Hetty (18 page)

Unlike the villainous railroad agent in Norris’s book, who suffocates in a loading car under an avalanche of wheat, Huntington just grew stronger as he moved from one scandal and controversy to the next. By the late 1880s, he had moved to New York, and was furiously working on pushing the Southern Pacific across Texas. Many men, strong and tough in their own right, hated Collis Huntington almost as much as they feared him. He was a physically imposing man, two hundred pounds, with a large head and piercing eyes. He knew he was intimidating and he used this quality to his advantage whenever it suited him. He was known as a vindictive man who never forgot a slight.

Hetty Green was not impressed. To Hetty, Huntington was no empire builder. He was the man responsible for the principal humiliation of her life, a time when she had come the closest to losing control of that which gave her life purpose and meaning. She blamed Huntington for mismanaging the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, and for the bond shenanigans that she felt had caused Cisco to go under. Because of Huntington, she had been forced to beg and plead before that impertinent Lewis May. Because of Huntington she had had to write out a check for several hundred thousand dollars, an act that felt like tearing a chunk out of her own flesh. If people thought Huntington could hold a grudge, they hadn’t seen Hetty.

In the wake of the Cisco disaster, long before Ned began his apprenticeship, Hetty had bought as many of the damaged bonds
of the Houston and Texas Central as she could. By 1887, she owned $250,000 in first mortgage bonds and about $1 million in general mortgage bonds, enough to be a thorn in Huntington’s side for any plans he might have for the railroad.

As part of a reorganization plan, Huntington stiffed remaining bondholders. He proposed to exchange existing bonds with new ones that would pay 2 percent lower interest and run fifty years instead of five. Bondholders grumbled, cried foul, but had little practical recourse. They could give in, or, Huntington intimated, the Houston and Texas Central would fail outright, and the investors could use their bonds to paper the walls of their parlors.

One bondholder made it clear that she had no intention to go along with Huntington’s proposal. “C.P. Huntington and his friends among the bondholders of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad Company had a meeting yesterday whereat a reorganization scheme was endorsed. Mrs. Hetty Green, however, was an absentee,” the
Times
noted on December 16, 1887. “She owns something over $1,000,000 worth of the company’s bonds and Mr. Huntington’s offer doesn’t suit her. The Huntington contingent say they do not care whether Mrs. Green assents or not; they can go right along and reorganize the company without her. Other big men have talked in just this way about Mrs. Green in times past, but somehow she usually contrives to come out ahead whenever the fighting notion strikes her.”

Wall Street observers licked their lips at the prospect of a battle between Hetty and Huntington. “Wall street men, usually very gallant where women are concerned, have no very great liking for Mrs. Green and her close business methods,” the
New York World
reported on May 27, 1887, “but on the other hand they are not particularly in love with Mr. Huntington, whose genius for driving a bargain is a matter of common fame; so they will watch this contest with impartiality, but with intense and lively interest.”

A committee of increasingly nervous bondholders met over
several months to try to hash out a compromise that would earn better terms than what Huntington had proposed. Hetty sent as her representative William J. Quinlan Jr., cashier for the Chemical National Bank. The bondholders, not content to deal just with Hetty’s representative, made several pilgrimages to see her at the bank, hoping she would join them in reaching a compromise before the railroad failed.

Whether Hetty gave her outright promise or merely intimated that she would go along, the committee members believed they had a unified front. They hashed out a compromise with Huntington, essentially going along with his demands. Amid rumors of the agreement, Houston and Texas Central stock rose to $40 per share, its highest level in ages. That was good news for Huntington, who had scooped up loads of shares at around $10. But no sooner had the bondholders announced the resolution, in May 1887, than Hetty made an announcement of her own. She had changed her mind. Was that not, she said sweetly, a woman’s prerogative? If Huntington and his crowd wanted her cooperation, they would have to come directly to her.

As word spread of Hetty’s refusal—presaging more months of haggling and delays—the stock sagged like a leaky balloon, back down toward $10. Huntington, who had broken more than a few tough men on his climb to success, watched in cold fury as the value of his securities sank and his broad plans for Texas stalled, all because of this … woman.

The bondholders, meanwhile, professed themselves to be stunned by Hetty’s duplicity. “Members of the Committee … use a stronger term than ‘changed her mind.’ They say she ‘deliberately broke her promise,’ and while disinclined to make a public attack upon a woman, did not disguise their disgust at her conduct,” the World reported the following Friday. “Her action, it was declared, was indefensible, and Mrs. Green’s action two years ago in withdrawing her half-million-dollar deposit
with John J. Cisco, which many believe was the immediate cause of the failure of that old-established house, was recalled.”

What did Hetty care? If being noble and honorable meant getting swindled by Collis Huntington, the other bondholders could keep their nobility and honor. Edward Mott Robinson hadn’t waited around, like other sentimental fools, while his fortune trickled away with the demise of the whaling industry. His daughter wasn’t about to go down with the bondholders. Just as she had during the Georgia Central takeover battle a year earlier, Hetty had maneuvered herself into the position she wanted—the third point on the triangle, watching everybody sweat. She prolonged the negotiations with Huntington’s representatives for another eleven months. At last, in April 1888, she consented to the reorganization. Just what Huntington was forced to yield was kept a tightly held secret. The World noted: “It was generally believed that she had carried her point.”

But all of this had been merely a prelude. Now that Ned was full-grown and trained, he was ready to head for Texas. Together, they would make some real trouble for their adversary.

