Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [43]
SEVEN
HETTY STORMS WALL STREET
In late January 1885, what had been an unusually mild winter in New York suddenly took a turn for the worse. The temperature dropped seventeen degrees in a single day to well below freezing, and gale force winds battered the coast. Ships, unable to approach the harbor, rode out the storm just offshore. The brig W.N.H. Clements finally limped into the Atlantic Dock under tow after a terrifying night at sea with her sails shredded, her anchor cables snapped, her crew nursing frostbitten hands and feet, and her entire length encased in ice. On shore, winds whipped angrily around the banks and brokerage houses of lower Manhattan, kicking up clouds of sand and dust from the street that temporarily blinded carriage drivers and pedestrians and lodged into every fold of clothing. Brokers and traders could be seen dashing down streets chasing high hats blown from their heads. But Hetty, who had arrived in New York a few days earlier, alone, was far more concerned about the financial storm raging in the offices of John J. Cisco and Son at 59 Wall Street. Some celebrities burst onto the scene so suddenly and with such force that the Before and After of their fame is as obvious as two cities separated by a fissure in the earth. For Hetty Green, the precipitous time was that January, when Cisco and Son, where Edward invested and where Hetty kept her securities, collapsed. She was two months past her fiftieth birthday, a time of life when most people have already settled into the routines that will define the rest of their lives. But Hetty’s life would never be the same. After the Cisco failure, she would declare independence from her husband, and war on the world.
Both Hetty and Edward had a long history with the bank. John J. Cisco was an erstwhile dry goods merchant who had served as assistant United States treasurer before starting the bank in 1867. Edward had done his banking with Cisco for quite some time. Hetty trusted the bank’s conservative, staid reputation enough to place her securities there for safekeeping. Cisco was amused by Hetty’s eccentricities when she came to New York from Bellows Falls to check on her holdings or add something to them. He loved to tell of the day he was looking out the window of the company’s building at 59 Wall Street and saw Hetty stepping off of a public coach on Broadway, carrying a bulky parcel. He went to the front door to greet her, and learned that the parcel contained $200,000 in negotiable bonds.
“Don’t you think it was risky for you to have brought these bonds downtown in a public stage? You should have taken a carriage,” Cisco said.
Hetty arched her eyebrow. “Perhaps you can afford to ride in a carriage. I cannot.”
Since Cisco’s death in March 1884, the firm’s business had been handled by his son, John A. Cisco, and his partner Frederick W. Foote. As managers, the junior Cisco and Foote were less cautious and conservative than the elder Cisco. The bank had been financial agents for the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Cisco and Foote didn’t just handle the financial arrangements; they bought heavily in the railroad’s bonds, both personally and on behalf of the bank. In 1884, a conglomerate bought the railroad as a possible link in a new transcontinental railroad, one that would mirror and augment the northern route. The man behind the conglomerate was Collis P. Huntington, the forceful, fiery, and headstrong leader of the Big Four, the cadre of tycoons that had carved the Central Pacific Railroad, the western portion of the first transcontinental line, through mountains and forests. But no sooner had the sale gone through than Huntington and his associates shocked investors by defaulting on a bond payment due January 1. The Houston and Texas Central, Huntington announced, was in far worse shape than originally thought. The railroad’s bonds plunged. The bank’s Houston