Richmond times-dispatch. [volume], July 23, 1916, Image 43

About Richmond times-dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1914-current

Image provided by: Library of Virginia; Richmond, VA

                
Was She a Financial Genius of
Surpassing Shrewdness and
Foresight Whose Life Furnishes
an Example of Honesty,
Thrifty Industry and Modest bu
Really Intelligent Charity
That Every Young Man or
Woman Would Do
Well to Emulate?
By Leonard Keene Hirshberg,
A. B? M. A., M. D. (Johns Hopkins).
1>f the career of the late Hetty Green, who died re
cently, leaving an estate estimated to be worth
considerably more than Jloo,0f'0.000, psychology has
a most curious and Interesting problem.
Was Mrs. Green, as her friends and admirers flrmlj
Insist, a financial genius of surpassing shrewdness and
foresight, whose life furnis-hes an example of honesty
that every young man or woman would do well
emulate?
Or was she. as many who have studied her life and
character believe, a pitiable monomaniac with a mind
so wrecked by insane greed that she dodged her taxes,
Ignored her duty to her fellow men. and sacrificed even
her own happiness, in the most miserly way for
money's sake?
No man or woman of .?hom history makes record
*ver displayed both in private life and in contact wtih
the rest of the world a more bewildering complexity
of contradictory eccentricities than Hetty Green. To
solve the' puazle which she presents to science?to
separate her good qualities from her bad ones and form
a just estimate of her character?this can be done only
by dissecting the mental processes which made her
what she was and comparing them with the processes
which are found in normal men and women, as well
as with those which are known to produce the curious
types we call ruisers.
Like other brain-twisted people. Hetty Green
scoffed at the idea that she was a miser and suc
ceeded in convincing many of her friends that it was
an injustice to call her one. Rut consider how Fhe
lived?only for money's sake. She gave little to
charity and had only a small circle of friends. Her
life for many years was given up almost exclusively
to dodging tax collectors and beggars and to fighting
all sorts of legal proceedings. She never used her
wealth for the development of gre-it industries as
Rockefeller, Carnegie. James .1. Hill and other
wealthy men have done.
Whatever enjoyment she got out of life seems to
have been through the accumulation of money and
the anticipation that her soi might .some day be the
richest man in the world. I-Jv*n death would not
relieve her sordid career with a touch of human kind
ness?her will reveals not. a single bequest to charity.
Not only that, but she drew it in such a way as to
leave it doubtful whether the State will be able to
collect its just dues in the shape of inheritance taxes.
hi reply to a Chicago minister who wrote her that,
she would be lost to Heaven if she insisted on her
money from a $50,000 mortgage on his church, she
#ald: "You xiad better pray for my soul then, because
I am going to foreclose within thirty days." and she
did.
At various tiniQS she is charged with having tried to
fave doctors' bills by applying to free clinics and
charitable hospitals for treatment for her-eif and
family. The loss of her son's leg is said to have been
due to such penuriousnens.
In little matters the mine spirit was shown. Once,
it is said, she quarrelled with her washerwoman
because she would not reduce the amount of her bill.
As a compromise .Mrs. Green ordered that in the
future when the woman washed the petticoats s?ho
wash only the lower half of them. This would reduce
the labor and would enable her to reduce the bill'
All these things are to psychology convincing proof
of the existence in Mrs. (Jreen of the perverted type
of mentality which we call the miser.
One of the first misers of whom we have any
knowledge was Dichaeus Dichaenus. a descendant of
the Byzantine monarch?, but without any of their ex
travagances. He carried his miserliness to such an
extent that he had not the slightest regard for any
human being who did not live and think in terms of
avarice. Mrs. Green showed precisely the same
symptoms when she repeatedly expressed her admira
tion for the late Russell Sage, a man of almost if not
quite as parsimonious habits as herself.
"The true miser." savs Dr. Charles W. Ilurr. pro
fessor of mental diseases at the University of Penn
sylvania, "gets pleasure from sensations which give
the normal person pain." How well Mrs. Green fitted
this description is apparent from even a casual study
of her life and habits.
For many years her annual income was more than
$5,000,000, and yet she rarely spent more than $3,0o0
or $4,000 a year to live. For a long time she occupied
a three-dollar a week mm in a tenement house in
Hoboken, and at. oil' .imes she occupied a modest
fiat in the same < osting not more than $2f> a
month.
She scrimped and saved on her living expenses not.
because she had any idea that Hy living on a more
liberal scale she would imperil her fortune, but he
cause like all misers her aesthetic sense was so per
verted that she derived a peculiar pleasure not only
from the saving of money, hut from doing all sorts
of things which would be revolting to a normal person.
