Insull Strikes Back

Ever since his Midwestern utilities empire collapsed in scandal in the 1930s, the late Samuel Insull has served a generation of writers as a bogy of financial skulduggery. Samuel Insull Jr., 57, once his father's righthand man and now a Chicago insurance salesman, bore up steadily under the legacy. Last week he rebelled.

Insull complained about a piece by Scripps-Howard's Washington Correspondent Charles Lucey citing "racketeering practices of a kind that sent the Samuel Insulls and Richard Whitneys to jail." He objected to the words of Historian

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The Crisis of the Older Order: "[Insull] dominated Chicago, bribing the state utilities commission, affably encouraging the corruptions of local politics." He took exception to what Kenneth E. Trombley wrote in The Life and Times of a Happy Liberal: "[Insull's career] was to end with his going to jail for embezzlement."

In effect, said Insurance Man Insull, these critics charge "that we Insulls were convicted of certain crimes when, in fact, we were acquitted on every occasion." * He noted that he was "indissolubly linked" with his father, heading the same companies, accused of the same misdeeds, standing trial in the same courts. Against Correspondent Lucey, nine Scripps-Howard papers. Authors Schlesinger and Trombley and their publishers, Insull filed libel suits for $4,000,000. Said he: "This marks the first attempt of us Insulls to strike back at a 25-year unorganized but consistent campaign to vilify us."

* The elder Insull was jailed in Turkey while, awaiting deportation to the U.S. for trial, and again for a week in Cook County while his son raised $200,000 bail. But he was found innocent of all charges: mail fraud, embezzlement, and violation of the bankruptcy laws.

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