Saving Sin City by Mary Cummings

Author:Mary Cummings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

1905

23

CORPORATE SCANDAL AND A CAUTIONARY CASE

There are no laws to cover ninety-nine out of a hundred cases of the crimes committed every day in this era in the name of high finance.

—WILLIAM TRAVERS JEROME

By 1905, the rumbling against Jerome for his failure to go after the high and mighty is growing louder. There is rising anger aimed at insiders of the three big insurance companies—Equitable, New York Life, and Mutual—for squeezing millions from their policyholders and using the money to invest in securities for their personal profit or to reward legislators for standing firm against industry regulation. Scandalous but not quite illegal, the corporate pilfering is putting huge profits into the pockets of powerful capitalists with access to the treasuries of the big three—men with names like Vanderbilt, Frick, and Gould. Given the lack of regulatory legislation on the books, Jerome, try as he might, is unable to find any evidence of the kind required to take the corporate con men to court.

Pressure on Jerome intensifies when dissension within the Equitable Life Insurance Society between the company’s elderly president and 29-year-old James Hazen Hyde, son of Equitable’s founder and heir to a controlling interest in the company, precipitates a major scandal. Determinedly cosmopolitan and flashy, Hyde never misses an opportunity to flaunt his wealth and high rank among the elite, most recently with a star turn at the Horse Show with the president’s daughter Alice on his arm. For his greatest social triumph, he has chosen to host a magnificent costume ball for which no expense is to be spared.

The Equitable’s old guard, upset by the prospect of young James putting the company’s ill-gotten gains on display at a high-profile, high-cost ball at a time when the business is already in bad odor, would like very much to squelch the party, rid themselves of its irresponsible host, and get back to the business of quietly looting the company’s coffers. But the newspapers have been reporting on ball preparations for weeks and there is no way to avoid the enormous publicity, which risks raising uncomfortable questions—questions that, if pursued, could shine a light on obscene corporate greed and its connection to high-society hedonism.

On January 31, 1905, at 10:30 P.M., a steady stream of carriages and electric vehicles rolls up to Sherry’s to deliver Hyde’s costumed guests. The host, splendidly attired in the uniform of the New York Coaching Club—coat of myrtle green, black satin knee breeches, black silk stockings, and an assortment of medals—is there to greet them and signal the way to the third-floor ballroom. Originally designed by Stanford White in full-on French palatial style, it is filled with roses, palms, shrubs, and arbors, a study in excess that recalls the splendor of the court of Louis XV, which is, in fact, the motif Hyde has chosen for his extravaganza.

When, with a tap of his baton, the conductor of the forty-piece Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra gives the signal and the music begins, the dance floor fills with swirling figures. Mrs. Fish’s fabled turquoises, Mrs.

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