Science has discovered that soon after a miser's
brain becomes permanently warped signs of Ibis men
tal weakness begin to show in his physical appearance,
Hetty Green showed all these signs.
Perhaps the most striking of the marks which miser
liness sets upon a person's body arc to be found in
the eyes. Nobody who saw Mrs. Green even once will
ever forget those deep-set, narrow eyes of hers. When
not furtively roaming from side to side they would
fix themselves in a steady gaze that seemed perfectly
well able to pierce flesh and hone or a building's walls.
In Mrs. Green's face long before sho reached old
age there appeared the peculiar seams and wrinkles
which indicate the atrophy of the thyroid, adrenal and
other ductless glands. In misers these glands shrink
(c) A\MffllCAN PfcfSS A5SM,
The Kusly Hfack Dress and Old-lashioncd
Hon net Which Hetty (ireen Wore Even
When She Had an Income of $5,000,000
a Year Arc, Psychology Declares, Con
vincing Proof of the Perversion of Her
Aesthetic Sense. This Is One of the Symp
toms of the Mental Disease Which Pro
duces Misers.
and bccome atrophied in an early s.'age of tlio mentnl
disease, and as a result the miner becomes incapable
of normal love, joy, sympathy and other kindred feel
ings.
Although miserliness i? n rather infrequent mental
disease, it belongs to a great class of diseases which
are very common. Idtu and women who are able to
solve the most difficult, arithmetical problems with
lightning-like speed, but are imbecile or half-witted
in other respects, belong to the same genoraldass
as misers.
But strong as the evidence is that Mrs. Green's brain
was warped by disease, the case is not proved until
wo have discovered what caused the. malady. As
Professor Freud, the great Austrian scientist, and other
scholars have shown, misers are made, not born. The
mental weakness which they develop is either the re
sult of some unfulfilled longing or some hidden pent-up
memory.
Hetty Green's obsession and delusion which burnt
away all normal human feeling and put in its place
the most sordid kind of miserliness can undoubtedly
be ascribed to the strife following her father's death.
It. was the long series of lawsuits which nearly robbed
her of her heritage that embittered her aonl and
warped and twisted her brain out of all normal shape.
Psychology does not attempt to deny that Hetty
Green possessed extraordinary ability and that her in
tentions were undoubtedly of the best. What it does
insist on is that wealth has become a monomania with
her, and that as this mental disease progressed it
made her view herself and her relations to the world
in an abnormal light. Her great talents were wasted
in the futile effort to make actualities of life conform
to her insane viewpoint.
Copyright, l#ir>, b
Exterior of the $3-a-Wcek Room in Hoboken Where Mrs. Green Lived for
Several Years. Psychology Says It Is Characteristic of Misers to Enjoy
Living Under Conditions Which Would Be Hardships for Normal Persons
Why Psychology BeHeves Hetty Green
Was a Miser
IS' her face she showed the same features found in the faces of
all the misers of whom science has any record.
Ilcr dress and all her habits of life displayed the perver
sion of the aesthetic sense which is an important symptom of the
mental disease that produces misers.
Sufficient cause for the disease known as miserliness is found
in the bitter legal battles which followed Mrs. Green's father's
death and-which nearly robbed her of her heritage.
She declared Russell Sage, a man almost as parsimonious as
herself, an ideal type of citizen and business man.
Long before she reached old age her faco revealed the pe
culiar seams and wrinkles which indicate the atrophy of the thy
roid, adrenal and other ductless glands. This condition of these
glands is a symptom which shows itself in an early stage of the
misers' mental disease and makes them incapable of normal love,
joy, sympathy and other kindred feelings.
She derived pleasure not only from the saving of money, but
from dressing, living and behaving in a way that would give
normal persons extreme pain.
y the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reserved.
Or Was She a Pitiable
Monomaniac So Dominated
by Greed That She
Dodged Her Taxes, Ignored
Her Duty to Her Fellow
Men and Even Sacrificed
Her Own Happiness for
Money's Sake?
CONVINCING as the evidence that the late Mrs. Hetty Green waS
a "brain-warped miser" may be to psychologists, it will have no
weight to those who knew her intimately either in business
or socially or through her numerous charities. To them she will ever
remain one of die world's super-women, a brilliant financial genius of
whom America may well be proud, and one whose life furnishes an
inspiring example to future generations.
In business efficiency, Mrs. Green's friends say, there are few
caotains of industrv to be compared with her. Until almost the day
letty Green in Her Comely
Youth, Before Her Marriage and
Before the Disease from Which
Psychology Says SUe Suffered
Had Begun Its Inroads on Her
Brain. And Above, Character
istic Features of a Miser?(A)
High, Sloping Forehead; (B)
Deep Set, Piercing Eyes; (C)
Long Nose with Narrow Nos
trils; (D)?Lips Firmly Com
pressed. s
of her death Bhe personally di
rected the multifarious details of
business enterprises which ex
tended into every part of the coun
try and yielded an annual profit
in excess of $5,000,000. And she
did it all in a little office not more
than ten feet square, and with the
assistance of only a clerk, a type
writer girl and an office boy.
