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Good Bad Billionaire
Hetty Green: The 'witch' of Wall Street
00:47:50
Hetty Green was America’s richest woman, but was renowned as the nation’s biggest miser
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- [00:00]
Simon Jack
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the Future today with Invesco QQQ, let's rethink possibility. There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc. It's the late 1870s in New York City, the beating heart of the US financial industry. A dourly dressed woman sits quietly in the back of a horse drawn omnibus, an early form of public bus, and she finds herself squashed into her seat, surrounded by grubby fellow passengers as they head downtown. Soon she's at her stop. She quickly alights and strides purposely to her destination, the Cisco Bank. Her bank. She's there to make a deposit. And here's her banker waiting nervously in the doorway, hopping from foot to foot. Mrs. Green, why didn't you take a carriage? You could have been mugged, he scolds her. The woman fixes him with a stern glare. A carriage indeed. Perhaps you can afford to ride in a carriage. I cannot. This is, of course the not strictly true. The bonds Mrs. Green is there to deposit are worth $200,000 alone. This is all her own money and she has millions already stored away in the bank's vaults. Mrs. Green cannot just afford to ride in a carriage. She could buy a fleet of them. Hetty Green is the richest woman in all of America, but she's also the country's biggest miser.
- [01:51]
Zing Seng
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.
- [01:57]
Simon Jack
We take them from 0 to their first, then from a million onto a billion.
- [02:02]
Zing Seng
My name is Zing Seng and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.
- [02:04]
Simon Jack
And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.
- [02:07]
Zing Seng
And for the last of our mini season of dead billionaires who shaped American business, we are breaking all of our own rules. Because today's subject, Hetty Green, never even became a billionaire in her lifetime.
- [02:19]
Simon Jack
But we couldn't resist bringing you her story because she's an incredible figure of 19th and 20th century American business. She was a pioneer of value investment, something we'll talk about later.
- [02:29]
Zing Seng
And.
- [02:30]
Simon Jack
And a woman whose achievements are all the more spectacular when you consider that she died four years before women were even allowed the right to vote in the USA. That's over 80 years before the world's first self made female billionaire, Martha Stewart made a billion.
- [02:44]
Zing Seng
Now the press called Hetty the Witch of Wall street because she wore black and was thought of as a miser. It's a pretty cool nickname anyway.
- [02:51]
Simon Jack
Pretty bit of casual misogyny going on there as well.
- [02:53]
Zing Seng
I think there's something about being called the Witch of Wall Street. I don't know. They also called her, by the way, the Queen of Wall Street. Much more respectful because her ability to pre financial panics was off the scale. And she was also famous for providing emergency loans to bailout institutions.
- [03:07]
Simon Jack
And it's not like Hetty Green didn't make a lot of money. In fact, adjusted for inflation, the 200 million some estimate she left in her will would today be worth $6 billion. She was America's first female tycoon and the richest woman in America during the so called Gilded age. So we think she's more than earned her place on Good Bad Dead Billionaire.
- [03:28]
Zing Seng
So let's go back nearly 200 years and take Hetty Green from zero to a. Hetty Green was born in 1834 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her birth name was Hetty Howland Robinson and she was the daughter of Edward and Abby Robinson who were Quakers.
- [03:48]
Simon Jack
Quakerism of course is a sect of Christianity that believes in looking for a kind of inner light. A religion of quiet reflection that is non hierarchical. You wouldn't typically associate Quakers with great wealth, the wealth of billionaires. But being a Quaker was an important part of Hetty Green's identity.
- [04:05]
Zing Seng
In fact, you could could argue that much of what was called her miserly behavior could actually be attributed to her being a Quaker. In later life she said, I'm a Quaker and I'm trying to live up to the tenets of the faith. That is why I dress plainly and live quietly.
- [04:19]
Simon Jack
Quakerism is anti bling for sure. But right from the start, as well as being a Quaker, Hetty was wealthy. Her father Edward worked with her mother's father, Gideon Howland, in the family whaling business. It was the largest whaling business in New Bedford, which in turn was the center of the whaling industry worldwide. And if you've ever read Moby Dick, you'll know that New Bedford is right at the heart of the whaling industry. One of my favorite books ever written. They used to go out to Greenland and what have you, and all around the world from there to bring back whale oil, which whale oil was still using lamps in all sorts of industrial uses. It was really big news.
- [04:54]
Zing Seng
It was basically liquid gold.
- [04:56]
Simon Jack
Liquid gold, exactly. In fact, Moby Dick, I think, would have been written when she was a teenager. So if you've read Moby Dick, picture that scene, and that's when she's a teenager.
- [05:06]
Zing Seng
So Edward had been disappointed when Hetty was born because he wanted a male heir to take over the business. He and Abby did actually have a son about 18 months after Hetty was born, but the boy died after just a few weeks. And that was a pretty foundational event for Hetty. Her father became angry and embittered. Her mother took to her bed with grief. And the result was that Hetty, who had been sent to stay with her grandfather Gideon, for the birth of her brother, ended up actually living there until she was a teenager.
- [05:33]
Simon Jack
So Hetty was raised, really, by her grandfather and her step grandmother Ruth, and her maternal aunt Sylvia, who had lifelong health issues that often led to her being confined to the house. And while young Hetty was loved by her relatives, she became more and more distant from her own parents.
- [05:48]
Zing Seng
Yeah, she, in fact, developed a particular closeness to her grandfather because as his eyesight was deteriorating with his age, she read him newspapers and financial reports every evening. And now, this was the thing that really kindled her interest and understanding of the financial world. She later said, in this way, I came to know what stocks and bonds were, how markets fluctuated, and the meaning.
- [06:09]
Simon Jack
Of bulls and bears just a little explanatory. Note that a bull market, prices are generally going up. A bear market is where prices are generally going down. And those sound like archaic terms. They're still very much in use in financial circles today. In fact, if you go to Wall street, there's a statue of a bull and a bear fighting each other, just like, you know, some are sellers, some are buyers. So that's still very much in the blood. But it wasn't just financial terminology that interest little Hetty. She seemed pretty interested in money itself, too.
