In the first half of the 20th century, it could become the richest woman of all time and earned an unrivaled authority in the field of speculation.
Henrietta Green.This name has become a household name in America.Here are just symbolize it was not fabulous luxury, a nice cash crunch and dazzling splendor of the appearance of the businessman on Wall Street, and artificial poverty, disgustingly dirty life and the hypocrisy of the old marketplace traders.In his greed and self-interest, it surpassed all that has ever existed on earth hoarders together.
Greed, as we know, can be perceived in different ways.For example, the manifestations of parsimony Ford (Ford often used instead detached from his coat buttons, which always seemed to him excessive luxury, ordinary washers) and Rockefeller (he never subscribed to newspapers, preferring to read yesterday's editions that seem to be so casually quizzed at theirfriends) called his contemporaries only smile and slight surprise.Greed as Green could not cause the people who knew her no feeling other than disgust.Disgust and hatred."Old witch", "mad rat", "greedy beggar," "bottomless pit" - this is an incomplete list of derogatory epithets "loving" Henrietta Green baptized her colleagues and loved ones.
childhood, adolescence, adolescence.
And that, and another, and the third was with Hetty dull and joyless.If any novelist started writing a book about childhood dreams, thoughtful quest, the first passionate love, travel, and lie in wait at every step of the dangers that Henrietta would be the last, whose image he agreed to take as a prototype of the protagonist.Unlike other children were striking.Young Henrietta was a complete contrast to the normal child her age.Sullen, wary, silent and surly girl frightened her grim not only the neighborhood children, but also their parents.Children's games and amusements are not fascinated Hattie.Instead, she loved to wander alone in the surrounding area and do nothing.From the side it was possible to think that she kept waiting for something, especially as it was so.
was born Henrietta Holland, nee Robinson November 21, 1835 (according to some biographers, in November 1934) in the city of New Bedford (New Bedford).Here in Massachusetts port on the northeast coast of America's future millionaire spent the best and well-fed during its long half-starved life.Her father was a prosperous shipowner and contained several large whaling industry in different parts of the city.Her mother Abie Holland came from a noble and wealthy family of the Old World.Her paternal grandfather was a fugitive convict, sentenced to death by hanging and fled to America with empty pockets and full of hope for a speedy enrichment eyes.Here she received a secondary education.For more obstinate nature perky girl was not enough.Neither Boston nor the Harvard College, which sought to attach their children all the money bags of America Henrietta not long delayed.Constant scandals, fights and poor progress in studies, most likely, were not quite at hand authority such prestigious educational institutions, so restless girl students successfully cost of accounting year course in one of the provincial schools of Rhode Island.Returning home, she plunged into the everyday routine of the port city.
To honor Greene will be said that the vast majority of the qualities that she had in middle age, brought it on their own, without anyone else care.From his father inherited it moved only muzhikovatoe physique, tremendous physical strength and the habit of swearing at every step.More early Henrietta showed extraordinary abilities for the oral account and mathematical calculations.Already in its 10 years, while other children played with dolls and toy models designed sailboats capable girl walked arm in arm with her father's accounting magazine and knew that two plus two equals three.The unit she, like the habit keepers, always cheated in natural decline.Taking a walk with his father and his brothers in the home port and multiple docks, Henriette was involved in the shipment, and in weighing and selling, and even beatings delinquent sailors.My father could not get enough on sensible daughter.A daughter and hated his father and his brothers, and the whole city smelled of fish and salt.Around this time, it is calculated that even if the kill in the Atlantic Ocean all the whales, then this will not be enough to secure a decent and comfortable life without any regard to map wind rose and fickle weather.Smart Henrietta drew metropolis, and there she saw my future.
Henrietta business.
financial world American Green resigned immediately.It is not that it pursued a series of major trouble, but the stars in the sky woman is clearly not enough, and the bat and did not seek.Methodically and not particularly annoyed about the rapid progress of young businessmen - upstarts, it does its job: selling caught fish, to build a shipyard and equip all new whaling expedition.Watchful waiting was for her could not be more appropriate.Personal money the woman was not (all earned together with his father evolved to his personal bank account), and even if they have it and were like something that prevailed in the family Robinson, would not allow her to turn to his own business.Years passed.Henrietta was waiting.Upstarts such as Rockefeller rich in our eyes.Henrietta was waiting.Rosli production, markets, banks and foreign capital, were written and introduced promising new financial schemes, swept across America and waning dollar fever.Henrietta was waiting.
