Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [46]
The friends of the house say that if Mrs. Green had taken up the loan made to her husband it would not have been forced to suspend. It makes her largely responsible for the failure and subjects her to much criticism for the selfishness which actuated her conduct towards a firm which for twenty years has acted as her financial agent, collecting her interest and looking after her interests, besides guarding with honor the securities held by it in trust for her, amounting to the enormous total of $25,000,000. The friends say that if, under a strong pressure, the firm had but used for a day or two a million or two of her securities in its possession, it might have bridged over the gulf and saved itself from financial wreck.
As the World thus praised Cisco and Foote for their gallantry in resisting the temptation to pilfer a million or two from Hetty’s securities (which, given their recent record, they might well have lost), the Tribune concurred that Hetty’s “peremptory demand for the transfer of a large sum of money precipitated the failure of the firm.”
The Times described the events like this:
Soon after rumors affecting the credit of the banking firm were started, Mrs. Green wrote from Bellows Falls, Vt., where she is residing, requesting the firm to close her account, stating that she desired to place her cash in other banks. The letter reached John J. Cisco & Son while a heavy run was being made upon them by their depositors. Friends of the firm say that to have paid the large amount called for by Mrs. Green at that time would have crippled the concern and caused a sacrifice of the interests of other creditors. The firm replied to Mrs. Greens letter informing her that her husband, Mr. E. H. Green, formerly Vice-President of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, owed them more than $700,000 and requesting her to allow her deposit to remain for the time being as an offset to that loan. This she promptly declined to do, as it has always been her invariable rule to keep her own financial matters entirely separate from those of her husband.
The Cisco affair marked the beginning of the public fascination with Hetty Green that would follow her for the rest of her long life. At that point she was still referred to as “Mrs. E. H. Green.” Within a short time, as her fame eclipsed that of her husband, the papers would rarely refer to her as anything but “Hetty Green.” “Mrs. E. H. Green is well known, by reputation at least, in Wall-street,” the Times reported. “She is believed to be the richest woman in America, a title earned by her own business sagacity, energy, and watchfulness.” The article added later: “She has lived a frugal life, exercised extraordinary keenness in her investments, and by embracing every good opportunity that the stock market afforded she has more than quintupled her inheritance. Old Wall-street operators give Mrs. Green credit for having as intimate a knowledge of railroad securities as any person they know.” Her idiosyncrasies also were attracting attention: “The ‘richest woman in America’ has some strongly marked characteristics,” the Times said. “She does business on the strictest business principles, regardless of sentiment or relationship, and she is economical in the most elaborate sense of the word. She seems to have made it a rule of her life to indulge in no personal luxuries. She has been known to walk from her hotel in this city to a social reception through a heavy snowstorm rather than pay for the use of a coach.”
An enterprising reporter from the World journeyed to Bellows Falls. “Mrs. Green looks to be about forty-five years old [she was fifty], is of robust form, usually wears her iron-gray hair in a French twist and her sharp eyes continually dart from one object to another. She is a woman of tremendous will power, her determination being quite as remarkable as her parsimony. Overdress, according to the townspeople, is not one of her weaknesses…. Frequently she rides or promenades wearing on her head a hat with iridescent trimmings and in cold weather she