TEN
THOU SHALT NOT PASS

I
n December of 1892, a crowd gathered at a courthouse in Waco, Texas, for the federal auction of the Waco and Northwestern Railroad. As railroad properties went, the Waco and Northwestern was none too impressive—just fifty-four miles of poorly managed track connecting the small eastern Texas communities of Bremond and Ross. But this obscure property was a vital link in Collis Huntington’s plan to control railroad traffic across the Southwest. In contrast with his Central Pacific’s fairly straight line across the North, Huntington had no formal charter to cross Texas. His routes comprised a mismatched patchwork of large and small Texas roads that he’d been able to piece together. The Waco and Northwestern, in receivership since 1885, provided a crucial link. Huntington had just settled a long and nasty battle with financier Jay Gould, his principal rival in Texas. After racing one another across Texas in a furious battle to be the first to lay tracks to coveted cities, the two had settled on a truce to coordinate construction and pool freight traffic. Now, Huntington needed the Waco and Northwestern for access
to Waco, and as a connection to the Texas Panhandle. As usual with railroads, this one came with a significant sweetener—nearly 500,000 acres of land deeded by the state.

Christopher Dart, a special commissioner appointed by the courts to handle the sale, called the gathering to order. In the crowd was Julius Kruttschnitt, the Southern Pacific’s general manager for Texas and Louisiana, and Huntington’s handpicked representative. Huntington had told Kruttschnitt he could bid as high as $1.25 million for the road. But nobody, least of all Kruttschnitt and Huntington, expected he’d have to go anywhere near that high. There was someone else in the crowd that day, a tall young man of about twenty-four. He was not a local man, and if anyone took notice of him it was perhaps because of his imposing frame and the contrast between the intense youthfulness of his face and his stiff, awkward gait.

Kruttschnitt opened with a bid of $800,000. He and a couple of other interested parties bid the price incrementally up from there. Then the young man spoke up with a bid of $1.1 million. Kruttschnitt realized too late that he was in a bidding war with a determined buyer. As he stood trying to balance in his mind Huntington’s desire for the Waco and Northwestern versus his limitation of $1.25 million, the young man left him and the other bidders behind, with a winning bid of $1.365 million. It was all over in a matter of minutes. Commissioner Dart tapped his gavel and announced the winning bidder for the Waco and Northwestern Railroad—Edward Howland Robinson Green, on behalf of his mother.

The news, relayed by a sheepish Kruttschnitt, infuriated Huntington. And that, of course, had been the point. Huntington was quick to strike back. Using all of his considerable economic and political power, he and his associates magically produced liens against a large chunk of the land that went with the sale. Then, both local and state governments waded in, claiming that the land, all half-million acres, belonged to
them.
Through their lawyers, Ned and Hetty responded that they had believed in good faith
that the land was included in the sale, pointing out that a railroad without any land was worth practically nothing. If the land wasn’t included in the sale, they wanted out. Now Huntington filed a second motion, asking that the Greens not be allowed to withdraw from their bid. In essence, Huntington had decided that if the Greens wanted to jump into the Texas railroad business, he would make it an experience they would never forget. Let them watch their $1.365 million go down the drain as the railroad died.

Litigation over the Waco and Northwestern stretched on for three years. One effect of the battle was that it made Hetty a folk hero among California farmers who hated Huntington. A group of San Franciscans sent her as a gift a .44 caliber revolver, along with a holster, belt, and cartridges, and a note promising that if she ever came to visit, they would turn out ten thousand strong at the depot to greet her. For Hetty, accustomed now to being on the receiving end of unflattering articles about her personal idiosyncrasies, this was an unfamiliar gesture of embrace. She relished it. She loved to tell friends about the gift, and also about the time, during the height of the battle, that Huntington came to see her at her office at the Chemical Bank. No doubt he went with the idea of intimidating her. During the course of the conversation, he threatened that if she and Ned (who remained in Texas) didn’t relent, he would see to it that Ned was tossed in a Texas jail. Hetty’s eyes narrowed on Huntington. “Up to now, Huntington, you have dealt with Hetty Green, the business woman. Now you are fighting Hetty Green, the mother. Harm one hair of Ned’s head and I’ll put a bullet through your heart!” She made a motion toward the revolver on her desk (perhaps the one sent to her from California). Huntington, surprised and alarmed, left the office so quickly that he forgot to take his silk hat. He sent an assistant for it the next day.

The dispute ended in 1895 with the court deciding that the land had not, in fact, been included in the sale, but that the Greens would not be held to the purchase. It was a muted victory for both sides. Hetty got back the hefty deposit Ned had put
up to secure the sale, and Huntington got his railroad. He paid $1,505,000, or, $255,000 more than his outside figure of three years before. Ned and Hetty asked to be reimbursed for $25,000 in lawyer’s fees accrued during the case. A judge granted them half the amount. Huntington, showing he could hold a grudge as well as Hetty, sued, over a paltry $12,500, and had the decision overturned. Hetty, who hated to spend needlessly, probably considered the $25,000 in court costs some of the best money she had ever spent—if only to see Huntington squirm.

About the time the Waco and Northwestern imbroglio started, Hetty took over another obscure, run-down branch line. This was a fifty-two-mile branch line of the old Texas Central Railway Company (different from Huntington’s Houston and Texas Central), connecting the towns of Garrett and Roberts, east of Dallas. When the Texas Central went through a financial reorganization, Hetty was faced with the prospect of turning in her $750,000 for a fraction of their value. Instead, she surrendered the bonds, plus $75,000 in cash to buy the spur line. This, she would turn over to Ned as the final test of his business abilities. Texas would be his principal home for the next sixteen years, a place big and wide enough to accommodate his bigger-than-life personality and appetites, and give him some of the happiest years of his life. It was there that Ned would prove himself as a businessman, not just an apprentice, with decision-making capacity and capital of his own. Ned would develop into one of the Lone Star State’s most colorful characters, leaving his mark on politics, railroading, agriculture, sport fishing, and automobile racing.