20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Battle of Titans in Gilded Age Corporate Takeover, September 4, 2003
This review is from: After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905 (Hardcover)
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.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Party's Over?, August 30, 2003
This review is from: After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905 (Hardcover)
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.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Can't wait to see the movie, March 21, 2005
This review is from: After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905 (Hardcover)
A well-researched history book that reads like a novel is a rare find, but this is one. In an era when corporate greed and corruption are once again a part of everyday life, it's also a nice reminder of where years of deregulation and laissez-faire policies got us last time. James Hazen Hyde was a product of that time: spoiled, overly entitled, shamelessly extravagant in a city where poverty was widespread, and fond of business practices that have since been made illegal. But he was also the victim of even greedier - and smarter - associates, and Beard does a great job of portraying a rather unsympathetic character sympathetically.
Hyde's downfall seems to have been a lack of ambition or interest in learning the business he inherited, coupled with an overeagerness to reap the benefits of his father's financial success. Illustrating the latter is the party that serves as the book's climax, an incomprehensibly extravagant affair by the standards of any era. Beard argues that Hyde's detractors had already been hoping for years to bring him down, and the ball simply served as a welcome excuse to do so. Whether she's right or wrong about that, the event certainly proved to be fertile ground for scandal. In a classic case of "the truth is never juicy enough," rumors began circulating that Hyde had paid for the ball with company funds (he hadn't) and that the already-obscene cost was four times as much as it really was. Despite being guilty of nothing worse than bad taste, Hyde was soon bought out of his father's company and out of Wall Street society. Investigations and reform legislation followed, but those who were guilty of real wrongdoing were never punished.
Beard's overview of the financial events and disputes will probably be too simple for those with a strong knowledge of finance and business, but it's perfect for the rest of us. In any case, she is clearly more interested in Gilded Age high society and how it set the stage for James Hyde and his party, and her research in that area is impressive. The era's many excesses leap off the pages, with various Vanderbilts and Roosevelts making cameos throughout, making the greed and injustice palpable without anything approaching preachiness. Hyde himself becomes a somewhat tragic figure, living off his inheritance in Europe, outliving the damage to his reputation but emerging as a walking anachronism on his return to New York in the 1940s.
Sad, but very well done!
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