- [06:36]
Zing Seng
Yes, she did. As a child, Hetty was known for her tantrums. And there was a very often repeated story of her being taken to the dentist chair, age 7. She to sit in it. She was literally kicking and screaming. But then a servant offered her a silver half dollar to calm her down, saying it was a gift from her mother. And it worked flawlessly. She took the bribe and she settled down.
- [06:57]
Simon Jack
I don't think that would have worked on my kids, giving them cash. It works now. When. Now they're older.
- [07:02]
Zing Seng
Funny how that happens.
- [07:04]
Simon Jack
Didn't work back in those days. But it's not like young Hetty was ever short of money. From an early age, Hetty received an allowance of A$50 a week. Now, doesn't sound like a lot, but in Today's money, that is 45 doll.
- [07:17]
Zing Seng
But frugal Hetty didn't actually spend that cash. At the age of eight, she had the family's driver take her into town so she could open her own bank account and begin a lifelong habit of saving. I don't think I knew what a bank account was when I was age eight.
- [07:30]
Simon Jack
But then, when she was 13, Hetty's grandfather died. His fortune passed on to Hetty's mother and her Aunt Sylvia. But her father, Edward, now controlled the family's powerful whaling business. And he exerted that power. He became referred to as the very Napoleon of our little business community.
- [07:46]
Zing Seng
But Edward also became closer to his daughter Hetty after her grandfather's death. She now read the papers for him, and he instilled an obsessive attention to detail in his daughter. Hetty said she acquired from him the habit of keeping track of every cent and getting the most value for every dollar.
- [08:03]
Simon Jack
Meanwhile, she's been attending a Quaker boarding school and then a finishing school. And after that, she was sent off to New York as a debutante.
- [08:11]
Zing Seng
Yes, she was there with the express purpose of finding a husband. In fact, this is actually really telling of the time. And you'll find TV shows like this one called the Gilded Age, actually, which is about this moment in history where women debut themselves on the New York social scene in ball gowns, and you're expected to find a husband and absolutely nothing else.
- [08:29]
Simon Jack
Yeah, and same sort of thing was happening in the UK at the time. But, yeah, you go out there, go fishing for a husband and make a.
- [08:35]
Zing Seng
Good match, well, you hopefully find a whale. She'd been gifted an allowance, though. She'd been given $1,200 and told to buy new clothes. At the end of the season, she returned to Neil Bedford without a husband, but with even more money than she'd.
- [08:50]
Simon Jack
Taken away because she spent $200 on cloth. But she'd also, while there, invested the other $1,000 of the money she'd been given in bonds and those had gone up in value, much to her father's delight. Business acumen therefore proven, Hetty was allowed to spend the next few years shadowing her dad at the family whaling business.
- [09:08]
Zing Seng
Her aunt still got her to attend these balls to try to find a husband. In youth, actually, Hetty was known for being very beautiful. She actually attended one ball which the then Prince of Wales, later King Edward vii, had attended. Hetty charmed the prince by joking she was the Princess of Wales, spelled W H A L E S. Apparently he replied that he'd heard all of Neptune's daughters are beautiful and that she was proof of that. So what a charmer.
- [09:33]
Simon Jack
That is quite a line, isn't it? All of Neptune's daughters are beautiful.
- [09:36]
Zing Seng
I wonder if he rehearsed that in his head.
- [09:38]
Simon Jack
Yeah, but that. When Hetty's mother died in 1860, 26 year old Hetty remained unmarried. And as Abby had not left a will, all of her wealth, which was 50% of the Howland whaling fortune, went to Hetty's dad, Edward.
- [09:50]
Zing Seng
Hetty asked her dad to share the inheritance, but he refused. Her aunt Sylvia put Hetty in touch with a family attorney, but he ended up agreeing with Edward. Although Hetty did get a house worth $8,000 out of this. Now this is interesting because even though it seems like Edward was so supportive of his daughter's business acumen, he clearly didn't think that she could manage the fortune when it came right down to it.
- [10:13]
Simon Jack
And I'm sure that did not go down well with Hetty. Just a year later, Edward shut down the whaling business and moved to New York. This is 1861. This is the year civil broke out in the US but there was still business to be done in New York.
- [10:25]
Zing Seng
City and Hetty joined him. Clearly, you know, not too put out by the fact that he cut her out. She helped him manage his portfolio of stocks, bonds, real estate. She was monitoring banking and shipping rates. So she was really getting stuck in.
- [10:37]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And in New York, Petty was introduced to Edward Greene. Now he was a self made millionaire who traveled the world working and become a partner in America's largest commodity trading house. And in 1865, the 44 year old Edward Green and 31 year old Hetty became engaged.
- [10:54]
Zing Seng
But just two weeks after the announcement of the engagement, Hetty's dad died rather unexpectedly.
- [10:59]
Simon Jack
Yeah, he left an estate worth $6 million. That's about 117 million in today's money. But he bequeathed his only child, Hetty, just 1 million of that, 919,000 in cash, along with a San Francisco warehouse and land around Chicago. The remaining 5 million was left in a trust, which, on Hetty's death, would go straight to her children, if she'd had any at all. So essentially skipping her.
- [11:22]
Zing Seng
I mean, this sounds really outrageous to us now, but apparently this was really common practice when leaving money to women. But obviously, Hetty was angry. Her dad didn't trust her to invest the money herself. So she would gain interest and dividends from the money, but she'd have no control over how it was invested or managed.
- [11:39]
Simon Jack
More personal tragedy. On top of that, a month later, Hetty's Aunt Sylvia died, too. Now, she left an estate of over $2 million, a million of which was given to various people in New Bedford for improvement of the town. And a million was put in another trust for Hetty. So once again, Hetty would receive no cash, and again, it would pass on to her heirs when she died.
- [11:59]
Zing Seng
Nevertheless, Hetty was now a millionaire, and she did have direct control of about a million dollars. There was another 6 million she owned on paper, but she, remember, had no access to that at all. So at this point, all of that money is inherited wealth. But with control of at least some of that capital, she was ready to start making money for her.
