THE ROMANCE OF MILLION-MAKING.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 219, 20 October 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ROMANCE OF MILLION-MAKING.

MILLIONAIRES IN PETTICOATS. (fey the Author of "Dramas of Royal Courts.") (From "News tf le World.")

If any man had doubted woman's capacity to amass great riches by the sheer cleverness and shrewdness of her brain, the career of Mrs. Hetty Green must surely have removed his scepticism, for Hetty, as she was familiarly known across the Atlantic, had proved for half-a-century of years that she knew the art of making millions —and keeping them (often a very different matter) —as well as any man who ever pded up a mountain of gold. It is true that money-making was in Hetty's blood, /or her father before her had fared so well that he was able to leave her a snug fortune, variously estimated at from £500,000 to a round million. If ever a woman had excuse and temptation to take life easily and luxuriously it was Miss Hetty. But such a thought never entered her head. As a child her favourite study was financial news and stock reports, and, t is said, many of her father's most successful investments were made on ner advice. Thus when she came into he r fortune she looked on it only as the nucleus of many more millions which sTie herseir would make. For fifty years she led as strenuous a life as any man in Wall-street. She spent ten hours or more daily in her office, working much harder than any o£ her clerks, and she pitted her brains aaginst the Cleverest in New York. Generally she came out a winner. Witu a far-seeing discernment John Jaco;> Astor himself might have envied, she bought land in the direction in wlvch she knew New York must expand, and soTa it in later years at a fabulous profit; she lent "call money" when tin rates were highest, and made fortunes by mortgage bonds. " When I see n good thing going cheap because nobody wants it." she once said "I bnv n lot,

of it and tuck it away. Then, when tue time comes, they have to hunt me lip and pay uie a b'g price for my holdings." • By such methods, never spectacular or risky, her millions mounted up with clockwork regularity until, long beloro the end came, her fortune was estimated at £12,00(/.000. She was one of the half-dozen richest persons in tue world. But although during her later years her income was certainly not less than half a million a year, ths amazing woman was content to spend less than £2O a month on Jierself. She matta her home "in a modest six-room flat on the third floor of a n Hoboken (the Whitochapel of New YorkJ. Sho did her own .housework, sallied forth daily with a basket to do her shopping at the cheapest stores, and was never known to enter a cab. Of her home, on« of her poor neighbours contemptuously said, "Such furniture! you should see it! The whole lot isn't*worth fifty dollars. I wouktn t pay express charges on it! Thus for half-a-eentury Hetty led tiio. Spartan life, iinding all the pleasure sho sought in the multiplication '1 her money-bags. Then, when she had completed the "allotted span' of lite a few years ago, she determined at last to enjoy a little of gold. From the Hobokon slum she migrated to the laza Hotel, one of the most fashionable and expensive in New York, where she engaged a sumptuous su'te of rooms at £1()0 a monfTi. To celebrate the transTormation sue gave a rogal banquet to her frie-nds—the most splendid feast money could command, served on gold plates and accompanied by "seas of champagne." And. to crown her emancipation, she paid sixty guineas to a well-known beauty specialist to repair the ravages of time and restore something of her lost youth and looks.

Bui Mrs. Green ic only '»ne of inan> women across the Atlantic wlio haro proved that, even 111 man's peculiar field of gold-winning, they can rival and often eclipse iiim. The name of F.lla Hawles Header is little known in England, but it is almost a household word from Maine to California, and her story is more romantic than most fiction. Born in Alabama, "where tho coons come from,'' Mrs. Header begin her astonishing career at 'the age of twenty by addressing envelopes in a New York newspaper office for a dollar a day. Four yars laler she was head of a nourishing reporting agency, w tli sixty assistants working for her; and it ■was at th's time she had her first light with Hco cveh. when, in spite of bis .-treiMioiis opp'ivt- < n. she s 'cured the shorthand work of tho Police Commission.

From this stage li- r progress was m-'teoric- almost too swift and dazzling to follow. She launched into one finaii'ia! scheme .'.iter another, eaeli on

an as-ending scale of magnitude and daring, fighting sum.' of the cleverest finano'ers in the States and always emerging triumphantly. She beat the

redoubtable I'ierpont Morgan in organ ising a £2.000,000 railway; overcame all opposition and induced our House, of Lords to adopt the Sprague system on the Central London Tube; gained, against the opposition o[ powerful rivals, important railway concessions from the Sultan of Johore; successfully pitted herself against M all-street to control the copper interests of Peru; an 1 for two years fought Roosevelt for concessions in San Domingo, involving t!i; enormous sura of £20,000.000. WharMrs. Reader's wealth to-day is, wh > shall say? All we know is that it must run into many millions, all made by her own clever brains and indomitable will.

If you picture Mrs. Reader as a ha< Ifaced aggressive, masculine woman, as is per haps only natural, you are grievously wrong. This lis the picture drawn of the "ninth wonder of the world," as she has been dubbed by one of ho: friends. " Her face is soft and round: her blue eyes full of laughter. Her smile reveals a set of teeth that would be the abiding envy of a picture-post-card beauty. When she enters a room one might well imagine that she was :i quiet, charming and vrey pretty French mamma, who has just left -i plentifully supplied nursery. Indeed, the only things that suggest anything extraordinary in her are her broad white, high forehead, eloquent of brain power, and a pair of eyes of remarkable brilliancy and intelligence, which seem to read a man or grasp a subject in a flash."

