Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [53]
Annie saw in Hetty a side that others did not—a side that ran contrary to her public image. Annie appreciated Hetty’s humor and loyalty as a friend. Annie was also secure enough in her social position not to care how her friendship with Hetty would reflect upon her. In some ways, Annie, the do-gooder, took on Hetty and her family as a social project. When Hetty appeared at parties or balls, or events at Newport, Annie Leary was the one who orchestrated it. Hetty’s daughter, Sylvia, was of particular interest to Annie, who was determined to bring her out of her shell. If Hetty believed she was bringing Sylvia up to respect money and to be wary of gold diggers who might be after her (and Hetty’s fortune), it was Annie Leary who saw clearly the devastating effect this was having on the girl.
The friendship with Annie notwithstanding, Hetty lived her life convinced that, as a businesswoman, if not as a woman, she was fundamentally and completely alone. Nobody else would watch out for her interests. She mistrusted all forms of alliances and cabals. Where other investors sought the safety of numbers, the soothing ring of consensus, Hetty felt most comfortable on her own, trusting her own judgment and instincts. She was a free agent in the truest sense of the term, and anyone going into a deal assuming he had Hetty Green in his corner, or that she could be pushed, harassed, or cowed into going along with a crowd, learned difficult and expensive lessons to the contrary. Her shrewd conduct during a takeover attempt of the Georgia Central Railroad a year after the Cisco failure offers an excellent glimpse at the tactics and style she would use over and over for the rest of her career.
Based in Savannah, the Georgia Central had been pieced together from a number of smaller southern roads. It was a large railroad, with some two thousand miles of track around the Southeast, but it was unwieldly, inefficient, and complacent. The stock languished at $69 per share, and the company had been paying stockholders a meager 2 percent semiannual dividend. In a story that sounds more out of the corporate raider days of the 1980s than the 1880s, a group of wealthy investors, mainly from New York, spotted a ripe takeover opportunity. They were particularly interested in a steamship line, owned by the railroad, which ran regular service between Savannah and New York. The steamship line, they figured, had been badly undervalued among the railroad’s jumble of assets. The investors began buying up the stock during the summer of 1886 with the idea of installing their own managers and directors.
Over the next few months, an increasingly bitter and nasty battle ensued, as the New York group tried to round up a majority of the voting stock in time for the directors’ election in January. The New Yorkers charged the railroad with sloppy management and failing to properly reward stockholders. The Georgians dismissed the New Yorkers as greedy manipulators and outsiders who would simply break the company apart for a quick profit. Hovering in the near background, informing and inflaming sentiments on both sides, was the Civil War, barely twenty years past and still fresh in everyone’s mind. The Yankees, it seemed, were marching across Georgia once again.
Hetty got wind of the plan early on and began quietly buying up Georgia Central stock at around