page_title: James Hazen Hyde
section_title: Removal from The Equitable
hierarchical_section_title: James Hazen Hyde / Career / Removal from The Equitable
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration shows eight men and one woman sitting and standing around a table, each is identified with a Cabinet position: J.P. Morgan as "Sec'y Navy", Thomas W. Lawson as "Sec'y War", Thomas F. Ryan as "Att'y Gen'l", James J. Hill as "Sec'y Int.", James H. Hyde as "Sec'y Com. and Lab.", Russell Sage as "Sec'y Agric", Henrietta "Hetty" Green as "Post Mistress Gen'l", Andrew Carnegie as "Sec'y State", and John D. Rockefeller as "Sec'y Treas"; sitting on the table is a statue labeled "Golden Calf" and hanging on the wall are portraits of "Midas" and "Croesus". On the far left is a ticker tape machine.
context_page_description: James Hazen Hyde was the son of Henry Baldwin Hyde, the founder of The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. James Hazen Hyde was twenty-three in 1899 when he inherited the majority shares in the billion-dollar Equitable Life Assurance Society. Five years later, at the pinnacle of social and financial success, efforts to remove him from The Equitable set in motion the first great Wall Street scandal of the 20th century, which resulted in his resignation from The Equitable and relocation to France.
context_section_description: Following his father's death, Hyde was the majority shareholder and in effective control of The Equitable.  By the terms of his father's will, he was scheduled to assume the presidency of the company in 1906.  Members of the board of directors, including E. H. Harriman, Henry Clay Frick, J.P. Morgan, and company President James Waddell Alexander attempted to wrest control from Hyde through a variety of means, including an unsuccessful attempt to have him appointed as Ambassador to France.
  On the last night of January 1905, Hyde hosted a highly publicized Versailles-themed costume ball. Falsely accused through a coordinated smear campaign initiated by his opponents at The Equitable of charging the $200,000 party (about $4 million in 2014) to the company, Hyde soon found himself drawn into a maelstrom of allegations of his corporate malfeasance.  The allegations almost caused a Wall Street panic, and eventually led to a state investigation of New York's entire insurance industry, which resulted in laws to regulate activities between insurance companies, banks and other corporations.
  In 1905, Hyde's net worth was about $20 million (around $400 million in 2014).  After the negative press generated by the efforts to remove him from The Equitable, later in 1905 Hyde resigned from the company, gave up most of his other business activities, and moved to France. There were published rumors that he would marry French actress Yvonne Garrick in 1906.
caption: Hyde depicted in J. S. Pughe's illustration, A cabinet that could afford it, 1905.
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