ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1930s, the integrated structure and increasing size and power of AT&T (as well as the increasing importance of telephones in all aspects of business and government) were subject to a series of investigations. Telecommunications was not alone in this Congressional concern; the report on the telephone industry was but one in a number of parallel Congressional studies of large holding companies in different lines of business brought about because of the often poor performance of such firms in the early years of the Depression.