- [12:28]
Simon Jack
She is a millionaire. There's plenty more in the sidelines which she can't get her hands on. But with the million she's got, she soon began making her own investments. But first, she put in motion a lawsuit to fight her aunt's will. And this is really where her miserly reputation begins.
- [12:43]
Zing Seng
And you can judge this for yourself, because in 1865, Hetty was really angry with the will that was presented as her Aunt Sylvia's. Now, this is the one, remember, that gave 1 million to various people in Neil Bedford. But this also includes $50,000 to Sylvia's doctor. And Hetty smelled a rat. Now, she was convinced it was written under duress, believing the doctor had dictated it to her aunt.
- [13:05]
Simon Jack
And she did have some reason for this belief. Hetty and Sylvia had actually written wills together just a few years earlier, after Hetty's father had refused to share her mother's inheritance with her. Hetty and Sylvia had both agreed to leave the Howland fortune to each other.
- [13:19]
Zing Seng
Now, Hetty presented this well of Sylvia's, drawn up in 1862, as evidence that the whole fortune belonged to her. But the will Hetty presented also had a second page attached. And that page said that any future wills should be ignored in case Any caretakers or a doctor persuaded Sylvia to make another one.
- [13:38]
Simon Jack
So Hetty's case ended up hinging on whether Sylvia's signature on the second page of the 1862 will was genuine or had been forged by Hetty. The trial is famous in law circles. It's called the Howland Will Forgery Trial. It made the front pages. It was avidly followed by the public.
- [13:54]
Zing Seng
And sure enough, the newspapers painted Hetty as a miser who was trying to take money away from ordinary people. The money Sylvia had to improve the town of Neil Bedford. Hetty had to face angry townspeople and smears in the press. Shopkeepers even began to charge her extra for goods when she walked in.
- [14:10]
Simon Jack
So basically, all the townspeople are saying she's trying to take back all the money that was sprayed liberally around, trying to improve things for ordinary people. And at points, Hetty worried for her life. She said. She said, for days, I did not leave my room. I lived on crackers and raw eggs. Yum. All the time, schemers were trying to get my money.
- [14:27]
Zing Seng
Fairly sure she could have cooked those eggs if she wanted to, but maybe that's beside the point. In November 1868, Hetty heard that the judge had actually thrown out the case on a technicality, and the later will was upheld. So Hetty received no more money, but insisted the taxes be paid from the capital and trust rather than from her income. So that meant the beneficiaries weren't paid until 1872, and that actually ended up worsening her reputation.
- [14:51]
Simon Jack
So she's not doing well in the port of public opinion. But not everything was going badly for Hetty. In the late 1860s, yes, she had some good news.
- [14:59]
Zing Seng
So in 1867, she finally married and became Mrs. Edward Green. The couple had a son, Ned, and they relocated across the Atlantic to London, where they set up married life in the Langham Hotel, which is actually just across the road from the BBC building where we are recording today.
- [15:14]
Simon Jack
I walked past it this very morning, and actually the architecture of the Langham looks very much like those kind of New York hotels like the Plaza and what have you. It's got a real period piece. And also around this time, she began receiving an income from her trust. And even though the money in the trust was being managed by other people, people Hetty disapproved of, it started earning her an average income of $350,000 per year. That's nearly $7 million in today's money. And that, along with the million she had from her father, was the money she could invest herself. So she's got some financial firepower now.
- [15:46]
Zing Seng
Yep. So she starts her journey and her investment career by buying government bonds. Now, during the US Civil War, both the Union and Confederate governments had issued government bonds to finance their war efforts. But with the Civil War now over, people were sell bonds to raise cash for post war recovery.
- [16:04]
Simon Jack
And as happens with markets, when you have a lot of sellers, the price of these bonds begins to fall very, very rapidly. They were also hit by uncertainty about the post war government's ability to repay those debts. And don't forget, this was still a hugely uncertain time in the U.S. the Civil War had ended. President Lincoln has been assassinated. The new president, Andrew Johnson, was impeached in 1867. And there's a lot of uncertainty whether this repayment would be in gold or paper money. Greenbacks not backed by gold. And this will further drag down the market value of these government bonds.
- [16:38]
Zing Seng
But where some people saw uncertainty, Hetty Green saw opportunity. She purchased government bonds at big discounts between 1865 and 1867, confident that they would eventually be redeemed in gold. Hetty said, I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business. Now, we've actually seen this kind of pop up again and again in the podcast, haven't we?
- [17:04]
Simon Jack
Well, this is what they call value investing. Trying to find stuff that's cheap, that nobody wants, and then basically the fortunes change and they become really expensive. I mean, buy low, sell high is the kind of mantra. And the person who kind of in modern sphere really exemplified this would be Warren Buffett. Probably the most famous example of that. Now, it became codified in a way, as an investment philosophy by two professors at Columbia University, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. Graham and Dodd are credited with creating the theory that there's an underlying value to a stock or a share or a bond that's trying to figure out what the thing you're buying is actually worth. And that is not necessarily the same thing as what it's being sold for on the market. So if you work out what you think a thing is worth, if the market's selling it for a bit less, you want to buy it. And if it's selling on the market for more than you think it's worth, you want to sell it. That's value investments. Pretty straightforward. Although the theory didn't really exist until the late 1920s, this is exactly what Hetty Green was doing 60 years earlier.
- [18:01]
Zing Seng
And you know, she was right about the value of those government bonds because they rose from $75 in 1866 to $90 in 1869. So Hetty started to rake it in. So on one particular day, she added a clean $200,000 to her bank account. And she later said, that's the most I ever made in one day.
- [18:20]
Simon Jack
And that is a staggering amount of money in those days to make it in a single day. And then US government passed something called the Public Credit act, pledging that bonds would indeed be redeemed in gold. So her hunch had paid off. She made a total profit of one and a quarter million dollars. So by the end of the 1860s, Hetty hadn't just inherited a million, now she's made a million of her own herself.
