Hetty Green

Henrietta "Hetty" Howland Robinson Green (November 21, 1834 – July 3, 1916) was an American businesswoman and financier known as "the richest woman in America" during the Gilded Age. Those who knew her well referred to her admiringly as the "Queen of Wall Street" due to her willingness to lend freely and at reasonable interest rates to financiers and city governments during financial panics.

As a highly successful investor, with a Wall Street office, she was unusual for being a woman in a man's world. Unwilling to participate in New York City high society, conspicuous consumption, or business partnerships, she may have been eccentric and curt with the press but she was a pioneer of value investing. Her willingness to make low-rate loans (with her well-tended reserves of currency) in place of the failing banks during the Panic of 1907 helped bail out Wall Street, New York City, and the United States economy. Nonetheless, she was seen in her widowhood as an odd miser all in black, sometimes referred to sensationally as the "Witch of Wall Street", and later the Guinness Book of World Records even named her the "greatest miser" for a time. Stories that were often cited include her refusal to buy expensive clothes or pay for hot water, and her habit of wearing a single dress that was replaced only when it was worn out. Later evaluations have seen her as perhaps eccentric, but mostly out of step with the excesses of the Gilded Age wealthy, and the contemporary expectations for women, especially of her class.

Birth and early years

Early childhood

Henrietta ("Hetty") Howland Robinson was born in 1834 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the daughter of Edward Mott Robinson and Abby Howland, the richest whaling family in the city. Her family members were Quakers who owned a large whaling fleet and also profited from the China trade. She had a younger brother who died as an infant.

At the age of two, Green was sent to live with her grandfather, Gideon Howland, and her Aunt Sylvia. Green would read the stock quotations and commerce reports for her grandfather and picked up some of his business methods. At the age of 10, she entered Eliza Wing's boarding school in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Green's father became the head of the Isaac Howland whaling firm upon Gideon's death, and she began to emulate her father's business practices. Because of Gideon's influence and that of her father, and possibly because her mother was constantly ill, she was close to her father and was reading financial papers to him by the age of six. Green learned to read ledgers and trade commodities. When she was 13, Green became the family bookkeeper. Hetty settled the case for a smaller percentage of the estate (approximately $600,000), which was placed in trust.

Exhausted from lawsuits and concerned about an effort by Hetty's cousins to have her indicted for forgery based on the Robinson v. Mandell decision, the couple moved overseas to London, where they lived in the Langham Hotel. The Greens departed the U.S. for London soon after their wedding on July 11, 1867. Their two children, Edward Howland Robinson Green (called Ned) and Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks (called Sylvia), were born in London: Ned on August 23, 1868, and Sylvia on January 7, 1871.

Investing career

Green followed a contrarian investing strategy, in her words, "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." Green invested the interest from her father's trust fund, once again investing as her father had done, in Civil War bonds, which paid a high yield in gold, augmented by railroad stocks. Her annual profits during her first year in London amounted to $1.25 million, and the most she ever earned in a day was $200,000. Green went on to say, "I believe in getting in at the bottom and out on top. I like to buy railroad stocks or mortgage bonds. When I see a good thing going cheap because nobody wants it, I buy a lot of it and tuck it away." Her investment strategy could perhaps be best described as a "buy low, sell high" position. Hetty's discounted greenbacks, bought during the Civil War, were increased in value when Congress passed legislation in 1875 backing them with gold. As Hetty said of her investing philosophy, "Before deciding on an investment, I seek out every kind of information about it." For several years before the panic, Green amassed a large cash position. When the panic arrived in October 1907, Green lent liberally to financiers and the City of New York to get them through the crisis. She was also the only woman invited to the critical meeting with J. Pierpont Morgan and the leading banking executives at the height of the crisis.

