Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1999
Abstract
David H. Stratton has written a brilliant, comprehensive biography of Albert B. Fall, Secretary of Interior during the Harding administration and the first cabinet member ever convicted and imprisoned for crimes committed while holding office. Fall had leased to Harry E. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny naval oil reserves in Wyoming's Teapot Dome and California's Elk Mountain and accepted $404,000 from these oil tycoons. The book proposes that out of his early career as a western speculator and corporation lawyer, Fall developed an anti-conservation philosophy and espoused unrestrained and immediate disposition of public lands to private enterprise. Thus, had he not turned over the naval leases to Doheny and Sinclair, he would have done so to other representatives of private enterprise. The real offense was Fall's efforts to overturn Progressive era reforms, especially natural resource conservation and the restraining of corporate power.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 19:4 (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.