After the Ball : Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905

Rating:
Summary: The Party's Over?
Review: AFTER THE BALL is a well-written reminder that the more things change, especially in the business world, the more they remain the same. With simple contextual shifts, the story could have easily appeared in an MSNBC/CNN feeding frenzy today rather than as a distant - albeit poignant - episode during the final throes of America's Gilded Age.

Patricia Beard has been an editor of several major magazines and is the author of several books including GROWING UP REPUBLICAN: CHRISTIE WHITMAN, THE POLITICS OF CHARACTER and GOOD DAUGHTERS: LOVING OUR MOTHERS AS THEY AGE. The latter is a well-regarded exploration of changing relationships between mothers and daughters as they journey through the aging process. In her latest book, Ms. Beard chronicles the pivotal event in the young life of James Hyde, heir apparent to the Equitable Life Assurance Society empire. While one of the most fascinating watershed event in corporate and governmental righteousness, the story also serves as a harbinger to the whirlwind circling about a perception of scandal as various individuals with distinct agendas respond to that perception. Written in the style of a finely honed historical novel, AFTER THE BALL provides the reader with a detailed tapestry of turn-of-the-century upper class society. The "Ball" as a tipping point, can be seen as a metaphor for the perceptual demarcation between the excesses of the old from the social idealism (or perhaps the idealistic rhetoric) of new, more "moral" commerce. Hyde appears as the sacrificial lamb, an embodiment of corporate greed and excess (there are similarities to the movie "Wall Street," Gordon Gecko and Bud Fox). A seemingly trivial and superficial (although admittedly lavish) private affair provides the ammunition for self-righteous, self-styled altruistic corporate raiders and opportunistic politicians to feast upon the carcass of a fallen member of the club. Business practices of the day are contrasted with societal norms, offering the reader an excellent understanding of upper-class life in "pinkies-out" New York City along with the detailed portrait of the protagonist.

Ms. Beard's considerable writing ability continues to improve with each book, reflecting maturation born of experience, talent, research, and reflection. Her writing style, while substantive, is delightfully polished, engaging the reader throughout the 350-page narrative. The crisp prose displays a clearly defined purpose and fidelity to the themes throughout. While not always in strict chronological order, the book is well organized to deftly move the story along its intended path toward its conclusion.

The Afterward, a short exploration of Hyde's son Henry and his adventures in World War II, offers an additional fascinating contrast between the perceived superficiality of the father and the seriousness of the affairs of the son. The material in this portion of the book, while an appropriate epilogue to the story of James, would also stand nicely as the subject of its own book. I would recommend AFTER THE BALL to anyone fascinated with the continuing drama of American business and upper-class society.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but slight
Review: An interesting read, though it has the feel of having been padded a bit, especially at the end when the author veers off into a mildly interesting but irrelevant mini-bio of the the son of the main character. I would rather she had spent more time clearly defining some of the financial shenanigans; I still am not clear on some very major points. I reread them several times, and perhaps they are just beyond me, but the rest of the book dragged because the author tried to build the story on what I thought were some shaky foundations. Perhaps if you're a stock-broket or banker it would be clearer. Also, the main actor in this drama, James Hazen Hyde, seems like such a pampered, spoiled child. Although Beard doesn't convert most of the sums involved into today's dollars, the one or two times that she does provides a basic formula; by that account, poor Mr. Hyde was worth approximately $50 million BEFORE his inheritance. Even if that figure is wrong by half, the letters he wrote to his mother wanting her to foot some of his bills are pretty pathetic. To be fair, this book probably suffered because I had only recently finished DAvid McCullough's THE GREAT BRIDGE.

Rating:
Summary: Battle of Titans in Gilded Age Corporate Takeover
Review: If you followed Enron, Worldcom, the conspicuous consumptions of Donald Trump or any of the other seamier of capitalism's excesses over the last several decades, this book will show you that history was repeating itself. In fact, comparing the ostentatious displays of wealth and brutal no-holds-barred corporate infighting between then (1900) and now, our capitalists sound like mere echoes of men who defined the terms "Gilded Age" and "Robber Barons."

Patricia Beard, in "After the Ball" has used the events and people surrounding the Equitable Life Assurance Society to illustrate a bygone era of business and living at the top level of wealthy society. In addition to dissecting a nasty takeover corporate takeover attempt well, Ms. Beard writes in a way that holds the reader's attention.