Her ability as a manipulator of
large investments is proverbial in
the world's financial centres, where
for years she operated with phe
nomenal success. Her first appear
ance in Wall Street was made soon i
after her husband had lost a mill
ion dollars there. It took her only
a few months to convince the men
who had ruined him that she was
more than a match for them at
their own game.
Just how much Hetty Green's
influence often had to do with
keeping the country's financial in
terests on a souud basis and pre
venting their embarking on wild
cat schemes will never be fully
known. But it is a matter of his
tory in Wall Street that on more^
than one occasion her insistence bii
honest, conservative methods pre
vented serious disaster.
Once when she had $1,600,000 on
deposits in one of Collis P. Hunt
ington's banks, she became con
vinced that he was using the bank's
money in some investments that
she regarded as ticklish. She pro
tested to Mr. Huntington in vain.
Then she went to the cashier of the
bank and demanded every cent she
had on deposit right away?and not
in checks, but In cash.
The news of Mrs. Green's ?with
drawal from the Huntington bu.uk
started the rumor that it was go
ing to smash. As a matter of
fact, it did have a narrow escape.
After that Mr. Huntington and
others like him were more ready
to heed Mrs. Green's advice, and
they found it of the soundest.
Hetty Green lfad such a quiet,
unostentatious way of accomplish
ing her financial coups that she
won the name of the "gum-shoe
financier." She delighted in throw
ing a veil of secrecy around every
thing she did, both in business and'
private life. This applied particu
larly to her charities.
If there was anything she de
spised more than lawyers it was
the wealthy man or woman who
gave not for the mere joy of doing
good, but for the sake of the pub
licity they would get. Consequent
ly she got the reputation of being
close-tisted and uncharitable, when
as a matter of fact she gave away
during her lifetime many millions
of dollars.
i iik v,ounress Ueary was Mrs.
Green's close friend, and througn her she made many liberal bene
factions of which the world never Tieard.
From the start of her business career Hetty Green showed an
almost supernatural ability to keep track of the personal affairs of
those who owed her money. Many a struggling householder or busi
ness man whose mortgage she held will testify that when he was hard
pressed to raise the interest Mrs. Green granted hiui a liberal ex
tension of time or lowered the rate of payment. But this was never
done except in the case of men who could convince her of their hon
esty and willingness to work hard. She had no patience with the mail
who lived beyond his means or the one who was always hunting for
"easy money."
In the same way she kept close watch of the personal affairs of
the hundreds of tenants of the buildings whe owned. When ill health
overtook 1 hem and they wero having difficulty in raising the money
for their rent aud other expenses they would often be pleasantly sur
prised to llnd pushed under their door some morning a receipted bill
for ttye month's rent, or, perhaps, a good-sized check. All these littlo
acts of charity were done, as Mrs. Green herself expressed it, "with
out any fuss or feathers. The recipients often never mot face to face
the grlin-visaged nut kind-hearted old woman to whom they owed tb?ir
financial salvation.
The economies which Hetty Green practised in her daily life were
as badly misunderstood by the public as her charities. She scrimped
nnd saved not for the mere joy of piling up more millions, but because
she. tlrmly believed that by so doing she way setting the world a good
example.
Much of tho "wrong impression which Hetty Green gave to the
world was due to the unshakable strength of her convictions. Once
her keen analytical mind had formed an opinion on any subject nothing
on earth could turn her from It. It was her firm conviction that the
Government was making grent wealth pay more than its just share
of tho State's expenses that caused her to be denounced as an unpa
triotic and unscrupulous tax dodger.
"The Bible," said Mrs. Green, a few years before her death, "has
been my guide all my life. I lived by it. and tried to square my lifo
by the Golden Rule. I dealt squarely and honestly by everybody.
Dorothy Dix, the well-known newspaper writer, who knew Mrs.
Green well, was one of iho many who believed that when she spoke
those words s-he told the truth.
"Hetty Green," says Dorothy Dix. "was a woman who often gave
herself instead of giving money, whose stinginess was an eccentricity,
a woman who never gave a beggar a penny, but who during a panic
built long rows' of houses to give men work. She was a woman of
such indomitable strength of mind and body that it sbemed Impossible
that she could die, yet now she has gone where the richest are. tho
poorest. And from my intimate knowledge of her I know she deserves
to fare well on that far journey."