Hetty: The Genius And Madness Of America's First Female Tycoon (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
The 1996 book, The Wealthy 100, ranked the net work of 100 wealthy Americans by the percentage of the Gross National Product their personal fortunes represented. Hetty, the only woman on the list, came in 36th— five places behind Bill Gates and three places ahead of Warren Buffett.This is a fascinating, well-written book about an amazing woman. On her own, using financial acumen unheard for a woman in her day and age (she died in 1916, at age 81), she managed to parlay a family inheritance into a fortune so large that she frequently bailed out the City of New York when they encountered cash crunches. When J.P. Morgan called a meeting of New York's financial leaders after the stock market crash of 1907, Hetty was the only woman in the room.Commentators of the time assumed that such financial acumen had to come with a price; articles were written about how lonely and unhappy she must be. And she did have quite a few odd and sometimes disturbing pecadillos: she absolutely hated to spend money, and would haggle over the smallest items exhaustively. Her son Ned suffered the loss of his leg later in life after a boyhood sledding accident, and it was rumored that his leg could have been saved if Hetty had paid for the best medical attention instead of dragging him around to free clinics, trying to save money. Rain or snow, she walked daily from the New Jersey ferry to Wall Street (she lived in a small apartment in Hoboken) dressed in old clothing, wearing a heavy black veil to keep from being recognized. It didn't work, of course; the disguise simply earned her the nickname "The Witch of Wall Street".Seeing past the prejudices of her time (I'm forgiving the use of the word "madness" in the book's subtitle, assuming that it was more for marketing purposes), the book paints a portrait of Hetty as a frugal woman who eschewed pretense and frivolity, loved her children, was very happy doing what she was good at. I greatly enjoyed learning more about this colorful and fascinating giant of American finance, of whom I'd known nothing previously.
This biography of renowned miser Hetty Green is interesting because of its subject’s wealth and thrifty habits; but what I found even more interesting was how the author tried to highlight Hetty’s humanity and failed.Hetty Green lived from 1834 to 1916 and was born into a Quaker family who happened to control the wealthiest whaling company in America. She inherited her family’s money, some of it through an aunt’s will, on which Hetty allegedly forged the signature. She went on to multiply that early fortune through good investments and extreme thrift, including bringing buckets of dry oatmeal to her bank, where she would add water and heat it on the radiator in order to avoid a restaurant bill.Hetty is plain old cheap, and she tends to be pretty nasty about it. But author Charles Slack is determined to bring out her human qualities. He plays up the fact that when she was living in various tenements in Hoboken to avoid paying residency taxes, she gave savings banks with a dollar inside to some neighborhood children. Slack’s anecdotes meant to highlight her kindness are overwhelmed by the very nature of her character.The author’s attempt to redeem Hetty Green’s legacy fail; there aren’t enough positive stories about this woman to stretch this book beyond its slim 226 pages. So while it’s not a very successful as a biography, it is a pretty good story about America’s cheapest and most forgotten tycoon.
What do You think about Hetty: The Genius And Madness Of America's First Female Tycoon (2004)?
People are truly weird, and this book chronicles the life of one good example. Hetty Green made her mark on a man's world of Wall Street finance and real estate in an era that featured "robber barons" who would do anything for money. Green was a true eccentric, living in apartments with her children, moving from place to place to avoid taxes, never spending any more than she absolutely had to on living, only on making more money. This remarkable story reads like a novel, fascinating in its narrative of this remarkable piece of history.
—Sandra Strange
An interesting account of a woman swimming against the tide in a time when woman were not known or allowed to take the reins of business. Because there were no sons, her father had her by his side to learn the fundamentals of business. Whether he realized that this would keep her from "settling" for the life of society maiden is doubtful. What is sad is that Hetty never seemed to balance the running of her fortune with the joy of using it to at least live comfortably rather than in rented rooms in tenement houses. I found her litigious attitude amusing. While she would not see her money buying comfort for herself or her children, she saw no problem with spending large sums of money for court cases, even though she said she hated lawyers. And, in the end, her fortune passed down to her children was parceled out to many institutions and people, not leaving any legacy.
—Debra
Hetty Green, known to her legion of detractors as ‘the Witch of Wall Street’, became the richest woman in the world through a combination of financial genius and utter ruthlessness, living like a pauper and caring nothing for what the world thought of her. (Her two children found it much less pleasant.) Not a likable character by any means, and yet there is something (almost) admirable in the way this flinty, quintessentially New England Yankee competed with powerful men in a man’s world – and won. This is a fascinating story, now largely forgotten, with numerous local angles and locations, from New Bedford to Vermont.-Alan
—Jeff