Investment strategy

Green conducted much of her business at the offices of the in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers; she did not want to pay rent for her own office. Possibly because of her usually dour dress (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps in part related to her Quaker upbringing), she was given the nickname "the Witch of Wall Street". Fisher argues that despite her eccentricities, Green was in many ways a better investor than most of her early Wall Street contemporaries. Green clearly understood the power of compound interest, and her focus on regular modest gains of 6% a year and frugal living made her fortune more durable than the likes of Jesse Livermore who repeatedly earned larger sums on more extravagant deals but also went bankrupt through excessive spending and high-risk investments.

Reputation

thumb|upright|Green circa 1905

Thrift

The Gilded Age was an era known for its excesses in spending on material goods, and she was among the few prominent investors who chose not to partake. Indeed, she was known for being frugal or stingy with her money. Journalists of her time often presented her thriftiness as evidence of her miserliness, when in fact it played an important role in her investing strategy. Examples of negative media portrayals included reports that she never turned on the heat or used hot water. She was also known for wearing a single black dress that she would not replace until it was thoroughly worn out. Moreover, she reportedly instructed her laundress to wash only the dirtiest parts of her dresses (the hems) to save money on soap. The harshest accusation, however, was that she neglected treating her son's injured leg, which eventually resulted in an amputation. The evidence cited was her refusal to pay for a visit to a single physician. However, there is substantial evidence that Green put great expense and effort to treat her son. This included visits to multiple specialists, as well as temporarily relocating her residence so that she could care for him.

Green's thrift also reflected her Quaker upbringing, which featured an emphasis on plain clothing among other characteristics. When a reporter questioned why she had spent so little time during a visit to an expensive hotel, she responded "Young man, I am a Quaker, and I am trying to live up to the tenets of that faith. That is why I dress plainly and live quietly. No other kind of life would please me." Finally, Green’s thrift was essential to her investment strategy, as it enabled her to buy assets confidently amid financial panics because it prepared her to live on minimal expenses.

Media portrayal

Green was often portrayed negatively in the media. Yet her investment strategy shunned the nefarious tactics that were commonly used by Wall Street speculators such as Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk. She once commented on this misperception:

It has turned out...that my life is written for me down in Wall Street by people who, I assume, do not care to know one iota of the real Hetty Green. I am in earnest; therefore they picture [me] as heartless. I go my own way, take no partners, risk nobody else's fortune, therefore I am Madame Ishmael, set against every man.

In her old age, Green developed a hernia, but refused to have an operation, preferring to use a stick to press down the swelling. She eventually moved her office to the National Park Bank, when she thought she had been poisoned at the Chemical Bank, a fear she had most of her life. According to her longstanding "World's Greatest Miser" entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, she died of apoplexy after arguing with a maid over the virtues of skimmed milk. The New York Times reported she suffered a series of strokes leading up to her death.</blockquote>

Green was buried at the Immanuel Cemetery at the Immanuel Episcopal Church in Bellows Falls, Vermont, next to her husband. She had converted late in life to his Episcopalian faith so that she could be interred with him.

Green's former mansion in Englewood, New Jersey was purchased by the Actors Fund in 1928. The mansion was razed in 1959, and a modern facility was erected in 1961, which currently houses the Lillian Booth Actors Home.

In popular culture

Green is mentioned in George M. Cohan's song "Then I'd Be Satisfied With Life". She is also mentioned in The Decemberists's "Calamity Song."

The She-Wolf (1931) and You Can't Buy Everything (1934) are films about miserly billionaire businesswomen based on Green and played by Australian-born actress May Robson.

In the King of the Hill episode (S8S8, 2004) "Rich Hank, Poor Hank", Connie mentions Green by saying that extremely wealthy people who are also cheap, often have a mental illness.

The March 20, 2016 episode of The Dollop podcast featured Green.

References

External links

A more generous profile: "Shrewdness and Gumption"
Wealthy eccentrics, Hetty Green, CNNMoney.com
WallStreetCosmos.Com: Hetty Green, Witch or Wizard?