Salt Lake Telegram | 1932-06-15 | Page 4 | The Insull Debacle

THE INSULL DEBACLE A A V MERICAN business has not in years offered of- of as spectacular a tragedy as that of Samuel Insull More th than n. n half l a t century ago Insull l came cameto cameto cameto to America from England the poor boy of tradition eager to seek seel his fortune in the growing new land His rise was fast and dazzling The industrial industrial In Industrial in- in and financial empire that he put to together together together to- to gether kept on growing extending itself throwing tentacles about new plants becomIng becoming becom becom- I 1 ing the very epitome of those peculiarly American combinations of physical properties proper proper- ties ties financial resources and credit Insull's Insults own fortune was rated at any list however brief of the the scenes rulers ulers of America would inevitably have in included in- in his name And now he is going back to England His properties have gone into receivership he has Jost lost ost all of his own fortune in a futile effort to save them theIn he has some of debts and nd his personal income is a modest pension voted at the last minute by directors of his former lormer companies He is 73 years old Here if ever were success and failure on the grand scale Few ever rose higher than Insull few ever fell faster or harder And there is something extremely significant about the whole story Insull came in at a time of expansion Everything was getting bigger everywhere There were new fields to explore and exploit new ew worlds to conquer America was growing beyond all bounds and the clever and ambitious ambitious ambitious ambi ambi- could grow with her Things grew too fast too big perhaps the giants who were lifted up by the process have peen been cast down and the lusty exuberant burly hurly of youth in which such things are re possible has ended