- [18:42]
Zing Seng
So she's pretty much doubled her wealth just through her own personal effort. Now she went around looking for a next big investment, and that was in railroad stock. There were big glut of investors in the railroads as they expanded across the United States as it rebuilt following the Civil War. And actually British investors were buying up a lot of this kind of stock. There were flashy salesmen crossing the Atlantic promising high yields. You can imagine them toting those suitcases.
- [19:07]
Simon Jack
And you should think about this a bit. Remember the dot com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s. This was a bit like it. This was a kind of gold rush as railroads were going to be the thing that unlocks. They were basically the digital companies of their day. They were going to connect the United States. They were going to be an enormous gold mine for people to make profits and people were sucked in. There was everyone wanted a piece of this. But Hetty once again applied those methods we talked about. She would research companies in detail. She loved what she called digging up the dirt on companies. And she soon realized some were laying useless track that an average investor might not spot. Being no average investor through her research, her connections she had back in America from working with her father, she soon secured investments in a dozen railroad companies that she actually trusted.
- [19:52]
Zing Seng
But in 1873, the over investment and speculation in US railroads caused a financial panic. Now this led to the first major economic depression in the UK and Europe. And by the time it was over, 11,000 companies had failed and $380 million was lost.
- [20:08]
Simon Jack
It's quite a big moment this in financial history. The panic of 1873 is seen as one of those pivotal things. And in fact, if you look from 1873 right through to the sort of 1930s, in a way, it's actually not just a recession, it's a depression. For a few years there sows the seeds of further problems. And remember, just to tie this in with another one of our dead billionaires, this is the time that John Rockefeller, the Railroad Trust, the banks, what have you, were accumulating enormous amounts of power, and they started passing the antitrust laws to try and break up these big things. And part of that is because they seem to survive the panic of 1873, where everyone else got absolutely hosed. And you had the Sherman act came in in 1890. So really pivotal period in how economic policy and history is being written here in the United States.
- [20:57]
Zing Seng
Right. And attitudes towards people making a lot of money, presumably, Correct?
- [21:00]
Simon Jack
Exactly. And anyway, it was time for Hetty and her husband Edward to move back to the US They've been in London to be closer to Wall street and their investments. Of course, they now had two children in tow, Ned and Sylvie, named after Hedy's aunt. And the family settled in Vermont, where Edward was from, both making regular trips to the banking capital. New York is just a few hours on by. I was going to say by railroad.
- [21:22]
Zing Seng
Now, Hetty banked at Cisco, as he mentioned in the start of this episode, as her father had before her, and she would head to the bank in person, which was actually highly unusual behavior for a woman at the time.
- [21:33]
Simon Jack
And there she was buying up the stocks, the shares, if you like, that people were selling during this ongoing panic. She believed, as we discussed in long term investing, said, when I see a good thing going cheap because nobody wants it, I buy a lot of it and tuck it away. Very Warren Buffett like.
- [21:48]
Zing Seng
And because Green could afford to ride out that panic, her wealth grew. While others lost banks in need of cash began selling Hetty loans, which the borrowers had got using property as collateral. Now, some of those borrowers then defaulted on those loans. So over the next few decades, Hetty accrued lots of properties and built a sizable real estate portfolio to boot.
- [22:06]
Simon Jack
That's very interesting. So what's going on here is a borrower goes into a bank, the bank then lends them the money secured against that property. The bank suddenly realizes it needs cash because there's a panic going on. People taking out their money in order to raise cash. They will sell the loan secured against that property to Hetty. And if they then default on the loan, Hetty will then take possession of the property on which that loan was secured. So she was basically accidentally accumulating an enormous real estate portfolio.
- [22:36]
Zing Seng
She Just seems to be able to generate wealth through magic.
- [22:39]
Simon Jack
Well, it's very interesting. People who've got cash in times of panic can extract incredibly good terms. This actually happened during the financial crisis. Warren Buffett actually lent Gold Sachs money, which is like, I would love to.
- [22:53]
Zing Seng
Be in that business meeting.
- [22:54]
Simon Jack
Wouldn't that be great? How much do you guys want? You know, anyway? And. And what Warren Buffett did was he extracted fantastic terms for lending Goldman Sachs money. And this reminds me, it was a precursor to that.
- [23:04]
Zing Seng
He very much the proto Warren.
- [23:07]
Simon Jack
Yes. So, Hetty came to own land outside Chicago that would become the business district called the Loop and the entire town of Cicero, which later was a base for the legendary gangster al Capone. By 1885, she owned entire blocks of New York, Chicago, Boston, and later owned a California mine that earned her $12 million in gold and quartz production. So, quite the portfolio.
- [23:28]
Zing Seng
I would hate to be the mine owner who lost that while defaulting on his loan. Now, Hetty actually rarely bought property outright. She usually gained it via foreclosures. But once she acquired property, she rarely ever sold it.
- [23:40]
Simon Jack
She also didn't do much to tart them up, either. She rarely did anything to improve the place if it didn't have a working business. She didn't build on land or update existing buildings, as she didn't like to spend it on construction and be taxed for that Chicago. She did, however, let farmers grow vegetables on the land for low rents. But her real strategy was simply to wait until the area around her land got developed and more valuable, so her own property's value increased.
- [24:05]
Zing Seng
Now, this seems like another example of how frugal she was. They say you have to speculate to accumulate, but I'm not really sure that Hetty really believed in that particular business philosophy.
- [24:15]
Simon Jack
Yeah, so she's sort of kind of like leaving them to be slightly derelict and just waiting for the moment to sell them on. And there are worse examples of her purported miserliness. You'll remember the incident from the top of this program of her carrying $200,000 in bonds to the bank and claiming she couldn't afford a cab fare. But perhaps the most egregious example of this was an incident involving her young son, Ned.
- [24:36]
Zing Seng
So, Ned injured his knee after a fall, and Hetty sent for the doctor, who was a few hours away. And while she waited, Hetty made a potus, which is a kind of organic remedy you apply to an injury to relieve inflammation. Now, by the time the doctor arrived, Hetty, he thought, I've fixed it. And she just waved him away.
- [24:53]
Simon Jack
She said, if he'd gotten out of his buggy, I've had to pay him, even if he wasn't needed, you know.
