Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [47]
The World was also among the first to suggest publicly what would become a stock characterization of Hetty—that she must be unhappy. “Health and wealth she may have, but there is scarcely a villager here who has less happiness or less of the things to be enjoyed in life than Mrs. Edward H. Green.”
Hetty cared far less what people were saying of her than she did about the fate of her money locked away at a now-bankrupt firm. Since his financial difficulties started, Edward had been spending more and more time away from the family, at the Union Club in New York. One hopes for his sake that he was in New York rather than Bellows Falls when these events transpired. Hetty always had a temper, especially when she felt her money compromised, and her reaction to the Cisco fiasco must have bordered on pyrotechnic, the walls shaking with every colorful epithet she had soaked up on the New Bedford docks. She packed a bag and marched down to the Bellows Falls station to await the next train to New York.
By the time she arrived, control of John J. Cisco and Son had passed from Cisco and Foote to Lewis May, an appointed assignee. May issued the following announcement upon taking charge: “The rumors started some ten days since about the old established banking house of John J. Cisco & Son, and which were telegraphed all over this country and Europe, have caused a very severe run upon them on the part of their depositors. In addition to this, they were largely interested in the bonds of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, which have been greatly depreciated by the severe blow against the credit of that company caused by the action of C.P. Huntington in purchasing the coupons of the first mortgage bonds. These matters with the general great depression of all securities have compelled them for the benefit of all their creditors to make an assignment without preferences for the purpose of a gradual liquidation of all their affairs. All the depositors will undoubtedly be paid in full as soon as the securities can be realized upon. The firm has no outstanding contracts at the Stock Exchange.”
The assurance that all depositors would be paid hardly mollified Hetty. As soon as she arrived in New York, she marched into the Cisco offices at 59 Wall Street, looked May in the eye, and said, “I’ve come to get what’s mine.”
Hetty might have been able to browbeat the dispirited Cisco and Foote into complying, had they still controlled the bank. But May did not flinch. A familiar and respected figure on Wall Street, he had been a partner in May and King, an investment house, and, more recently, had presided as assignee over the failure of a large dry goods company. He had, in the words of the Tribune, “won a reputation for prompt business methods.”
An extraordinary scene developed over the next several days. Hetty threatened, screamed, and pleaded, stomping her foot and at times sobbing. May matched her fire with a cool (and, to Hetty, infuriating) calm. Bystanders gathered at the windows of the Cisco headquarters to watch. Many more followed the saga in the newspapers. Hetty’s $25 million in securities were not technically among Cisco’s assets, and were therefore not part of May’s jurisdiction in settling Cisco’s affairs. Hetty’s cash deposit of $558,851 accounted for more than a quarter of the firm’s total. The next largest depositor, the estate of founder John J. Cisco, had a mere $218,593 on the books. In a rather pathetic footnote, at the bottom of the list of depositors was Edward Green, holding in trust for his son $1,106. But the physical presence of Hetty’s securities at the locked-up bank gave May a powerful negotiating tool. However much Hetty valued her cash deposit, May knew that the securities represented virtually her entire net worth.
May said he would be pleased to release Hetty’s massed securities—as soon as she