Hyde

block prints after the Japanese manner. She
studied in New York at the Art Students'
League, in Berlin with Skarbina, three years in
Paris with Raphael Collin and Albert Sterner,
in Holland and England, consuming ten years
in hard intensive work. Returning to San Fran-
cisco, she decided to go to Japan, intending to
remain only a few months. Her interest in Japa-
nese art had been stimulated by her association
with Felix Regamey, with whom she had also
studied in Paris. She stayed fifteen years, es-
tablishing herself in Tokio in a charming house,
soon acquiring proficiency in the intricate art
of wood-block painting, cutting, and printing.
She received a first prize in the annual exhibi-
tion of the Tokio artists for a print of a lovely
Japanese mother and child entitled "A Monarch
of Japan." Two of her illustrated books for chil-
dren are Moon Babies (1900) by G. Orr Clark,
and Jingles from Japan (1901), by Mabel Hyde.
She brought to her perfection of line and color
the western feeling for, and appreciation of, the
dainty pictures made by the women and children
in their gardens, on their bridges, and under
their gorgeous umbrellas. She returned to Amer-
ica in 1912 and later settled in Chicago, but she
took trips to South Carolina, Mexico, and India
—parts of the world which presented different
phases of life and beautiful material for prints.
During the World War she worked tirelessly for
the soldiers. Her works have been exhibited in
almost every city from New York to California,
and they include, beside woodcuts and etchings,
lithographs and aquatints. Large collections are
in the National Library, the Carnegie Library,
Pittsburgh, and the California State Library.
She is also represented in many galleries and
museums. She was a member of the leading art
societies in America and of the Societe de la
Gravure Originale en Couleur, Paris. Among
her awards were a gold medal, Alaska-Yukon
Exposition, 1909; honorable mention, Paris Sa-
lon, 1913; and a bronze medal, Panama-Pacific
International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915.
She died in Pasadena, having moved to Califor-
nia shortly before her death. She possessed orig-
inality, artistic skill, and a keen appreciation of
beauty in nature and life.

[Bertha E. Jacques, Helen Hyde and Her Work
(1922); Brush and Pencil, Jan. 1903; Internet. Studio,
Jan, 1905, Nov. 1911; Harper's Bazar, Jan. 1906; the
Craftsman, Nov. 1908; Am. Mag. of Art, Sept. 1916;
July 1919; Am. Art Ann., 1915 j Who's Who in Amer-
ica, 1913-19; Chicago Tribune, Times (Los Angeles),
May 14, 1919.] H.W—t.

HYDE, HENRY BALDWIN (Feb. 15,1834-
May 2, 1899), founder of the Equitable Life As-
surance Society of the United States, was born

Hyde

at Catskill, N. Y., the descendant of William
Hyde who emigrated from England probably in
1633 and three years afterward moved to Hart-
ford with Thomas Hooker. He was the son of
Lucy Baldwin (Beach) and Henry Hazen Hyde,
a local merchant who later became a successful
life insurance solicitor, executive, and broker
with an extensive business in Boston, Mass.
With only the meager school training afforded by
the village school in Catskill, young Hyde, at the
age of sixteen, sought the larger business oppor-
tunities in New York City, where, in 1852, he
obtained a minor clerkship with the Mutual Life
Insurance Company, advanced to the position of
cashier, and absorbed the insurance methods and
standards common in the fifties.

In 1859, on disclosing his plan to form a rival
organization, he was summarily dismissed from
the older company and succeeded in launching
the Equitable Life Assurance Society. With
youthful audacity and keen business sense he
rented a room, on the second floor, above the
offices of the Mutual Life Insurance Company,
borrowed office furniture, erected a sign so large
as to obscure that of the Mutual Life beneath it,
raised the one hundred thousand dollars neces-
sary capital, and began to write life insurance.
Owing to his own youth he arranged that he
should be called vice-president and manager
while the title of president was given to William
C. Alexander, a brother of James W. Alexander,
pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church,
with which Hyde had already connected himself.
For forty years he devoted all his exceptional
energy and business ability to the Equitable So-
ciety. Before his death the company reported
assets of over two hundred and fifty million dol-
lars, a surplus of over sixty millions, and out-
standing insurance of over a billion dollars. He
not only determined all questions of policy but
devoted himself to the supervision and encour-
agement of the active field force, to details of ad-
vertising, and to the careful management of the
growing branches in the United States and
abroad.

In 1865 the company paid the first dividend to
its policy holders but three years later announced
the Tontine plan, by which it could avoid the
financial drain of paying annual dividends out of
a surplus small on account of the company's
youth and high expense rate. When this form
of insurance proved very popular the business
of the company increased rapidly, and the sur-
plus grew from seven millions in 1868 to ten mil-
lions the next year, thirteen millions the year
after, and twenty-six millions by 1874. The per-
sonal profit to the founder of the company in-

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