Authors:
Historic Era: Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
Historic Theme:
Subject:
July/August 1997 | Volume 48, Issue 4
Authors:
Historic Era: Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
Historic Theme:
Subject:
July/August 1997 | Volume 48, Issue 4
It is easy to make money in a bull market. Just look at the thousands of Wall Streeters who have done so in recent years, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average has broken through thousand mark after thousand mark. But, as they drive around in their Range Rovers, smoke their fifteen-dollar cigars, and discreetly pull back their shirt cuffs to reveal a glimpse of a Rolex, these beneficiaries of the greatest bull market in the history of Wall Street might spare a moment to think about Samuel Insull.
In the summer of 1929, securities in Insull’s companies were appreciating at the rate of $7000 a minute. His utilities empire, centered in Chicago, extended into thirty-nine states. With his cookie-duster mustache, velvet-collared overcoat, neatly turned Homburg, spats, and elegant walking stick, he was, for the 1920s, the very model of the modern major capitalist.
Only three years later, however, his companies were in ruins, and he was a fugitive from justice. Franklin Roosevelt, running for president, would refer contemptuously to “the Ishmaels and the Insulls, whose hand is against every man’s.” It was one of the greatest falls in the history of capitalism.
Samuel Insull was born in London in 1859. His father was a non-conformist preacher, and his mother operated Insull’s Temperance Hotel. Although the family was anything but rich, they managed to send their son to a good school, where he showed a quick mind and considerable aptitude for hard work. When he was 14, he became a junior clerk to a firm of auctioneers.
Four years later, he got the lucky break so characteristic of Horatio Alger stories, both real and fictional. George E. Gourard, Thomas Edison’s London representative, hired lnsull as his secretary. So impressed was he with his young protégé that, in 1881, when lnsull was only 21, he was sent to this country to become private secretary to the great man himself. In a few years, he was Edison’s most trusted business adviser.
Before long, Edison decided to put lnsull in charge of the fledgling Edison General Electric Company, which was not then doing well. lnsull quickly turned the company around. When he had gone to what would soon be called just General Electric, it employed 200 men. When he left, less than a decade later, it employed 6000, and Insull, at the still-young age of 33, earned a then-princely $36,000 a year.
But Insull was restless. He admired Edison, but he wanted to be out from under his thumb. He accepted the presidency of Chicago Edison, one of that city’s infant power companies, which, despite its name, was not controlled by the inventor. Insull’s salary was only one-third what he had been earning at General Electric, but he quickly borrowed $250,000 from Marshall Field to buy a substantial amount of stock in Chicago Edison and set about to make it the dominant power company in the area.
The year after Insull arrived in Chicago, the World’s Columbian