- [24:57]
Zing Seng
But that POTUS actually hadn't solved the problem at all. And Ned's knee got worse and worse. And over the years, Hetty tried many different cures and doctors to help her son. She even took Ned to free clinics. That's placercept to provide healthcare for those in need who can't afford it, even though they definitely could. Now, Hetty took Ned there under a pseudonym because she could, of course, afford the doctors, and they would have known that and charged her.
- [25:20]
Simon Jack
Pretty questionable behav trying to, you know, get medical advice on the cheap. Her excuse was that had they known her identity, they would have basically charged her a bunch. And that actually, by being kind of anonymous, she would get more accurate and that more accurate diagnosis. I'm not. I'm not sure how I feel about this one.
- [25:38]
Zing Seng
Yeah, I know. So not quite misely, but clearly quite paranoid that people are trying to use her as well.
- [25:43]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I think that's right. A lot of our rich people have a paranoia about people trying to get at their right.
- [25:49]
Zing Seng
I mean, in any case, none of this actually worked out for poor Ned. He eventually had to get this leg amputated.
- [25:55]
Simon Jack
Poor Ned.
- [25:56]
Zing Seng
Poor Ned. He spent the rest of his life walking on a cork prosthetic leg.
- [26:00]
Simon Jack
I would feel pretty upset if I was walking around on one leg. And my. My mother, who was the. One of the richest people in the world at that time, could have got me better medical attention. And you know what, there's definitely some family strain during this period, because while Hetty's empire grew to be valued at around $26 million in the the mid-1880s, husband Edwards previously successful investments were hitting the rocks.
- [26:26]
Zing Seng
Now, Hetty and Edward's finances were entirely separate. Edward had actually invested most of his personal fortune in the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, L and N. But in early 1884, the US went through another financial panic, while at the same time, the president of L and N confessed to fraud. So the stock of that company collapsed, and Edward Green was pushed into debt.
- [26:46]
Simon Jack
So, differing fortunes for the happy married couple. Or the not so happy married couple, maybe, because Cisco bank, where both Edward and Hetty kept their money, was affected by the financial panic, too. Hetty decided to withdraw her cash reserves of over half a million dollars from the struggling bank. Last thing the bank needs at that moment. But the bank informed her that her husband was in its Debt to the tune of $700,000. They asked her not to withdraw her cash. It was a quarter of their entire reserves. They needed it to cover her husband's debt. But Hetty refused, threatening to sue and Cisco, the bank had to close. So that's an old fashioned, old fashioned run on a bank where she basically takes out the money that they needed.
- [27:24]
Zing Seng
To survive and they basically collapse. Now, the newspapers all blamed Hetty for Cisco's closure, but Hetty pointed out the immoral, possibly illegal move by her bank of using her money as collateral for her husband's debt without her knowledge or permission. Now, Hetty tried to move her deposits and valuables from their vault, but they basically refused until she paid his debt. They were basically holding everything she had in the bank as hostage until she paid off Edward's money. And that included her valuables and the deeds and the certificates to a whole fortune. So much more than just her $550,000 cash reserves.
- [27:57]
Simon Jack
I think Hetty's got a point here. I don't think that if we got entirely separate financial arrangements, you cannot hold mine as security against my husband's money. So I think if this was in modern day America, Hetty would probably have won that argument. But in the end, she was forced to pay the $700,000. The very next day, Edward helped her move boxes of silver valuables and $25 million worth of certificates from the banks of vault into a cab to take them to Chemical bank, another big bank at that time, where she would bank from then on. But while Hetty and Edward stayed legally married, this incident effectively ended their union. Their marriage, they separated. She no longer went by the name of Mrs. Edward Green. She instead called herself Mrs. Hetty Green.
- [28:40]
Zing Seng
From then on, which is pretty understandable because I would be quite angry if I was in her position. And Hetty being Hetty, she also didn't forget how the bank had treated her. Her. Two years later, Hetty filed a lawsuit against a bank manager of Cisco for mismanagement. The judge only agreed to hear this case if Hetty paid the court expenses of up to $10,000, whether she won or lost. Hetty agreed. But she irritated the judge and also her own lawyers by questioning the witnesses herself. The bank manager, in turn, angered Hetty by boasting on the witness stand that he might not have been allowed by law to force Hetty to cover her husband steps. And after grilling him and accusing him of sending someone to intimidate her or trying to induce her to have a heart attack, the judge sided Nonetheless, with the manager.
- [29:24]
Simon Jack
So Hetty ended up losing $15,000. And a bit like, if you remember the Aunt Sylvia lawsuit, Hetty's court case delayed payments to other Cisco customers. So again harmed her reputation in the eyes of others.
- [29:37]
Zing Seng
But while her miserly reputation was building in the public eye, so was Hetty's fortune at the new bank Chemical. She requested a desk so she could work on her investments also, presumably to keep an eye on the bankers. I'm sure they weren't really thrilled with that. They offered her an office, but she refused. And she would pick whatever desk was free or simply sat on the floor. She's maybe invented hot desking. Before hot desking was a thing, it.
- [30:00]
Simon Jack
Must have been quite an unusual arrangement. She also would bring in baked onions to eat because she believed in they prevented colds. Not the most unfragrant thing to eat in an office.
- [30:10]
Zing Seng
No, I guess it is sort of like the 18th and 19th century Christmas equivalent of bringing in tuna to microwave in the oven.
- [30:16]
Simon Jack
Yes.
- [30:17]
Zing Seng
She also spent time reading newspapers, trade magazines, journals, talking with visiting financiers. So really she was kind of behaving almost like she wanted a job on Wall Street.
- [30:26]
Simon Jack
Well, all that. She felt like she kind of owned the bank. And while she was doing this, she made loads of successful investments, by the way. She bought more railroad stocks, she bought more government bonds, real estate. She also added mining companies and other securities, other shares, bears. And she loved a haggle. She loved negotiation. She was always pushing the price up just a little bit more when traders tried to force a hand. And again, like Warren Buffett, she was very happy to hold on long term to a stock to get its full value.
