Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1906-04-23
vice-presidency at salary Of 100000

vice-presidency at a salary of 100000
year. -, y. &33ss&Ea>
To Mr.. Alexander, now president of
the Equitable, this rare and astonish-
ing youth, a figure more to be looked
for in fiction than in real life, was an
object of great sentiment, suggesting
the responsibilities of parent and
teacher rather than the discipline Of
a great financial institution
The youth was an extraordinary
combination of intelligence, agrees
iveness, vanity and vulgarity. He had
lived like prince at Harvard, with a
private cook, valet, fast horses and
a set of groveling sycophants. He
wore extraordinary hats and waist
coats, aped the style of Paris boule-
Warbler in the wonderful cut and
twirl of his beard and mustache, car
ried costly flowers on his bosom, like
a prlma donna, tied violets in his
horses brides when on his way to
business, and had the splashing ex-
travagances, the love of notoriety and
the -Waisted strutting, cock-a-
dandy way of an unripe nature eager
to express a sense of unlimited wealth
and power, in terms of an experience
that had not yet gone beyond bright
feathers and heads r~E -. n5
1t will serve no useful purpose here
to dwell upon the fantastic angles,
the social adventures and the head
long follies of this precious young
man as he burst, full-spangled and
plumed, into the great central world
of finance in New York. His short
comings have been set forth to the
American public-his famous banquet
to Ambassador Cambon, his notorious
and royalty extravagant fancy-dress
ball, with a French actress as its
heroine, his princely progresses hither
and thither, all emblazoned in the
newspapers, and mostly at the ex-
pense of the Equitable-these things
have been painted in vivid colors, and
perhaps too little has been said in
extenuation of the failings of one so
young and so warped by organized
fiattery. =.
AS young Hyde realized his power
over the vast assets of the Equitable
society, he gradually ignored the au-
thority of its president and usurped
his functions. He cared little for the
insurance side of the business. That
was too dry and dull. His ambition
was to be the financier Of the society,
the disposer of it's hundreds of mill
lions.
Wall Street woke up to the fact that
young Hyde was an easy door to the
nearly 100000, 900 resources of the
Equitable. Wall Street had waited
long for supply Of money that would
flow where it was needed. The era
Of colossal industrial stock fotations
was at hand. The country trembled
on the verge Of the most violent
gambling fever in it's history. All
sense of proportion was melting away
in the golden haze that settled down
upon The American speculative world
when one industry after another was
merged, transformed into stocks and
bonds, and sold at fabulous profits to
an excited and credulous public As
this craze for industrial securities in
creased, Wall Street reached out for
money to meet the requirements of
new railroad mergers and other sub
stantial developments. Billions of
dollars of new securities We're offered
fduring this feyerish period of glitter
! ing bubblelblowing, when even men
like J. Pierpont Morgan, accounted
the master-fnancier of his age, lost
his head.
In all the great insurance companies
the directors and officers found them
tselves standing waist-deep, as it We're,
in a sort of Mississippi of money, and
so vast was this tide, so ever increas-
ing, that the splashings of secret
syndicate commissions seemed to
them to be of small account. The
very immensely of the funds in the
control of the insurance system seemed
to sweep away all considerations save
I that the solvency of the companies,
their ability to meet all outstanding
policies, should not be impaired.
SO that, when the respondent
young sWaggerer who really controlled
/ the Equitable society was seen to be
drifting into the hands OF powerful
men, like Jacob H. Schiff and e. H.
Hartman, both directors of the
Equitable, but representing outside
1 interests which unloaded tens of mil,
i lions of dollars Of securities upon that
i organization; when it was observed
that young Hyde, be-foWered,
tcredmlous and inexperienced boy, was
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