CRIME: Old Man Comes Home

(See front cover) In the cool grey light of dawn S. S. Exilona lay at anchor near Ambrose light ship outside New York Harbor. A coast guard cutter and a bevy of tugs drew near. A passenger, Mrs. Louise Dvorak, stood on deck talking to a white-haired septuagenarian. The old man told her: "This is the first time in 30 years I have returned to New York without some one of my family to meet me.'' "But your son is on one of these boats." "My son is here? Where?" The old man rushed to the rail. Suddenly he spied the figure of a short bespectacled young man on the cutter Hudson below. "Oh, Junior! Junior!" he cried. "Hello, pop. How are you doing?" came the robust-voiced reply. Thus the Samuel Insulls met last week for the first time since they parted nearly two years ago in Milan. As the younger man climbed up the ship's side, his father rushed forward, embraced him. Senior Insull, trembling with excitement, turned to his fellow passengers and said: "Gentlemen, my brother—I mean, my son." Photographers began to take pictures from the tugs below. Father and son posed readily at the rail of the ship, again on the cutter after the old man had climbed down a vertical ladder. "Let go my arm," he said to a sailor who tried to help him. He himself kept order among the overeager photographers. "You'll get all the pictures you want," he said, "so don't get in front of each other and get in each other's way." And again to a man who tried to butt in: "Get away, I'll run this. This is my show and this is my mug. I've got a proprietary interest in it." Before leaving the cutter Samuel Insull gave newshawks a prepared statement: "I have erred, but my greatest error was in underestimating the effect of the financial panic on American securities and particularly on the companies I was working so hard to build. "I worked with all my energy to save those companies. I made mistakes, but they were honest mistakes. They were errors in judgment but not dishonest manipulations. ". . . You only know the charges of the prosecution. Not one word has been uttered in even a feeble defense of me. And it must be obvious that there also is my side of the story. "When it is told in court, my judgment may be discredited, but certainly my honesty will be vindicated." The cutter bore the Insulls to Fort Hancock on the tip of Sandy Hook. They were motored under guard to Princeton Junction, N. J. and by 10 a. m. were aboard a westbound Pennsylvania train. Next day in Chicago, after being fingerprinted and suffering a slight heart attack, the Elder Insull was arraigned in Federal Court. Judge John P. Barnes promptly announced that bail would be $200,000. Insull stiffened. Said Junior Insull: "We won't even try to raise that. It's impossible." By 2 p. m. the old man was lodged in the hospital ward of Cook County Jail. Before him lay the possibility of several months behind bars awaiting trial.