Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [54]
By November, the stock had shot up to $100 per share. She could easily have sold at this point for a quick $200,000 profit. She chose to sit tight, figuring that, as the clock ticked, the New Yorkers would grow ever more nervous. In a close election, her chunk of stock might just mean the difference. E. P. Alexander, the New Yorkers’ handpicked candidate for president following the planned takeover, approached Hetty with an offer of $115 for each of her shares, a $15 premium over the already inflated going rate. He was offering her more than $300,000 above what she had paid.
Hetty told Alexander he could have the shares—for $125. It was a bold gamble. After all, the New Yorkers might simply decide they could win without her and leave her with wads of shares and no buyer. But part of Hetty’s genius was to recognize when the other side was sweating. Alexander did the frightening math—$837,500—in his head, declined the offer, and left. Hetty waited. A short time later, Alexander returned with a new offer. She could have her $125, but not until after the election. Instead of selling her shares now, she would promise to vote their way. When the election was over, she would get her money, in full, regardless of the results of the election and the going rate of the stock. Alexander could hardly believe he was making such a generous offer to this stubborn woman.
Hetty replied, “If I have to wait for my money, the price is $130.”
Alexander had come too far, the election was too near, for him to go away empty-handed again. He countered with $127.50. Hetty agreed. First, as was her custom, she demanded that Alexander’s group post collateral for the entire amount in advance of the vote. On January 3, shareholders elected E. P. Alexander president of the Georgia Central Railroad, and installed a new board of directors. Hetty’s shares provided nearly half of Alexander’s 15,000-share victory. The new managers went about trying to salve wounds of the previous months’ battles, assuring Georgians that southerners, not northerners, would continue to operate the railroad and that the new owners wished only to improve, not dismantle, the company. Hetty Green washed her hands of the entire affair, having sold her shares for $854,250—31 a profit of $385,200.
NINE
GROOMING A PROTÉGÉ
Hetty disproved the prevailing idea that women were incapable of handling finances. Her skill, tenacity, and fearlessness made her a feminist long before that term became a rallying cry for generations. Her money gave her power over men and companies and financial markets, and yet she never proclaimed herself an example, or even an advocate, of women’s rights. And when it came to deciding which of her children would succeed her in handling the family fortune, her choice couldn’t have been more conventional; from the start, it was going to be Ned.
Hetty explained her position on women in business years later in a Harper’s Bazar article that ran under her byline in 1900. “Mentally, I do not believe woman to be inferior to man, save as she has become so by a mistaken course of training,” Hetty wrote. “A certain amount of business training would be an excellent thing for women, but it should be begun in their infancy.” She frequently cited her own training from reading the financial papers to her father and grandfather. “A mother will say to her boy, ‘Go out and play,’ while to the daughter of the house she observes, ‘Do this piece of sewing and I will give you a pretty ribbon,’ thus incidentally sewing the seeds of vanity, and imparting a restricted and wrong view of the value of things in relation to life and labor. The boy becomes broadened mentally and physically by his robust out-door life, while the girl’s natural