- [30:53]
Zing Seng
Hattie once said, I enjoy being in the thick of things. I like to have a part in the great movements of the world and especially of this country. I like to deal with big things and with big men. And she was never afraid of taking those big men on.
- [31:05]
Simon Jack
No. In fact, she had one big battle with a guy called Collis Hunter Huntington over the Houston and Texas railroad. There was extensive negotiations. There were big dollar deals, there were lawsuits. The whole thing was covered by an avid press because she must have made a journalist dream this character. On this occasion, the public were on Hetty's side, though. In fact, the farmers, who were already angry with Huntington's railway expansion, sent Hetty a revolver as a gift with what was described as a light hearted hope she would use it on Huntington.
- [31:37]
Zing Seng
I'm sure Huntington was excited to hear about this particular threat. In fact, this whole feud went on for years. And it actually came to involve Hetty's son Ned, who was fully grown by this point. And things really came to a head during an argument between Huntington and Hetty. Now, Huntington made a slight at Ned, and Hetty said, up to now, Huntington, you have dealt with Hetty Green, the businesswoman. Now you are fighting Hetty Green, the mother. Harm one hair of Ned's head and I'll put a bullet through your heart. And then she reached for the revolver. Gosh. High stakes in high drama.
- [32:08]
Simon Jack
Definitely high drama. This whole dispute ended up costing Hetty $25,000 in legal fees, which you'd think given her reputation, she'd be pretty cross about. But it seems she was quite happy to pay just because the whole battle wasted so much of Huntington's time. And even then, the pair continued to trade insults via the press. Hetty said Huntington had been grinding wealth out of the poor for years. Huntington called her nothing more than a glorified pawn broker after she bailed out banks during a financial panic. Quite an interesting point this, because although Hetty has got this reputation as a miser, she did seem concerned about the poor. And this whole thing of her bailing out banks was not her only magnanimous act. And obviously we've had the phenomenon of banks being bailed out both in the. Well, around the world during the financial crisis and actually when banks do go bust, bad things happen. So whether you like them being bailed out or not, it does count as an act of public service in a way.
- [33:05]
Zing Seng
This wasn't actually the only act of public service you can chalk up to Hetty. In fact, she actually also offered very full fare rates when she loaned money to businesses or municipalities in need. Now, in 1898, when New York City itself was in financial peril, she loaned the city $1 million at a rate of 2%. That was well below the going rate of 3 1/2%. In 1901, she advanced the cash strapped city another 1.5 million following yet another financial panic. So quite literally propping up nyc.
- [33:34]
Simon Jack
Incredible. I mean, literally bailing out New York City. They're the home of Wall Street. There she is propping up the very city itself. And then when the huge San Francisco earthquake hit in 1906, which destroyed, it was absolutely devastating, destroyed lives and businesses. And there were insurance claims which took millions more from the banks and from Wall Street. Hetty again loaned New York money, this time four and a half million dollars. There were loads more such loans later on. In 1910, she lent money to more than 30 churches across the US again at rates well below market value.
- [34:06]
Zing Seng
And it was also in this period, after the death of her estranged husband Ed Edward, that she began dressing all in widows black. Now, she would wear the same out of fashion black dress day after day until it wore out. And you know, when I say wore out, I really do mean worn out, because apparently those black dresses would rot and turn green before she would even think about replacing them. And so, you know, this visual image of her in this black dress, this frumpy old lady, you can really see why she was being called the witch of Wall Street.
- [34:35]
Simon Jack
Yeah, she does sound like a Miss Havisham sort of character stuck back in time. Or they are say Queen Victoria wore black every day after her husband Albert died. And no one called her a witch, at least not at the time.
- [34:47]
Zing Seng
No, not to her face definitely anyway.
- [34:49]
Simon Jack
But although she became increasingly wizened, she continued to work right into her 70s. When working in Manhattan, she had first lived in boarding houses in Brooklyn where she liked the quiet. Later she moved to a small flat in unfashionable Hoboken and commuted every day to her office at the bank by shooting train.
- [35:06]
Zing Seng
When asked why she lived so simply, she answered, I'm a Quaker. My early training disciplined me towards pomp and show. My family has been rich for five generations. We need make no display to ensure recognition of this position.
- [35:19]
Simon Jack
Interesting. So, you know, when she said disciplined me towards pompa, I think it made her averse to pomp and show. And I suppose it's one of those things that basically people with generations of money feel no need to show off.
- [35:32]
Zing Seng
Exactly.
- [35:32]
Simon Jack
Whereas some of our self made population billionaires feel the need to sort of display their wealth in a much more ostentatious way. It's like the difference between old money and new money.
- [35:40]
Zing Seng
There's a reason why they call them nouveau riche.
- [35:42]
Simon Jack
Nouveau riche. Anyway, when Hetty Green died in July 1916 at the age of 81, it was said she'd collapsed after arguing with her maid over a raise. But that just may be part of the myth of the witch of Wall Street. We don't know. She actually died after a series of strokes.
- [35:57]
Zing Seng
The Associated Press said Hetty Green was the world's most remarkable myth. Mistress of finance. The Boston Sunday Globe said, in point of fact, it is a question of Hetty Green in a financial sense wasn't the greatest woman that ever lived. The New York Times said if a man lived as did Mrs. Hetty Green, devoting the greater part of his Time in mind to increasing of an inherited fortune. Nobody would have seen him as peculiar.
- [36:20]
Simon Jack
So true.
- [36:21]
Zing Seng
So even at the time, people were already starting to look back on how they treated Hetty and thought to themselves, oh, maybe we're a little bit too harsh at the time.
- [36:28]
Simon Jack
Well, remember, earlier on I said a little bit according. The Witch of Wall street was a bit of casual misogyny. It is true. True. Both in. In the tales that we've been telling about rich women in the past, and also just in terms in the business world, women who do fantastically well in business. Everyone goes into great detail about how tough they are. They would never say that about a guy.
- [36:50]
Zing Seng
No. And also, there's a certain kind of fascination, I think, when these women do fall from grace. Like, look at how the press treated Martha Stewart when she ended up in jail. And remember, this is a time before women could even. So it's hardly surprising that people were treating Hetty in this way.