And then, finally, the time has come so coveted.In 1864, her father died.Before it opens up new horizons, beckoning to her super-profits and government.But first I needed to settle some business on small home in New Bedford.In his will, drawn up by the head of the family, all the money in the amount of 7 million dollars with little passed to Henrietta, and the whaling business was transferred at the mercy of the management of the brothers of the deceased.The brothers have expressed confusion over the terms of the will and questioned its validity.The fact is that in zavedёnnym Robinson family tradition and business, and revenues from it were in charge of the whole family (noble Quaker community) and, in accordance with community rules, forbidden to bequeath his property to any a particular person.
Then Henrietta made clear his family that set up very seriously, saying that personally kill and feed sharks anyone who gets in her way to the parents' money.His strong words she decided to back up the case and burned down one of the family of docks, where there were three large fishing boats and a couple dozen rowing boats.Such an act Henrietta shocked even those closest to her-minded people.Nevertheless, the point in relations with the newly formed relatives millionaire has put itself.Two years after the death of Edward, she died and her favorite Aunt Sylvia Holland, has divided his fortune equally between the members of a large family.What makes Henrietta?It makes a copy of a will, according to which the money aunt to get her one, and bring him to court.Such blatant dishonesty was not expecting anyone.Naturally, the court found the will is a fake, but the deed was done - with annoying relatives was done, and his father's money was in her room.
Then there were the Wall Street stock exchange, securities, calculations, predictions, bets, fights with investors and their attorneys, losses, gains and reputation of a mentally unbalanced person.Paradise and the natural habitat for the likes of Henrietta Green.
Henrietta inside and out.
If you compare and merge the memoirs of contemporaries, the millionaire looks can only be compared with the image of Baba Yaga, often played well in the film Georgy Millyar Soviet kinoskazochnika Alexander Rowe.Long nose, bulging black eyes darting, trembling chin jutting forward and hunched figure in a gray dirty clothes can really bring terror to anyone.And if everything else is added More and rough shell-like voice, great hands and tenacious habit of constantly expressed multistory abusive folds, the color of the advanced exchange traders will appear in all its ugly glory.
textbook example of a scam in places catering throwing in meals and snack nuts and bolts in the face of Lady Green gained the most, that neither is a dignified expression."Mistress of the stock exchanges", apparently, seemed very unprofitable undertaking throw bolts and screws, so she preferred to throw in soups and beverages ordinary stones, which collected all the New York roads and construction sites.Business partner Green on behalf of the named Adam Sylvester recalled once that big bag, which she wore with them at all times, in case of an unexpected meal at any restaurant was full of boulders and earth.
usual daily ration of 300 grams of millionaire porridge with salt and 50 grams of black bread.Because she preferred to soft drinks water from the tap, and of the desserts - a piece of refined sugar.However, sugar, as well as oil, happened at the Green rarely - mostly on the occasion of the reception of guests, or on major holidays.Incidentally, such a diet has been extended to the whole family as a whole.Henrietta never indulged gastronomic himself or his children.
Even minor nephews business woman got one of the hospitality "generous" aunt.In 1875, Green's cousin Lisa Bernstein brought the summer to Henrietta their children - a ten-year and eight-year-girl Betty boy Joshua and tearfully asked that look after them while she and her husband will travel around Europe.Henrietta with her characteristic pragmatism responded to the request of his beloved cousin and took the children under their care.When two months later, having settled the case in Europe, Lisa and her husband returned to America, she found his once healthy children in a very poor condition.They did not speak, barely standing on his feet and then fell into the hungry fainting.It turned out that his aunt not only cut back on their daily intake of food to the bare minimum, but also arranged for them to work in the laundry room, where the children are very successful parents for the first and probably the last time felt by all the charm of a fourteen working days.It is understood that after the incident of any kinship with Green could not be considered.