The Equitable was one of the big three life insurance companies at the dawn of the 20th Century. Important to policy holders because life insurance was the only means of support available at the time if the man of the house died with dependants, it was important to Wall Street because the premiums sat in a vast cash pool and were available to finance much of our industrial growth of the period. The Equitable had been created by one man, Henry Hyde, who grew it from a store-front business to vast size in the forty years after the Civil War. Henry Hyde was a founder, a decisive man who knew his business, could make decisions and had the respect of his company officers as well as his fellows.

His son, James Hazen Hyde, had none of his father's characteristics and had not been schooled by his doting parent in the arts that would be necessary to run the Equitable when it was his turn. When Henry died, James, in his early twenties, was the product of money and society -- finishing schools in Paris, the best clubs, debutante balls, and the kingly sport of coach riding. In short, he was trained to compete in the world of Mrs. Astor, not Mr. Astor.

To compensate for these deficiencies, father Henry had established a trust for his son. A vice presidency with the Equitable and the tutelage of James Alexander, President of the company and the man entrusted by the founder to school young James until he could assume the Presidency himself.

Alexander had other ideas. Put off by James Hyde's public and ostentatious lifestyle (including the Hyde Ball, one of the most talked about and over the top dinner productions in an era of societal excess among his class), claiming that it did not befit a corporate leader who could keep the "sacred trust" of a life insurance company, and wanting control of a company he had contributed mightily to, Alexander organized a takeover fight among the board members. His goal was to strip James of control of the Board of Directors and to do it by using James' social prominence against him in a public as well as behind-the-scenes attack.

What ensued was a year long debacle that quickly spun out of control, as first the Alexander side and then the Hyde forces battled for advantage. The board members, financiers like Harriman, Ryan, Morgan, Frick and others backed the side that stood to gain them the greatest advantage in victory. Plans, compromise offers, press leaks, attacks intrigue and back stabbing came forward in a flurry as the fight became very public and enthralled ordinary people (over 100 front page stories in the NY Times in about a year's period). Regulators soon got involved, the NY Legislature, political bosses and any number of money-men, eyeing easy capital if they could assume control. President Theodore Roosevelt worried that the fight would harm the Equitable, dissolve commercial confidence and bring the economy to a grinding halt.

When it was over, neither side got what they wanted or expected, the NY Legislature was spurred into reforming insurance oversight, Charles Evans Hughes was launched on his path to the US Supreme Court and his run for the White House and the Gilded Age (from hindsight) set on a path toward memory.

Beard weaves this corporate intrigue with a biography of James Hazen Hyde. He is the archetypical society man of the Gilded Age, spending on livery, costumed balls, big houses, fast women, a sport very few could even afford to compete in and his love of French culture. She does a good job of entwining the two threads of her book, stumbling only when she sometimes over-lists what various guests were wearing to various parties and engagements. On the whole, she does a good job of painting a picture of life as James Hazen Hyde knew it, and demonstrating that he was both cut from too fine a cloth to effectively run a competitive business and that he wore that cloth too proudly, helping to make his lifestyle a large issue in the corporate meltdown that froze the Equitable as titans battled for control.

The author writes well and generally keeps the pace moving along swiftly. The story weaves many famous business and historical personalities (it was a much smaller world at the top then) into the saga of a now forgotten business drama that held the public in fascination. This is a good book for readers interested in business history as well as viewing the lifestyles of the fabulously wealthy a hundred years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Parallells between now and then
Review: James Hazen Hyde inherited the majority of shares in the Equitable Life Assurance Society at the age of 23.Intelligent, wealthy, cultured and received in the best circles,he seemed ready to run the billion dollar company. He was no match for the older more seasoned men on the company's board. Encompassing the Gilded Era, when wealth was displayed and the 400 Ruled society,"After the Ball" details the ascent of Hyde and his eventual fall from power.Not only is this a story of business and the mechanisms of power, it is a a glimpse into the rarified world of the social elite. No expenditure seemed to extravagent if it meant besting your social peers,no display too vulgar. It is the time when Vanderbilts,Astors,Roosevelts and others filled the society news. James Hyde moved in these circles,using the vast monies in his business to ease the way. Briskly written, well-paced, "After the Ball" not only details the behind the scene power struggles (usually front-page news)but the intrigues within the highest of society.



Rating:
Summary: From Boardroom to Drawing Room to Ballroom
Review: James Hyde, the main character in Patricia Beard's "After the Ball," a fascinating chronicle of the Gilded Age, conceded, "I got too much power when I was young." Shortly after the turn of the century, Hyde appeared to be coasting to glory in charmed young adulthood affluence. In his twenties he owned a brownstone in New York, a house in Paris, a private railroad car, and a four hundred acre estate, The Oaks, on Long Island. Add to the aforementioned that he was Harvard-educated with all the right social connections, was matinee idol handsome, and was a vice president in the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and it becomes easy to see why many sought his company and others were just plain jealous.