- [37:05]
Simon Jack
So a woman who can't even vote is bailing out New York City not once, but two or three times.
- [37:08]
Zing Seng
That's pretty inspirational.
- [37:10]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [37:11]
Zing Seng
So let's talk about what happened to all that money. So Hetty left $25,000 to people other than her children. She left nothing to charity, which the newspapers pounced on. The rest of that fortune was divided equally between Ned and Sylvia, her children. The $5 million from her father's trust also went to Ned, while Hetty had set up another trust for Sylvia that was worth $4.4 million. So she was kind of trying to make sure that everyone kind of got.
- [37:35]
Simon Jack
An equal share and that basically that what happened to her didn't happen to her own daughter.
- [37:38]
Zing Seng
Exactly. And the 1 million from Aunt Sylvia's trust passed on to both of her children.
- [37:42]
Simon Jack
But she left far, far more than that to her children. Remember what else she's been doing during this time? The inheritance included up to $40 million of New York real estate mortgages, 60 million industrial mining securities, 25 million in railroad and bank securities, 20 million in land and real estate in the Southwest. And so a conservative estimate of her total wealth at the time of her death put it at 100 million, though many believe it was as much as $200 million.
- [38:09]
Zing Seng
Now, if we adjust that for inflation, this basically means Hetty was worth between around three and six billion dollars. She was the richest woman in America, the pioneer value investment, A woman decades ahead of her time.
- [38:23]
Simon Jack
Yeah. Proto female Warren Buffett. An extraordinary story. Definitely deserves her place on our list. But it is time to judge Hetty Green on some of our categories.
- [38:46]
Zing Seng
So let's start with the first category. Wealth. Well, Hetty was obviously the richest woman in America at her time.
- [38:51]
Simon Jack
Yeah. She built this up to $200 million fortune from the million dollars she had control of in cash and the 350,000 in yearly income. Income. So that's a hell of a return on the money she was actually in charge of. So it's not a rags to riches story. And in fact, you could argue, given how she dressed in later life, some could say this is a riches to rags story. But incredibly impressive and remarkable for a woman in this period.
- [39:15]
Zing Seng
I mean, I would say she's a nine out of ten.
- [39:19]
Simon Jack
I'm gonna give her an eight.
- [39:20]
Zing Seng
Right.
- [39:21]
Simon Jack
Just to acknowledge that technically, she was never a billionaire in her own lifetime, unlike Ford and Rockefeller, who were around this same kind of period. So I'm gonna give her an. It is a remarkable story. So eight for me, nine for you. Controversy.
- [39:34]
Zing Seng
So, obviously, lots of examples of that kind of miserly behavior. I mean, poor Ned and his knee injury comes first to be shocked by that. Yeah. I mean, it's a vital lesson to not trust natural remedies, really.
- [39:46]
Simon Jack
Yeah. So, I mean, she was often in the papers. People were fascinated by this character, as we are, of a woman who basically was amassing a fortune before even vote, bailing out, sitting and having very public rows with both bankers and other industrialists, which were reported widely in the press. So she's no stranger to controversy, you know, and the very fact she was called the Witch of Wall Street, I mean, she's a kind of. She's a controversial figure for sure. So I think she scores quite highly.
- [40:14]
Zing Seng
Yeah, I think she scores highly for her time, so. But, I mean, even by today's standards, public spats driving hard bargains, I kind of think that's almost par for course. So I'm just gonna give her a five out of ten.
- [40:26]
Simon Jack
Okay. I'm gonna give. Just because of the amount of newsprint she probably generated.
- [40:30]
Zing Seng
Yeah. She was probably an editor's dream.
- [40:32]
Simon Jack
Editor's dream. Five for you, six for me. On controversy. Giving back. Well, this is an interesting one for someone who is known as the Miser.
- [40:39]
Zing Seng
Yeah. Because there are actually stories of her individual acts of kindness where she was very much the Good Samaritan. There's one story that goes that when she was living in London, Hetty saw a cart driver fall and go into a seizure, and she ran over to help when no one else seemed to be helping. Thanks, London, for that. She got him Some water. She ordered a doctor to come. She bandaged his cuts with her own handkerchief. Apparently, a noblewoman, an aristocrat, who witnessed the scene from her window, actually sent a footman to offer Hetty a job as a nurse because she assumed that Hetty's bad clothing meant that she was poor. So Hetty had to turn the job down. And the woman was very much embarrassed when she found out. Hetty was one of those American millionaires.
- [41:17]
Simon Jack
I know she probably could have bought whatever stately home this noble woman was exactly from. Hetty's best friend was Annie Leary, who was a very active philanthropist. Hetty supported her charity work anonymously. Hard to track down, therefore, how much she donated. And her daughter Sylvia said after looking through her files on her death, she never told of her charities. There were many sums of 500,000, $10,000, lots of them. A list of about 30 families who receive regular incomes. I think that's referring to people who were their servants, basically, and their descendants.
- [41:50]
Zing Seng
Hetty herself said, I'm not a hard woman, but because I do not have a secretary to announce every kind act I perform, I'm called close and mean, stingy.
- [42:00]
Simon Jack
So, gosh, I mean, she. She definitely wanted to extract every value from every dollar, but clearly gave some of it away. So. And whilst we're on the subject of giving back and philanthropy, I think there's quite a big public service in the fact that she extended loans to banks, to cities at times of distress, and did not charge top dollar for those. And the. And have sort of punitive interest rates when, often when people are distressed, they turn to essentially loan sharks and get charged very, very, very high, top of the market interest rate she was giving them. Reasonable. I think that's quite. That is quite a big act of public service.
- [42:34]
Zing Seng
I think I would rate her kind of six out of ten for this.
- [42:36]
Simon Jack
Okay, six. I think I might agree with you. Six apiece on that one. And then we've got power and legacy.
- [42:42]
Zing Seng
I mean, she saved New York a bunch of times.
