(2 of 5)
Behind Samuel Insull lay 23 idle days of voyaging on the blue waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Behind that voyage lay nearly two years of lonely exile when he was hunted like a rat in a hole. Behind that exile lay three years of fear ful struggle to preserve a utilities empire in which thousands and thousands of people had sunk their life savings. Behind that struggle lay nearly 50 years of hard work during which, at first acre by acre and later province by province, Samuel Insull had built that empire. On the Water. In all his active life Samuel Insull never took a regular vacation. His periods of relaxation came at sea, usually two or three times a year, crossing the ocean on business. On the water his time was spent sunning himself on deck, talking to fellow passengers. The voyage which he began at Smyrna in mid-April was such a trip except that he traveled on a smaller, slower ship, in titular custody of a young Third Secretary of Embassy and watched over by traveling correspondents. While the ship was at Casablanca he suffered a brief heart attack, but otherwise his health was good for a man of 74. He talked readily enough with fellow passengers, groused a bit at being photographed, read a good deal, was delighted to get back copies of the Saturday Evening Post in Sicily. Apparently he worried little over what lay ahead until the last day or two before landing. When he spoke of himself he philosophized like many a retired businessman: "I never took pride in the fact that I made money. It was a pride in accomplishment. . . ." In Exile. Samuel Insull did not come back the same man who sailed from Quebec on the Empress of Britain in June 1932. His wealth lost, deprived of power but not yet humiliated, he first settled down in Paris on an $18,000-per-year pension granted him by his old companies. But humiliation followed. In Chicago a grand jury indicted him for embezzlement. Newshawks began to hound him in the streets. Finally, just before his arrest could be requested, he stole away in the night. His son Samuel Jr. went with him as far as Milan whence the old man fled alone to Athens. Instead of bravely facing the music, he had elected to become a hounded man, to ask hospitality of aliens, to finagle with outlandish courts and people, to flee on a scummy little freighter, to lie in shabby hotels, and finally to be cornered in a common jail in Istanbul and carried home captive. The Crack Up. Such disgrace followed, by only a few years, public honors. In 1931, on the 50th anniversary of Insull's arrival in the U. S., Owen Young, John Barton Payne, Charles Gates Dawes, Reginald McKenna (chairman of Britain's Midland Bank), Charles Steele (Morgan partner), Frederick H. Ecker (insurance). Gerard Swope and James A. Farrell sent tributes to the English-born immigrant who had achieved great things in his adopted country. But even then Sam Insull's pedestal of fame and fortune was tottering. His trouble dated back to 1928 when Capitalist Cyrus Eaton of Cleveland, through Continental Shares, his investment trust, now in receivership, decided to buy working control of a number of Insull utilities. Sam Insull was probably worth $100,000,000, but he did not own any great fraction of his companies' stock. He ruled them because he had built them. To head off Mr. Eaton's raid—a raid the courts have called piratical—he formed a holding company,