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The other needed reform—to clip the power of the New York bankers to control the credit resources of the country—was delayed until, under the compulsion of Woodrow Wilson’s leadership, the Federal Reserve Act was passed, and the power of Wall Street over credit for ever crushed. That Act democratized credit, and made it impossible for any man, or group of men, to concentrate and control it.

Young Hyde was shorn of his glory. He was compelled to sell his majority of ownership in the Equitable for two and one half million dollars—whereas but a few years before I had been authorized by James Stillman to offer him ten million dollars for the control of the Equitable and its connections—and to remove himself from all authority in its affairs, and from all influence upon finance in general. He retired to that luxurious obscurity which was his natural level. Disgusted with America, which did not “appreciate” him, he returned to France where he had already spent several years, and there devoted himself to a life of pleasure and of mild intellectual avocations.