- [42:43]
Simon Jack
She did. And, you know, she stepped in at some really dark periods in America's financial history. I think that her approach to investing. And it's pretty simple. It's kind of obvious, isn't it? Buy low, sell high. But people tended to. And we saw this in The Wall Street CR crash 30 years after this, that people tend to see something going up. If they see it going up, they want to buy it. They want to buy it. They want to.
- [43:07]
Zing Seng
It's human nature.
- [43:07]
Simon Jack
Fear of missing out. This is going up we got to join the bandwagon. You have these incredible stock market booms, often followed by busts. And she was the kind of person who would like to bottom fish, find stuff that was unloved, buy it, lock it away for a while. It made Warren Buffett a very rich man as well. And she was 60 years before him.
- [43:24]
Zing Seng
Yeah, it's actually very deeply unglamorous, which I think kind of fits with her general vibe as well. You know, this dowdy woman who dresses in black and kind sits on the floor of the bank happily reading trade periodicals. You know, it really does build up to an image of this kind of outlier. I mean, you kind of have to wonder how much money would she have made if she was born in the 20th century?
- [43:45]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I don't think she's going to have the same legacy as some of our other billionaires.
- [43:50]
Zing Seng
She's no Rockefeller.
- [43:51]
Simon Jack
She's not Rockefeller, but I don't think.
- [43:53]
Zing Seng
She would want to be. She wasn't the. She doesn't seem like the kind of woman who want to put her name on buildings.
- [43:58]
Simon Jack
Yeah, that's true. So I'm going to give her a four for power and legacy, I think.
- [44:03]
Zing Seng
Oh, it's difficult. I think I would actually go low and say 3 out of 10 just because the way that she was treated in the press, I don't think she could have gone into the White House and said, I'm Hetty Green, let's talk finance to the president at the time.
- [44:17]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [44:18]
Zing Seng
And I don't think. I don't think a lot of people know who she even is.
- [44:21]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [44:21]
Zing Seng
As opposed to Rockefeller or Carnegie.
- [44:23]
Simon Jack
Yeah. Okay, so you're to going.
- [44:25]
Zing Seng
Yes, Although I wish I could go higher because I think it is a fascinating story.
- [44:28]
Simon Jack
Okay, you've talked me around. Actually, I'm gonna go three as well. So three each of power and legacy. So when you're thinking about her sort of, you know, whether she's a force of good or bad in the world, I mean, I think that it's complicated because she cuts a very interesting caricature, doesn't she? You know, the witch type one, the woman who wears weird clothes and lives on the edge of town quite miserly, that tends to fuel a bit of suspicion and animosity. And I think that, like we said before, had she behaved in these ways and was a man in the now rather than a woman in a period before women could vote in the 19th century, no one would pay that any mind at all. What I do think counts against her is the Fact that she didn't often buy things that you would call productive assets, like shares and companies making stuff. She tended to buy things like government bonds. That doesn't produce any great productive output. Real estate, these are hoarders type of investments.
- [45:28]
Zing Seng
Right. They're conservative.
- [45:29]
Simon Jack
You're conservative, and, you know, it's a way of accumulating money. The capitalist would argue that those people who could become very, very wealthy because they've invented something or produce something or, you know, generate new ideas and innovation, they kind of deserve the money. And that's capitalism at its best. Hoarding money and sticking it in the bank, you know, in the vault. That is capitalism at its wor.
- [45:52]
Zing Seng
Such an interesting argument. I do agree that if Hetty Green was a man, people would be treating her very different. I mean, I think back to when we talked about Warren Buffett and how he just loves to eat McDonald's and would never spend money on, you know, a tasting menu or a fancy restaurant. And that is seen as an example of how frugal he is, in a good way, but also how charming.
- [46:12]
Simon Jack
Yeah, and homespun and folks. Homespun and folksy.
- [46:15]
Zing Seng
Exactly. Whereas Petty Green, you know, with the dresses turning green with rot. No, that is seen as weird and suspicious and strange. So I do think that her story is really a litmus test for how women were treated in that particular century. But in many ways, I think it's remarkable that she wasn't just hounded out of every single town she went into because she was so rich, because she was such an outlier, because she was clearly quite an eccentric at heart. I just think there's a movie in here somewhere.
- [46:47]
Simon Jack
There is. I mean, if you're gonna make a movie about Howard Hughes. Make a movie movie out of this.
- [46:51]
Zing Seng
Exactly. There's something in there. So if you're a filmmaker listening to.
- [46:54]
Simon Jack
This, get on it.
- [46:55]
Zing Seng
Get on it.
- [46:56]
Simon Jack
Okay, we need to see the Hetty Green on the big screen.
- [46:59]
Zing Seng
So is he green good, bad, or just another billionaire?
- [47:03]
Simon Jack
Well, get in touch and let us know what you think. Should she be remembered as the witch of Wall street or the Queen of Wall street?
- [47:10]
Zing Seng
Email, good bad billionairebc.com or you can drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001-917-686-1176 to 10. Tell us what you think. So we're just gonna fire up the good bad billionaire email inbox. We've actually got a really great email from a fan in Norway called Andre called Bjornsson. Sorry if I've butchered your name. Andre. He says, I love your podcast and always listening to it when I'm walking in the forest or along the fjords when I'm in Norway.
- [47:36]
Simon Jack
Oh, that sounds incredible.
- [47:38]
Zing Seng
That sounds like a much more glamorous way of listening to the podcast.
- [47:41]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [47:41]
Zing Seng
He also says, you should have a closer look into a Norwegian ship owner called John Fredrickson. And you know what? Maybe we will listen out on the next series of Good Bad Billionaire. Thank you for that, Andre. So we want to hear from you. Email goodbadbillionairebc.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 0019176861176 to let us know what you think.
- [48:03]
Simon Jack
That's goodbadbillionairebc.com Or 0019176861176 and don't forget to include your name. And we'll be back soon with some of your messages. Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast. It's produced by Mark Ward with additional production by Tamsin Curry. Paul Smith is the editor and it's a BBC Studios audio production for the BBC World Service.
- [48:27]
Zing Seng
The senior podcast producer is Cat Collins and the commissioning editor is John Minnell.