The Richest Woman in America (20 page)

John A. Cisco, son of the founder, was not only Edward’s banker; he was his partner as well. Along with Frederick Foote, the other member of the firm, they had purchased a large block of bonds of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. When the California railroad magnate Collis Huntington and his cohorts stepped in to take over the Houston and Texas, dollar signs flashed in the eyes of the Cisco partners. They had watched the price of another railroad, the Central Pacific, escalate when Huntington made it part of a transcontinental line; now the Cisco team hoped he would do the same for the
Houston and Texas. Instead, to their dismay the ruthless Huntington announced the railroad’s earnings were weaker than he had thought: he declared he was canceling the 7 percent dividend due shortly. The bonds plummeted and so did their wealth. Their Houston and Texas holdings, which had once been worth over $300,000 to the bank, were now worth almost half. At the same time, Louisville and Nashville shares continued to drop. The Cisco team wore glum faces as they toasted the new year of 1885.

Cisco’s troubles were quickly known on Wall Street. News of its shaky condition raced across the wires as far away as Europe, where the bank had a number of clients. Cisco responded indignantly to the rumors, denying any problems and claiming its assets were strong, but depositors demanded their money. Hetty had half a million dollars on deposit, and $26 million in stocks, bonds, mortgages, deeds, and other goods stashed away in Cisco’s vaults. When word about Cisco lit up the new switchboard in the rear of the Bellows Falls drugstore, Hetty sent a letter to the bank. She wasn’t taking any chances. At her desk at Tucker House she dipped the nib of her pen in ink and wrote: “Please close my account and remove my funds of $550,000 on deposit as I wish to transfer them to the Chemical National Bank.”

Cisco refused. Instead they informed her that her husband was more than $700,000 in debt and that the money he had borrowed had been backed by the collateral of his Louisville and National stock. Her money represented one-quarter of the bank’s assets on deposit. Cisco begged her to keep her deposits with them, not only to offset the loan but to calm their creditors’ fears. If depositors learned she was pulling her money out, they would panic. Hetty reminded them that she had always kept her money separate from her husband’s. She threatened to sue. On January 15, 1885, Cisco announced it was closing its doors. Hetty packed her bags and took the train to New York.

“Mrs. E. H. Green is well-known, by reputation, at least, on Wall Street. She is believed to be the richest woman in America, a title earned by her own business sagacity, energy and watchfulness,” wrote the
New York Times
two days later. “She has lived a frugal life, exercised extraordinary keenness in her investments, and by embracing every good opportunity that the stock market afforded her, she has more than quintupled her heritage.”

The paper continued: “Old Wall Street operators give Mrs. Green credit for having as intimate a knowledge of railroad securities as any personality they know.… She is so largely invested in the Louisville and Nashville securities that it has been frequently said that she practically owns the road.”

Bundled in a black cape and black gloves to fight the brutal wind and the cold, Hetty emerged from a black and tan cab and appeared at Cisco’s doors. She stood at the iron gate in front of the private office and scanned the room. Her piercing blue eyes landed on Lewis May. “I’ve come to get what’s mine,” she announced to the assignee for the firm. A white collar peeked out from her black wool dress, her gray hair, twisted in a French knot, was covered with a black bonnet and veil, and her legs were covered in black cotton stockings, her feet in black sensible shoes. She demanded that he transfer her funds to the Chemical National Bank. May informed her that he could not transfer her money, as it was covering her husband’s losses. Indeed, he said, he required more. Hetty walked out in a rage.

The following day she returned. Her voice as chilly as the January air, she reminded May that her husband had no legal right to use her money as collateral; the bank could not claim her funds. She demanded her deposits and called for the valuables in her vault. But May refused again. Hetty’s temper rose, her nostrils flared as she replayed scenes from the past: she screamed, she cried, she stamped her feet, but May remained unruffled. Outside Cisco’s offices, curious bystanders watched through the windows; newspapers reported the scene the following day; the
Chicago Tribune
called her “the Queen of the Street.”

In the end, Hetty had no choice: she paid her husband’s debt. The next day, with Edward on hand to assist her, she stuffed her $25 million worth of certificates into her satchels, lugged four boxes of heavy silver objects that had long been in the vault, and loaded it all into a yellow cab. The lone horse pulling the heavy cab lumbered along for a block and suddenly stopped: stuck in the mushy snow, the cab could not move. The driver hailed another hack, transferred part of the load, and the two cabs continued.

At the corner of Broadway and Chambers streets, Hetty descended from the cab and was met by George Gilbert Williams, president of
the Chemical Bank. The picture of a Victorian gentleman with his starched round collar, full mustache, and beard, Williams greeted his new customer with all the courtesy and respect due a woman of her wealth. “I have observed that many a tattered garment hides a package of bonds and that gorgeous clothing does not always cover a millionaire,” he told his colleagues.

But as warmly as Hetty felt welcomed, revenge ran like ice water through her veins. She would never forgive Edward Green for using her money without her permission; she would never absolve Lewis May for forcing her hand; she would never forget Collis Huntington for defaulting on the Houston and Texas bonds and forcing down the price of its shares. Her Quaker tradition may have frowned on lawsuits, but Hetty had already established a tradition of her own. Huntington would pay a price and May would face her in court. As for her husband, he was the one person she had counted on. He had stood by her at funerals, sworn for her in lawsuits, advised her in finance, and fathered her children. But in the end, he had crossed the line: she could live with his philandering, his drinking, his card playing, and his chancy speculations, but she could not tolerate something far worse: Edward had betrayed her. He had risked her money for his own return. He had squandered some of her wealth, and, in doing that, he had cost her some of her worth. Hetty bade him a fond farewell.

