Fitkin Sells Again

"If I possess outstanding qualities, I suppose they are good judgment, courage, industry, and a certain inborn genius." So once spoke Abram Edward Fitkin, 52, whose business consists primarily of buying and selling utility properties, who last week was once again negotiating a big deal with Samuel Insull.

Abram Edward Fitkin was the son of a harnessmaker, had twelve brothers and sisters. He studied for the ministry, married at 17. Five years later he announced: "It is better to be a good businessman than a poor minister." He became a bond salesman, saved up $75,000 from commissions.

With a $400,000 loan from a friend at the Guaranty Trust, he bought control of the water, light and power company at San Angelo, Texas. By 1927 he controlled properties worth more than $300,000,000 which he sold to the Insull interests. Biggest of these companies was National Public Service Corp.* He then formed Pacific Public Service Co., sold control of it to Standard Oil Co. of California in 1929.

Being a good businessman has not caused Mr. Fitkin to forget his religious training. In memory of a son who died at 18 he has built the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital at Yale, the Raleigh Fitkin and Paul Morgan Hospital at Asbury Park, N. J., the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital at Bremersdorp, Swaziland, South Africa (which he visits frequently). Another gift was $1,000,000 for the establishment of the 200-acre Raleigh Memorial Farm and Institute for Crippled Orphans at Scobeyville, N. J.

When he is not yachting on Memory III, Mr. Fitkin lives at Allenhurst, N. J. on a large estate overlooking the ocean. A few years ago he went to California, saw and liked bungalows. The result was that when he returned he moved his colonial home to the back of the estate, built a large bungalow on its site. On this estate, he raised, besides many an imported shrub and prize dog, an able active son: Willis Carridine Fitkin, 23, who is now vice president of the Fitkin companies.

The deal on which Father & Son were working last week consisted of selling the Eastern electric and water properties of Atlantic Public Utilities, Inc., to the Insull interests. After getting control of Atlantic last year through a holding company Mr. Fitkin promptly placed it in receivership. Atlantic has $60,000,000 in assets, more than half of which will be sold to Insull. The remaining assets are in water and ice properties and the 160-mi. Cleveland Southwestern Ry. What Mr. Insull buys from Mr. Fitkin is the electric and water service of 200 communities in 13 states, most of which are along the Atlantic seaboard. Although his new acquisitions add less than 100,000 customers to the several million he already has, the deal gives Mr. Insull his first toehold in Connecticut and Massachusetts and leaves Rhode Island the only State on the Atlantic seaboard which contains no Insull unit.

*A holding company with subsidiaries in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland. Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and West Virginia.

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