Beard's intensely researched work strips the veneer off the visible top layer and reveals that life can be highly disconcerting at the top of society as well. The difference is the battles that are fought, which, considering the stakes, contain a ruthless intensity.

In the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, in which James Hyde's father Henry flourished after founding the billion dollar Equitable Life Assurance Society, commercial triumph resulted from truly being in the right place at the right time with the right product. While income disparities were vast, ordinary citizens seeking to make financial ends meet bought life insurance policies to provide their families with security in the face of often rocky existences. The resourceful elder Hyde tapped into this desire. He succeeded so handsomely that big name magnates such as E.H. Harriman and Henry Clay Frick would soon grace Equitable's board of directors.

Henry Hyde died May 2, 1999, a year after his son graduated from Harvard. Young James was convinced that one day he would follow in his father's footsteps after receiving the proper seasoning, and the person designated to provide that assistance was acting president James W. Alexander, a veteran who had worked his way up the Equitable ladder. He would be assisted, it was anticipated, by Gage Tarbell, Equitable's third vice president and head of sales.

The book's title relates to a grand New York ball young Hyde gave on January 31, 1905. At the time this appeared to be the latest stepping stone up the success ladder for the handsome, witty, urbane New York City executive and socialite. One of the evening's guests would be another young New York aristocrat who would marry a cousin less than one year later and ultimately surge to inernational greatness and an enduring place in world history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In a contemporary framework it would appear that perhaps the gifted Hyde would succeed in New York society and beyond in the same manner as Franklin Roosevelt, but whereas the future president was just working his way into the city's and state's limelight with an ultimate focus well beyond those objectives, Henry Hyde's run of bad luck would bear an inverse relationship to the good fortunes of Roosevelt. Before long his company would be immersed in conflict. Alexander and Tarbell would turn on him, while Henry Clay Frick, who chaired an investigation into company activities, would so the same. E.H. Harriman was another formidable force pitted against young Hyde.

While Equitable fell into a comparable pattern of excess and wheeler-dealer activity characteristic of highly competitive New York corporate life, with its agents being provided with excessive advances and state law being violated by selling stocks to companies on whose boards they sat, directing animus against the youngest executive in the ranks appeared to be a case of absolving their own conduct through a designated scapegoat. In the process they also released pent-up jealousies against one of the dashing princes of New York society, who had dated Alice Roosevelt and visited with her and father Theodore in the White House. Hyde was also a friend of the period's most famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt.

Another highly publicized effort, the Armstrong Investigation, headed by Charles Evans Hughes, later to become Attorney General, Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, captured many headlines but resulted in no prosecutions. All the same, the damage was done and Hyde relocated to Paris.

A new phase of Hyde's life began in Paris, where he had earlier headed an Equitable office. In the manner of a seasoned aristocrat more characteristic of an ancient British family, Hyde ultimately married three times and cut a wide swath in Parisian society. His only son, Henry, had a large shadow to climb out from under, feeling initially dwarfed by his formidable father. Eventually he emerged from that shadow and achieved marks of distinction initially in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, in World War Two, then as a prominent New York-based international lawyer whose client list included prominent film director John Huston.

Patricia Beard is able to provide readers with such a fascinating front row seat in boardrooms, drawing rooms and ballrooms of the period due to her close friendship with the Hyde family. Henry served as godfather to one of her children. The book serves as both an interesting corporate chronicle of the times as well as providing social commentary wherein readers feel a part of the scene, rubbing elbows with the cream of international society.

Rating:
Summary: From Boardroom to Drawing Room to Ballroom
Review: James Hyde, the main character in Patricia Beard's "After the Ball," a fascinating chronicle of the Gilded Age, conceded, "I got too much power when I was young." Shortly after the turn of the century, Hyde appeared to be coasting to glory in charmed young adulthood affluence. In his twenties he owned a brownstone in New York, a house in Paris, a private railroad car, and a four hundred acre estate, The Oaks, on Long Island. Add to the aforementioned that he was Harvard-educated with all the right social connections, was matinee idol handsome, and was a vice president in the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and it becomes easy to see why many sought his company and others were just plain jealous.

Beard's intensely researched work strips the veneer off the visible top layer and reveals that life can be highly disconcerting at the top of society as well. The difference is the battles that are fought, which, considering the stakes, contain a ruthless intensity.

