Carl E. Bagge papers

Carl E. Bagge was the former president of the National Coal Association and a leader of the coal industry’s public relations countermarch against environmental activism in the 1970s and 1980s. Bagge enlisted in the Navy in 1945 after graduating from high school, serving in the Panama Canal Zone until the end of World War II. He then attended Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, on the GI Bill, and graduated from Northwestern University Law School in 1952. He married the former Margaret Evelyn Carlson the next year and worked for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad from 1952 to 1965. With the endorsement of Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Bagge was appointed to the Federal Power Commission by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. During his tenure, Bagge urged looser regulation of natural gas rates, a position that brought him bipartisan praise but endangered his reappointment. He resigned from the FPC in 1970 to become president of the National Coal Association. He retired after a heart attack in 1986, and died April 5, 2001. Materials in this collection mostly relate to Bagge’s work at the FPC, and include correspondence, legal documents, reports, meeting minutes, speeches, and published materials.