Martinsburg statesman-democrat. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1906-1921, 1908-02-28
uahappy Hesly Gree-.

) If you have been part Of the hur-
: rying throng that daily jostles down
lower Broadway you may have seen
her Such a lonely little figure! A
withered leaf, ii seems, strangely toss
ed in the great financial current. Fol-
low this little old woman in rusty
black and see her enter the Chemical
National Bank. She is not the scrub
woman. The scrubwoman has no
clothes of such ancient date as hers
the alpaca gown that has weathered
many seasons; the back wooden cape
that has shaped itself to the shoulders
as they have bowed through the last
ten years, and the tousled bonnet with
its little bunch of flowers that faded
with the millinery of many summers
past.
Yet she has made no mistake in en-
tering here, where the atmosphere is
crisp with the ways Of the business
world and metallic with the sound of
money. For 10! office boys and clerks
and men higher up stand obsequiously
aside as she enters. The bowed gray
head turns neither to the right nor to
the left as she walks straight on. With
assurance her hand rests on the gate
that leads inside beyond the brass
barred windows of mahogany roll
top desk. This is her Office.
The shabby little old woman who
has just passed from view is worth
$50, 900, 000-even 500, 000, 900, some es-
Inmates say. She is Hetty Rowland
Robinson Green, greatest mistress of
finance the world has ever seen. Seated
atop of her huge yellow millions, a
wrinkled old woman, the financial
limelight of a continent plays about
heras she directs the destInies of men
and of corporations. There is power IN
the penstroke of her aged fingers, the
thinNold fingers that are busy, busy all
day long cutting coupons and signing
checks. She has more ready money at
her command than any other one in
dividual! Wall street waits on her cof-
fers. To the iold-fashionea mahogany
desk comes procession of bank presi-
dents, hat in hand, railroad magnates
bowling low, and rich directors hum
bly, making obeisance. Even the city of
New York in need has brought its
plea to her, its richest citizens. Coolly
calculatingly, she listens, balancing
want and entreaty with grim nicely
of judgment. Theu size drives her bar
gain shire @dly.
They get her money and they pay
her price.
SO rolls up the tcr,une from which
she has long been famed as the richest
woman IN America. There is the posi-
BILE exception OF Mrs, Russell Says, bu
hers was amassed by her husband. In
all history there has been no other
woman who,' by the exercise of her own
ingenuity, has made so much money
as this supreme woman tinancier.
Yet the Midas touch that has fairly
incrusted her life with gold has been a
fatal gift. For Hetty Green is really a
bankrupt today, bankrupt in desire
With money to buy all that the world
has for sale, it holds nothing that she
would like. She has mortgages sire WIN
in acres from Boston to San Francisco.
She owns railroad and steamboat lines
copper mines in Michigan, gold m ines
in Nevada, iron mines in Missouri
telegraph and telephone securities and
government bonds, and in her safe is
locked pint of diamonds aud one of
the finest collections of pearls on earth
Yet the girl stenograrher who take $
her detation probably has lighter
healt under = new spring gown, the
butcher from whom she buys chuck
steak at II cents pound has better
Sunday dinner, and her nsighbcrs in a
Hoboken fiat, when they go on a
Coney Island outing, brighten the
monochrome of existence with more OF
color than varies her drab days.
Poor Hetty Green, least happy
woman in New York.
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