HEIR TO TWENTY MILLIONS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 973, 30 March 1911, Page 4

HEIR TO TWENTY MILLIONS.

Mrs Hetty Green, popularly known as "the richest woman in the world,” who for fifty years has been a great financial power in America, has formally abdicated her control over some £20,000,000 in favour of her son, Colonel H. R. Green, a jovial, keen-witted bachelor of forty-two. It is seventeen years since Mrs Hetty Green banished her only son to Texas, fearing that if she kept him at New York he would become an idler and learn to squander the millions she fostered so carefully. The story of his experiences was narrated by Colonel Green, beginning from the day when he left the modest £4 a week Hoboken flat occupied by his wealthy mother. "It seemed hard at the time,” he said, "for I wished to go to Paris. But I soon learned how wise mother was. I took charge in Texas of a foreclosing £150,000 mortgage against a wretched stretch of railway. That was my only stake. What have I got to show for it after seventeen years ? Why, properties worth more than £1, 00d, 000, and employing 2500 people. I have also the good will of a thousand with whom I have done business. "Once in reorganising my railway properly I telegraphed to my mother for advice regarding eight new locomotives. ‘You are on the ground,’ was the sole answer she vouchsafed to me. I told her later that when I wired for advice I wanted it. Tf I were dead, whom would you ask advice of ?’ she retorted. Since then I have done my own thinking and relied on myself.” Colonel Green, who stands 6ft in his stockings and weighs 3oolbs, states that he is about to , organise his own bank and trust company in New York for the administration of his mother’s vast properties.