H
etty and Edward stayed married, but their life together was over. For much of the time that Hetty was living with the children at Tucker House in Bellows Falls, Edward was lodging near the
Union Club in New York. Being part of the city’s oldest club implied “social recognition” and “the highest respectability,” one observer said: its membership was small, its waiting list long. Among its names were a slew of Astors and Aspinwalls; Biddles, Belmonts, Delanos, and Delafields; Gardiners, Griswolds, and Grinnells; Heckshers and Jeromes; Livingstons, Lorillards, Morrises, and Pells; Roosevelts and Schermerhorns; Stuyvesants and Townsends; Van Alens, Van Rensselaers, and Vanderbilts; Wilmerdings and Whitneys. No matter how rich an applicant was, his views, political and otherwise, had to concur with those of the other members. Upon occasion, even a Vanderbilt or a Morgan was refused.

Inside the splendid brownstone on Fifth Avenue and Twenty-first Street, the paneled walls held the secrets of powerful men seeking solace, safety, and conversation. A long-standing member, Edward had enjoyed many a leisurely hour and many a business meeting in the comfortable club, catching up with friends on the latest railroad news, real estate speculations, stocks and bonds and defalcations.

In the evening, “Big Green,” as he was known, dressed in the requisite formal attire, and in the frescoed dining room fit for a prince he ate his lobster or saddle of lamb and washed it down with some good
red wine. Then, lighted cigar in his mouth, brandy snifter at hand, he adjourned to the library to read, or the card room for cribbage, or the billiard room to smack a ball. Always ready to tell a good story or laugh at a good joke, he drew attention for his six-and-a-half-foot frame, won affection for his congeniality, earned admiration for his shrewdness and respect for his dignified ways.

Now after handing his coat to the servant guarding the cloakroom, he headed down the hall for the reading room; ensconced in a leather chair overlooking Fifth Avenue, he snapped open the
London Times
or
Le Monde
and scanned the news. Once in a while, gazing out the window, he saw his wife go by, dashed outside, and caught up with her over lunch. But most often he stayed indoors, his head down and his cigar dry.

While Edward secluded himself at his club, Hetty spent time with Annie Leary. A Catholic philanthropist whose generosity eventually brought her the title of Papal Countess, Annie was as close as a sister to Hetty and almost a mother to Sylvie and Ned. Devoted to Hetty’s children, she persuaded her friend to give them a Catholic education. In September 1885, at the age of seventeen, Ned enrolled at St. John’s College at Fordham. Although he won no honors and the school has no record of a degree, his classes in the “Belles Lettres” demanded attention: Latin and Greek, including the works of Horace, Homer, Cicero, Plato, and Sophocles; Comstock’s elocution; modern history; geometry and chemistry. While Ned endured his studies, fifteen-year-old Sylvie’s struggles at the Convent of the Sacred Heart recall those of Mark Twain’s Ruth Bolton in
The Gilded Age
, who described her school as “a place to turn young people into dried fruit.”

With her children at school, Hetty scurried off each morning, uncorseted and unknown, clad in a costume of black clothes. The woman who had been called Mrs. Edward Green was now Mrs. Hetty Green, one of the wage earners on her way to Wall Street. At the Chemical Bank on Broadway she strode past the iron bars separating the outside world from the inner workings of the bankers and headed toward the clerks. She scoffed at the offer of a private office and, instead, chose a seat at an empty desk or settled herself on the floor. With a mouthful of baked onions to ward off colds (as the Moldovan army still chews on today), she promptly went to work: she clipped
her coupons for dividends, read her newspapers thoroughly, scoured trade papers, perused periodicals, checked pertinent journals, probed the men in the office, and conversed with male colleagues such as Russell Sage or Chauncey Depew, who came to call.

When she had read, quizzed, grilled, interrogated, and investigated enough, when she had studied the costs, analyzed the assets, and dug through the debts, when she had found the answers to suit her, when she knew the true worth of a company and understood its weaknesses, when she was satisfied that its basic values were sound and its assets strong, that the downside risk was low and the upside high, then she invested her money. Over the course of a few years, choosing among railroad stocks and bonds, real estate (both land and mortgages), mining companies, and government bonds, she bought and sold securities: more than $1 million of Reading Railroad bonds; thousands of shares of Louisville and Nashville stock; 6,400 shares of Georgia Central Railroad; $1.25 million in Houston and Texas first mortgage and regular bonds; 2,200 shares and bonds of the Ohio & Mississippi; shares of the St. Paul and Duluth; initial shares of Hathaway Mills; and at least $3 million worth of mortgages in downtown Chicago, all traded in her accounts.

Sometimes at noon she ate a bowl of oatmeal or stole a sandwich out of her pocket; sometimes, surprisingly, her husband joined her and they ventured out, still friends. Sometimes she went alone, not to Delmonico’s or Sherry’s, where ladies lunched at damask-covered tables, but to restaurants with bare tabletops where hardworking men scarfed down their midday meal. They not only offered an economical repast, they kept her in touch with the real world. She much preferred common people to the stuffy socialites of the upper class. What she preferred most was her work. She loved digging up the dirt on businesses and she loved the nitty-gritty of finance. “I have a head for numbers.
They light up and tell me a story,” said Muriel Siebert, a later female success on Wall Street. Hetty’s numbers told a golden tale.