The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-07-07
C0CKERILL'S LETTER.
Story Of Henry B. Hyde's Remark
able Business Career.
This Is a Son-in-Law Era Host of Men
Who Have Become Famous and
= Host Who Are Lost
to Sight.
rCoPYRICHr. 1927

lIy as we'll as Dy virtue OF the great cor
poration he has practically created, one
of the most remarkable men in the
world. A friend of Mr.. Hyde, in reply
to my question asking some details
about Hyde's career, Said he supposed
that less had been printed about this
man than any other who ever filled so
important public function. hyde, -
said he, "has, all his life, been a worker
and not a talker. 1t is as true of him
now as it was thirty years ago, about
which time he conceived the idea of the
company whose name he has so eff
GENTLY identified with the idea of equity.
And he is almost as active now as he
was then, although years have told
| heavily on most of his contemporaries.
If it be no small achievement to found
an empire or to plan a city, it seems to
me fair to make a comparison between
| them and such an achievement as
| Hyde's. For he has created and brought
up to its highest pitch of usefulness a
| society-he prefers that word to the
term corporation which, measured
alike by the standards of usefulness,
wealth, influence and extent, 1 am very
free TO say has no peer.
Now and then l have heard illusions
| made to the enormous sums annually
paid Mr.. Hyde by the society as a salary
for his services. / consider it trife.
The directors of the New York Life In
surance Company resolved the other
day to pay Mr.. William II. Beers, an ex-
president Of that corporation, the sum
of s37, 500 annually, as pension, and
to some extent in lieu of the salary of
S75, 900 which he had annually received
during his incumbency. When some Of
the policy holders made objections to
the payment of what they called such
an enormous gratuity, it was discreetly
pointed out to them that that gratuity
was equivalent to contribution of
about ten cents per year from each of
the policy holders, and that for a man
who had devoted his life to the service
of such a corporation, without growing
rich in it, as most corporate officers do,
such contribution was simple justice.
Il don't believe it has ever found its
way into type, or, at all events, not so
recently but that it is of much interest
in this cOnnection-the story of how
Mr.. Hyde raised the salary issue with
his former employers, the Mutual Life
Insurance Company, before he had
more than matured in his own mind his
plan of starting the Equitable. No
doubt you have heard that there was a
difference of opinion between Mr.. Hyde
and President Winston. But, as hear
the story on the inside, that difference
of opinion was actually about the
amount of Mr.. Hyde's salary. Already
he had become an active, a useful and
well-known figure in the life insurance
world. 1t was just before then that an
uptown club to which he belonged OBJ
jected to his talking about life insurance
in its clubhouse, and intimated that
life insurance solicitor, such as Mr..
Hyde then was, should leave his
business or profession behind him when
he entered the club doors. Hyde heard
of it and got out of the club. But he
bore the facts in mind, and in his secre-
tive way has since kept track of the
movements and careers of some of the
very men most instrumental in censur-
ing him for his early devotion to bust
ness. He would have been more than
human could he have failed to feel a
sentiment something approaching to
exultation in his after life over APP
plications made to him by those former
club members of his for assistance
which he generously and quietly ex-
tended. But that little incident has
been the keynote of his own life. In
surance. insurance, insurance, has been
the topic of his waking and sleeping
hours. For my part, l believe this de-
votion to business is not only the way
to get rich, but the very best known
method of reaching serene and vigor-
Gus old age with mind and body alike
unimpaired.
THE DWIGHT CASE REC ALLIED.
did you ever hear the Dwight
story? No? Well, l have heard Mr..
Hyde say that it was the course his So
ciety took in that case which enabled it
to take the lead in life insurance and to
hold it. Some fifteen years ago Col.
Walton B. Dwight, of Binghamton, n.
Y, a broad-shouldered blonde giant,
six feet two inches in height, bluff,
hearty and always up to his eyelids in
affairs, died with his life insured for
s256, 900. Instantly what is now IA
nous as the Dwight case began in
the courts and has figured more or less
in them ever since, although I believe
that even the last of the recalcitrant
companies finally paid
.
dollars of life insurance was simply
astounding, the very existence of which
was of sufficient interest to attract at
ten ton from Maine to San Francisco. !
Col Dwight's 1886, 600 had been placed /
in twenty-six companies, some of which |
for years attempted to prove all sorts
of astounding and romantic hypothesis !
to release them from their liabilities on
the face of his policy. Several of.the |
companies actually formed a partner !
ship with a detective almost as well !
known as Allan Pinkerton himself, by 1
the terms of which they agreed to pay /
him $50, 200 in cash for the production ,
within six months of Walton Dwight /
alive or of evidence that Dwight had |
been alive one year subsequent to the |
18th of November, 1878 This was one |
of the marvellous tales then free
II discussed and which had /
just been recalled prominently |
to public attention By the Gran
dali case at Buffalo, \. Y, IN which
the fact that the insured has actually |
been identified years after his death
was apparently proven to the insurance
Col Dwight's death was a
sudden one, just four days before the