp
Christopher Ann Paton
January, 1982.
Container List
Series 1. Personal Files
Folder # at left:
Box 1
Biographical materials:
1-2 Vitae and background materials
3 Biographical news clippings
4-6 Autobiography (various drafts) 1950-1974
7 Diary and appointment calendars 1953-1959, 1967
8 Pending cases list 1966-1967
9 Legal briefs (drafts) 1972-1973
Writings:
10 “Public Power Regulation vs. Public Power”
11-12 “A Better Deal for Chicago,” pamphlet, drafts, correspondence 1950
13 “Your Telephone Bill,” The Nation 1954 January 23
14 Miscellaneous writings and speeches
15-16 Miscellaneous writings
17 Alice Booth, “In Search of a Father” 1965
Financial and legal materials:
18-20 Income tax returns, notes, correspondence
21-22 Personal investments
23-25 Personal and family legal papers
Box 2
1 Samuel Booth trust
Public service miscellaneous
papers:
2 Utility Consumers League of Illinois
3-11 Utility Users League
12 Paul H. Douglas hearing transcript (first page missing) n.d.
13 Harold L. Ickes n.d.
Illinois Commerce Commission:
14 General
15 Questions to Commissioners Perrine, Simpson and Vickers
16 Illinois Municipal League
17 Tennessee Valley Authority and Bonneville Dam background
material
Subseries 2. Correspondence
1930-1974 and n.d.
18-22 Lillienthal and Swidler
1930-1933
Illinois Commerce Commission:
23-26 ICC 1933-1936
27 ICC vs. Commonwealth Edison 1936
Box 3
1-5 ICC 1937-1940 and n.d.
6-9 National Lawyers Guild 1938-1940
10 Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies 1940
11 1940
12-13 City of Clinton water rate case 1941
14-17 Federal Communications Commission 1941
18-21 Office of Price Administration 1942-1946
22 Chicago taxicab licenses 1946-1950
23-24 Washington, D.C. practice 1947-1948
25 1947-1948
26-27 Chicago 1949
28 1949
Box 4
1-35 1950-1963
Box 5
1-15 1964-1969
Box 6
1-6 1970-1972
7 Presidential campaign 1972
8-10 1973-1974
11-15 Undated
Series 2. Litigation ca.
1950-1974
Boxes 7-18
Telephone company cases
Boxes 19-26
Metropolitan Sanitary District
cases
Boxes 27-30
WFMT and WEFM radio cases
Boxes 31-35
Gas company cases
Boxes 36-39
Commonwealth Edison cases
Box 40
Chicago Transit Authority cases
Boxes 41-43
Railroad cases
Box 44
Hoffman vs. Northwestern
Kearney vs. Board of Education
and other Board of Education cases
Kandl vs. Urse
Butler vs. Timothy Christian
School Society
Freid vs. Korson
Box 45
Cyka et al. vs. Elgin National
Watch Co.
Southwest Council of Civic
Organizations vs. City of Chicago
Freid vs. Danaher
Barnes vs. Harness and other
civil liberties cases