Samuel Insull
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Samuel Insull (November 11, 1859 - July 16, 1938) was an investor in Chicago who was known for purchasing utilities and railroads. He contributed to creating an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States.
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Early life
Samuel Insull was born in London, and began his career as a clerk for various local businesses. At the age of 21 he caught the attention of Thomas Edison while working for Edison's business representative in London. Edison offered Insull a job as his personal secretary, and Insull immigrated to the United States in 1881. In the decade that followed Insull took on increasing responsibilities in Edison's business endeavors, building electrical power stations throughout the United States. With several other Edison associates he founded Edison General Electric, which later became the publicly held company General Electric.
Life in Chicago
In 1892, Insull left General Electric and moved to Chicago to take over the presidency of Chicago Edison (later Commonwealth Edison). He began purchasing portions of the utility infrastructure of the city. When it became clear that Westinghouse's support of alternating current was to win out over Edison's direct current, Insull switched his support to AC.
His Chicago area holdings came to include Commonwealth Edison, People's Gas, the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, and held shares of many more utilities. Insull also owned significant portions of many railroads, mainly interurban streetcar lines, including the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad, Chicago Rapid Transit Company, Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad, and Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad. He helped electrify these railroads and others.
As a result of owning all these diverse companies, Insull is credited with being one of the early proponents for regulation of industry, allowing all companies to be able to sell electricity to any place on the market. He used economies of scale to overcome market barriers by cheaply producing electricity with large steam turbines. This made it easier to put electricity into homes.
Great Depression
Within Illinois, Insull had long battled with Harold L. Ickes. Upon the promotion of Ickes to Interior Secretary in 1933, Insull now had a powerful foe in the Roosevelt administration. Due to a severe increase in the regulatory power of the Federal, State, and City Governments, much of what Insull had built was confiscated during the Great Depression. Though Insull drastically reduced electricity rates, provided service throughout much of the Midwest, and developed a model for the electric grid used world wide, he was vilified in the United States for being a monopolist and contributing to the heavy speculation that was believed to have been the cause of the Great Depression. Insull left the United States but returned for a trial for over anti-trust charges. Insull was found not guilty and vindicated of all charges. He died of a heart attack on the Paris Métro. He is reputed to have died penniless, but he did not. The myth started when Insull was lying dead on the stairs in a metro station, his corpse was looted by a Parisian for his wallet.
According to The New York Times, Mr. and Mrs. Insull had arrived in Paris to see the French Bastille Day festivities and he rose at about 7 AM so as not to miss the show. Mr. Insull suffered from a heart ailment, and his wife had asked him not to take the Métro because it was bad for his heart.
Nevertheless, Mr. Insull had made frequent declarations that he was "now a poor man" and descended a long flight of stairs at the Place de la Concorde station and was stricken just as he stepped toward the ticket taker. His knees gave way under him and he fell forward upon his face with a crash, according to the ticket taker. "His glasses were smashed into a thousand bits". The first policemen on the scene loosened his clothing and found that his heart had already stopped.
Mrs. Insull, who was staying with him in a Paris hotel, was not located until two hour later and collapsed in shock when she learned of his death. Later revived, she sobbed that she was "all alone now" and later said "I had told him never to take a subway because it was bad for his heart."
Plans were announced for Insull to be buried in London, the city of his birth.
Books about Samuel Insull
- John F. Wasik: The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2006. ISBN 1-4039-6884-5
- Forrest McDonald: Insull: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Utility Tycoon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. ISBN 1587982439