Who is to blame?
man - a social creature, and therefore the roots of all evil to be found in the environment.According to most researchers biographies Green, the primary cause of her greed was the Quaker education received in childhood from the church and parents, especially the mother.Witnesses wrong, Sacred Truth "religious community friends" became for Henrietta guide to life.Quakerism, as a kind of ascetic Protestantism along with Calvinism, Pietism and Methodism preached physical and mental labor, non-luxury, modest lifestyle, receiving meager food, non-alcoholic and caring about your neighbor.At the heart of the Quaker doctrine is a system of questions the answers to which, a person close to the ideal.Here are some of them:
- Work hard if you are to eliminate social injustice, whether you are striving to ensure a normal life for all people in need and a fair distribution of the world's resources?
- Earn enough for you to later be able to help all those in need?
- Save you on their food and clothing, so that the economy could be an additional source of your income?
- Are you sure that you earn today can recoup the cost of food for you and a hundred more like you?
- Work hard you so that hard work, diligence and endurance to become the best reward you for your strength and fatigue?
- Do you suffer as the poor suffer the most in this world?
In fact, this ethics and serve as a powerful impetus for the development of advanced capitalist relations in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming a suitable ideological support of bourgeois society.This ethic and formed a Henrietta Green, turning her into a monster.It's safe to say that Green would be a prominent Quaker and was able to devote themselves to serving the interests of those in need around the world, if not for one thing.And it was to his father BUT capitals.Without them, Greene to the end of his days would have worked in some orphanage or a hospital escort, but they were, and, therefore, was an opportunity to make the mandate of their spiritual teachers - "feed all the hungry and clothe the naked of all."Who knows?
Maybe in the beginning of his moneymaking Greene guided by this motive.But alas, the good deeds the road to hell is paved with, and pure thoughts often have a tendency to rapid degradation and distortion to the lowest vices.He could have what some humane principles of female millionaire, who was fighting with the unemployed housewives in line for udeshevlёnnymi expired products?Do the universal happiness of a woman who even thought about your own little child: due to savings on candles, food and heating her son Ned to twenty years has become half-blind and painful disability.Unlikely.
Life.
In principle, it somehow Henrietta was not.Of course, there were the children, and her husband, and was somewhere far, far away in New Bedford numerous relatives and cousins, but they preferred not to know it.Neither the husband nor children nor relatives have not seen her in a loved one.Actually, the family Henrietta came into force ordinary necessities.Just at that time, in the second half of the 19th century, a single woman, without the protection of the official's wife, it was impossible to be no independent subject of economic relations, nor a full-fledged member of the civil society, even if such liberal, as the US.So, without hesitation, Henrietta found a more or less appropriate party - the rich, the weak-willed and let a man named Edward Green and quickly married him.More precisely, it has entered into a marriage.The fact that they have had children, explained the usual "future plans"."Children - a plan for the future," - she said, and in the press.
In general, a family idyll, however.Relations with kinsfolk went wrong Henrietta more since the carve-up of the inheritance of her father.In its goodwill it has achieved complete isolation from the outside world.Relatives cursed Henrietta.Children quietly hated, and my husband tried and did not catch the eye "better half."It seemed that the whole world remembers only the "old witch" and forgot all about a woman like Henrietta Green.
They will remember it much later, in 1916, when that is no longer the world will come and it is time to share their possessions, acquired and saved.Remembered it all - relatives, friends, namesakes, friends namesakes.When the notary opened testament to the crowded home late a few hundred "heirs" and their lawyers.However, in the will it means only one name - the name of the son of Henrietta Green Ned.All guessed more wealth greedy old woman.But how much exactly is stored on its bank accounts, no one had the slightest idea.And only when all the money from the accounts of the deceased were transferred to the account of her son, it was found that the amount of the inheritance was neither more nor less - 120 million dollars.
120 million was kept in the accounts of a woman who by and large in my entire life seen anything but stale bread, clothes from shops starёvschika, fresh oatmeal for breakfast, lunch and dinner and impassable poverty.Living worse than some members of the public floor, eating every day and forage donashivaya scant rags of the poor from the suburbs of New York City, the richest woman in the world and took the millionth part of his fortune.Instead, it used the "ungrateful" offspring.In 1951, all that did not have time to drink away and dissipate Ned, daughter Henrietta Sylvia gave to charity the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