In the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, in which James Hyde's father Henry flourished after founding the billion dollar Equitable Life Assurance Society, commercial triumph resulted from truly being in the right place at the right time with the right product. While income disparities were vast, ordinary citizens seeking to make financial ends meet bought life insurance policies to provide their families with security in the face of often rocky existences. The resourceful elder Hyde tapped into this desire. He succeeded so handsomely that big name magnates such as E.H. Harriman and Henry Clay Frick would soon grace Equitable's board of directors.

Henry Hyde died May 2, 1999, a year after his son graduated from Harvard. Young James was convinced that one day he would follow in his father's footsteps after receiving the proper seasoning, and the person designated to provide that assistance was acting president James W. Alexander, a veteran who had worked his way up the Equitable ladder. He would be assisted, it was anticipated, by Gage Tarbell, Equitable's third vice president and head of sales.

The book's title relates to a grand New York ball young Hyde gave on January 31, 1905. At the time this appeared to be the latest stepping stone up the success ladder for the handsome, witty, urbane New York City executive and socialite. One of the evening's guests would be another young New York aristocrat who would marry a cousin less than one year later and ultimately surge to inernational greatness and an enduring place in world history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In a contemporary framework it would appear that perhaps the gifted Hyde would succeed in New York society and beyond in the same manner as Franklin Roosevelt, but whereas the future president was just working his way into the city's and state's limelight with an ultimate focus well beyond those objectives, Henry Hyde's run of bad luck would bear an inverse relationship to the good fortunes of Roosevelt. Before long his company would be immersed in conflict. Alexander and Tarbell would turn on him, while Henry Clay Frick, who chaired an investigation into company activities, would so the same. E.H. Harriman was another formidable force pitted against young Hyde.

While Equitable fell into a comparable pattern of excess and wheeler-dealer activity characteristic of highly competitive New York corporate life, with its agents being provided with excessive advances and state law being violated by selling stocks to companies on whose boards they sat, directing animus against the youngest executive in the ranks appeared to be a case of absolving their own conduct through a designated scapegoat. In the process they also released pent-up jealousies against one of the dashing princes of New York society, who had dated Alice Roosevelt and visited with her and father Theodore in the White House. Hyde was also a friend of the period's most famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt.

Another highly publicized effort, the Armstrong Investigation, headed by Charles Evans Hughes, later to become Attorney General, Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, captured many headlines but resulted in no prosecutions. All the same, the damage was done and Hyde relocated to Paris.

A new phase of Hyde's life began in Paris, where he had earlier headed an Equitable office. In the manner of a seasoned aristocrat more characteristic of an ancient British family, Hyde ultimately married three times and cut a wide swath in Parisian society. His only son, Henry, had a large shadow to climb out from under, feeling initially dwarfed by his formidable father. Eventually he emerged from that shadow and achieved marks of distinction initially in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, in World War Two, then as a prominent New York-based international lawyer whose client list included prominent film director John Huston.

Patricia Beard is able to provide readers with such a fascinating front row seat in boardrooms, drawing rooms and ballrooms of the period due to her close friendship with the Hyde family. Henry served as godfather to one of her children. The book serves as both an interesting corporate chronicle of the times as well as providing social commentary wherein readers feel a part of the scene, rubbing elbows with the cream of international society.

Rating:
Summary: "A sordid attempt to destroy the property of [a] young man."
Review: Telling the true story of James Hazen Hyde, a glamorous young man who was majority shareholder of Equitable Life Assurance Society from 1899 - 1905, Patricia Beard gives a close-up view of the turn-of-the-century Gilded Age, with all its excesses. Upon the death of Henry Baldwin Hyde, who founded and ran Equitable, his son James, a recent graduate of Harvard, succeeded to the Board. Under the terms of his father's will, a regent would oversee his participation in the company until he was thirty, at which point he would take over.

His regent and "mentor," a friend of his father, was James W. Alexander, who had engaged in some questionable deals with Henry Hyde. More interested in protecting his own wealth and interests than in guiding James, Alexander, aided by other self-interested Board members, put James on forty-eight different boards, persuaded him to invest company funds in a variety of projects, and generally kept him in the dark. Because Equitable was formed by private investors who became shareholders, and was not a "mutualized" company, Board members could reap huge profits from the company's investments while avoiding oversight.

In 1905, when he was twenty-eight years old, the attractive James, a much-sought-after socialite, gave a huge ball, modeled after an event at Versailles, which cost him $100,000. James Alexander and other Board members, fearing young James's takeover of power in two years, used this party to accuse James of illegally using company funds. Throughout the many legal investigations which ensued, James behaved honorably as his father's "friends" destroyed his reputation to save their own.

