Most business leaders are men. This was even more pronounced over a century ago during another period when great fortunes were amassed: the Gilded Age. It lasted from about 1877 to about 1900, and enormous fortunes were made in railroads, banking, and more. The “captains of industry” or “robber barons” of the day were all men — with one exception: Hetty Green.
Green was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts on November 21, 1834. Her family were in the whaling business, which was the major industry in New Bedford. They were not only in the business; they owned the largest and most successful fleet of ships in the port. Thanks to her family’s resources, she was well educated, and also began learning about business when her father had her practice reading (at age 6) by reading him the financial news. By the time she was 13, she was doing the bookkeeping for the family business
In her late teens, Green was a classic rebellious adolescent — and in those days, that meant she ignored all the social norms around young women from wealthy families. Remember that the era was called the “Gilded Age,” and if you were rich you were expected to flaunt it. But Green ignored expectations, dressed in old (presumably comfortable) clothes, and paid little attention to her appearance. The only expectations society had for wealthy female heirs was to grow up and find a suitable husband, but Green’s mother despaired about Green’s “prospects” because of her habits. They sent her to New York when she was 20 to mingle with the rich upper crust and attend lavish balls, but instead of dancing and partying, she spent her time eavesdropping on the men’s conversations about Wall Street investing. When she returned home several months early, she’d only spent $200 out of her $1200 budget, and had invested the balance.
A few years later, Green’s father sold off the whaling business (just in time; the whaling business collapsed soon afterward) and moved to New York. Hetty commuted between New Bedford and New York for a while, and worked with her father on business opportunities and investments. She did get married, to Edward Green, but they had what today we’d call a “pre-nup” agreement; he couldn’t inherit any of her money. Edward was a wealthy investor in his own right, but over the course of his career Hetty had to bail him out several times. After she settled his $500,000 debt after the 1885 financial crash, she took a dim view of his dealings and he was on his own. Hetty, meanwhile, had tens of millions of dollars and had become known as the Queen of Wall Street.
Hetty Green weathered the 1885 crash handily, but her most amazing feat was foreseeing the even worse Panic of 1907 and wasn’t much affected by it. In fact she ended up bailing out several banks, as well as the City of New York. For her entire life she maintained the habits she’d first formed as a teenager — she was said to wear black dresses until she wore them out, and the newspapers of the day claimed she was so thrifty she never turned on the heat in her house and never used hot water. The stories were almost certainly false, and just an attempt to denigrate a woman (!!) who handled her own affairs, traveled by herself, and was a more successful investor than nearly all the men on Wall Street. She lived to be 81, and her fortune (in today’s dollars) was somewhere in excess of $5 billion. That probably made her the richest woman in the world, and nearly the richest person. Two movies, The She-Wolf (from 1931) and You Can’t Buy Everything (from 1934) are based on her life.
