1930's Business and the Economy | Insull, Samuel 1859-1938

ELECTRICITY MAGNATE

Symbol.

In the 1930s Samuel Insull was the symbol of the unprincipled, greedy businessman. His gigantic electricity-generating empire, a series of more than seventy shaky firms piled one on top of the other, had collapsed during the Depression, losing a million investors $2 billion to $3 billion. Indicted for fraud, Insull fled to Europe, from where he was extradited to stand trial. The sensational proceedings occupied the public for months. The writer John Dos Passos described him as "a stiffly arrogant redfaced man with a closecropped mustache," who was "the deposed monarch of superpower." During the 1932 presidential campaign Franklin Roosevelt attacked him repeatedly, denouncing industrialists like "the Insulls, whose hand is against every man's." By most accounts of the day he was shameless and ruthless. But he was also Thomas Edison's personal secretary, a poor boy made good, a business genius,...