As a portrait of the Gilded Age and the venality of some of its wealthiest men, the book is fascinating. The financial complexities are difficult to follow, however, and the assorted characters, including, unfortunately, James Hyde himself, never really come alive. James was only twenty-three when he became embroiled in Equitable and twenty-eight when he sold out and moved permanently to France. Too young and too much a victim to be intrinsically interesting, he is a cipher who reveals nothing about his inner self. Lacking a clear focus, the author devotes considerable research to the peripheral characters, their lifestyles, and marriages, even devoting pages to James's son, who was not born until long after the events at Equitable. More interested in lifestyles than financial dealings, the author misses the chance to draw meaningful lessons from the financial crisis at Equitable in 1905. Mary Whipple


Rating:
Summary: Interesting story of second generation power and wealth
Review: This book is an unexpected pleasure. I did not know much about the history of the early big life insurance companies and little about high society in New York and Paris just before the First World War.

There are many books about the men who actually built these early business empires, but not much about their children and what became of them as they tried to find their own way in the world. This transition of wealth and power to the second generation is a fascinating subject.

"After the Ball" is about just such a man of the second generation, James Hazen Hyde. His father, Henry, had founded The Equitable Life Insurance Company and like many of the early business tycoons, he was tough, had control of his subordinates, and wanted his children (especially the oldest surviving son) to take a prominent place in the world with a fine education, social and political connections, as well as money.

When Henry died at 65 in 1899, James had just graduated from Harvard. The father doted on the boy, but really didn't prepare him for the role he was going to be thrust into. Maybe the father expected to teach him before he died, but he waited too long. Henry's associates at The Equitable at first treated the boy with seeming respect and support. But soon their avidity got the better of them.

James Hazen Hyde had learned to live lavishly. The book taught me more about coaches and their place in society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries than I thought there was to know. It is a small topic, but interesting and very informative about life among the wealthy at that time. Another important part of society was entertaining the right people and being entertained by them. Lavish Balls were a part o this social interaction. James Hazen Hyde gave a fabulous Ball that became legendary, but legendary in a way that was not helpful to his future prospects of running the Equitable.

The public, who had formerly loved reading about these expensive entertainments, was now more resentful of what it considered waste and considered such extravagance an affront to the current egalitarian mood. James Alexander and Gage Tarbell, associates of James Hyde's father, used this publicity as a pretext to go after the son. They used lies about the expense involved and company funds being used to pay for it. It was largely a PR war at first and it seems they expected the boy to turn tail and run. Hyde didn't run. The fight ended up bringing everyone down.

The book does a very good job of showing us how Alexander, who took over the company after Henry dies, and Tarbell, who wanted to push out both the son and Alexander, warred against the son. In the process, others such as E.H. Harriman got involved. Along the way, the self-serving practices rampant in the industry were exposed and everyone came out looking bad and lost their positions. In the end, these fellows blew up the entire insurance industry as it had been run. James Hyde at least had the excuse that he was just doing what the others were doing when he arrived on the scene.

James Hazen Hyde left for his beloved Paris to let things cool down. He stayed much longer than he had expected. In the end he married without success three times, he had a son, Henry, with whom he was unable to develop a close relationship. James Hyde continued to live at the extreme limits of his reduced wealth, lived a long time and therefore left little or nothing for his son when he died. The son became a successful and decorated officer for the OSS during World War II and himself lived a good long time.

It is an interesting story, but this isn't a typical business book. Nor is it simply a biography. It mixes in a lot of different things. But this is a bit of a different kid of story and I think it requires this kind of telling. There are footnotes and a bibliography if you want to read more about the topics discussed in this book.

You can spend several hours getting many good things from this interesting book and feel like you invested your time well.

Now for a small, but not insignificant point. The book has at least a couple of curious factual errors that jumped out at me. Maybe this is picayune, but:

1) On page 62 the author states that John D. Rockefeller died in 1913 and that he left an estate of nearly a billion dollars. Well, he actually died in 1937 and had given away most of his estate to his various charities and to his son and family. He once said that if he hadn't given so much away he thought he would have had a billion dollars, but the book is wrong as stated. Ron Chernow's "Titan" is a really great biography of Rockefeller and I recommend that as well.

2) Diaghilev was never a dancer or choreographer as stated on page 315. The great Nijinsky, however, was and he was in the Ballet Russes, which Diaghilev founded with Bakst and Benois. Diaghilev was the impresario.

These kinds of little errors undermine reader confidence in the other things the author states in the book. However, this book has a lot to recommend it. So, if you want to know more about life in the gilded age and the social style of the times along stories of trying to be the successful son of a very dominant father, betrayal by people who had made intimations of friendship and support, politics, greed, and downright foolishness, then this is a good book for you.