Business: Insull Textiles

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Samuel Insull, foremost public utilitarian of the Midwest,* last week became the dominant textile miller of Maine. Martin Insull, his brother and second-in-command, announced the purchase by Insull-controlled New England Public Service Co. of four Maine cotton plants including Bates Manufacturing Co. at Lewiston.

It was by no means the first such Insull purchase. New England textile mills have been shutting down in numbers for the past several years. And Samuel Insull has been on hand to buy them in, not because he wanted to get into the sagging textile industry but because a textile plant in the hand is a power plant in the bush. Cotton mills are built beside waterfalls and alert Mr. Insull is a maker and seller of electricity.

Last week's Maine purchase was accompanied by an Insull statement, indicative of the present condition of New England and suggestive of a new motive in the Insullation thereof.

Just as other power men have become newspaper owners to ensure a market for their papermaking subsidiaries (TIME, April 22 et seq.}, so the Insull interests were entering actually into the textile trade to ensure "large numbers of new power customers." Brother Martin Insull said: "The primary object is to serve the textile industry in New England, better business there and increase employment."

The Insulls mean to continue their practical philanthropy, to buy more New England textile plants and thus "forestall financial ruin and consequent distress to numerous communities through enforced idleness of thousands of workers." In other words, having bought big stakes in New England, the Insulls must now help keep New England alive. They can afford to run a few textile mills at a loss if that will keep the workers there to buy light.