In the lulls of her fight for dominion and millions, Mrs. Reader's thughts are all of her hsuband, with whom she made a highly romantic marriage not many years ago, and of her home "Sometimes," she says, "I get weary

of it all, and then I go and make otic my -week's washing, just to get a little home atmosphere." That even the American woman of fashion can compete successfully wrth man in money-making is proved by tlic remarkable career of Mrs. Hermann (h irichs, a itader of New YorU society. Tho daughter of the late Senator I'air, one of the famous "Bonanza Kings," Mrs. Oelrichs inherited a substantial fortune, on which she might have speit her life in almost regal luxury. But m dele nee and ease are ny no means to 1 er taste, and about a dozen years aga she decided to fill some of ncr time by the management of her <«n affairs —a a employment- wli'ch she found so ploasr.nt and successful that she v.a> encouraged to higher business flights. She went to New Yoi'K with the doLberato intention of matching --*er brains aaginst the cleverest men in th j city, and, while still finding timo to play the Society lady and eclipse all rivals ill the brilliance and originality of her entertainments, suceeded so we ! 111 her speculations that, at the end t:' tow yours, she li'-id added £4,000,000 to ler already colossal pile of gold. " 1 think far less of the four millions," she i said to have remarked to a friend, ''than of the fact that 1 have proved that, a.s a maker of money, a woman, even of the butterfly species like myself, can be just as good as a man. And it is by 110 means only in the f'eld of finance and speculation that voman has proved a formidable rival to nan. One of the wealthiest cattle-own-ers in the world is Mrs. tfichard King, v'hose ranch, the "Santa Gertrude, covers 2,1101) square miles —an area nearly n'ne times tliat ot the Countv of Middlesex. In the centre of this vast estate stands Mrs. King's house, dominating the country like a huge baronial castle, and separated from the nearest boundary gate oy a drive ol 13 miles. Far away to tlic south the estate is liounded by -10 miles of coastline and inland it. is girdled bv 300 miles of barbed wire. Mrs. King counts her c;,ttle to 200,000, .while her flocks ot sheep are literally countless. She employs a small army of many hundreds ot cow-boys, and p.iys £2O,(XX) yearly wages alone. And the whole of tins gigantic enterprise is the fruit of her own energy and business acumen. Mrs. King, however, has a formidable rival in anothei woman riineh-owit-cr, Mrs. Xat Collins, whose life storv is full of romance. " H hen quite •>. vrting girl, ' she s.iys, " I was kidnapped by a band ol roving Indians r.nd carried off to their ma. : n camp, v here 1 was compeTied to witness tji>> tin t tiro of prisoners almost daily, o:tc.» being forced to look on while a -Ai-t-ail prisonvr was burnt at the stake. With oilier prisoners I was compelled to run ihe gaunt let* 'ind t>> this dav 1 bear th" seat' of a wound inflicted liy a tomahawk : n the hand of a bloodthirsty Indian." After her refca-e she spoilt a few years as cook on a f;oight-t>- un rt. between Dieneor and the .Mi-'-souri River, "hardly a day pass'ng,"

slij tells us, "without an Indian fight, lor the savages were constantly swooping down upon the trains, killing th» freighters or driving away the stock." 111 later years Mrs. Collins acted as \c-011t to an expedition of gold-seeker., travelling to Montana through some o! lire wildest districts 111 America, enc!i day bringing some fresh peril and • scape from death. From her first modest beginning as a >; : ncher, Mrs. Coigns' venture proved successful beyond her highest hopes. To-day her cattle are so numerous that, as sha herself says, "they are far too many to coynt. Dozens of times in a year I send trainloads of them —thirfy-four cars to cacti train—to Chicago, accompanying theru myself." Not content with her ranching industry, "Rio Cattle Queen of Montana," as Mrs. Collins has been dubbed, has made such a large fortune by speculation iin copper mines and land that she is reputed to be worth "at least 10.000,000 dollars," every dollar of her own making. Probably no woman in the world has amassed riches under more romantic circumstances than Mrs. Anne Kline Rikert, who, somo thirty years ago, was left an almost penniless widow with a young daughter to support, and, as she says, " With absolutely no business capacity at all." But Mrs. Rikert had ! stout heart, and how well it served her, her story will show. "I preferred 111 outdoor life to any other," she tells tjs. "and being in California mining w«a "ho only thing I could see to turn to. went to San Bernardino, purchased r. team an doutfit for a hundred dollars—all I had in the woWd —and set out with my little girl into the Mo jam desert, to the neighbourhood of the Silver King Min#i to seek my fortune. Su months later I had 40,000 dollars in the bank and owned several valuable mines."

But beforo Fortune deigned to smnu on the large-hearted widow, she had many black, heart-breaking weeks to live through. Night alter night, she says, after her child went to sleep, she cried until her pillow was so wet that she had to turn it over, and then sh?> cried until the other side was wet, and she had to put a towel over it. For four months she wandered daily with her daughter in the neighbourhood of tho Silver King Aline, vainly searching lor indications of silver—an object of r.ity or ridicule to the miners she met :n her wandering, for they know, or fancied they knew, that her quest was hopeless.

Then, .vhen despair was brooding c'arkly over her soul, luck came to her. "One day at sunset," (it is better t.) tell the story in her own words) ''as I was about to start back to our tent, my heart almost break ng, -1 heard my little daughter screaming, 'Ma-nrna 1' 'Mammal' I went to her and she called out, I have found some rock "xaetly like Mr. Pearson ..ad at San Bernardino.' Mr. Pearson was a man who had come up from Mexico and had -hown me specimens of silver ore. Sure enough she was right. I kno-koi nT some (Toppings and took aboue ' wn:tu Hve pounds back to my tent. When l reached it I found some men who had stopped on their way from San Bernardino to the mines, and I showed them toll rock. They exclaimed, 'You need not look any further; that rock will go from 4,000 to it.ooo dollars to the ton.' They were rght; it did, and even as high as 9,000 dollars (£1,800) to the ton. Every day I went over and got ir much of the ore as I could, and when 1 had the pillow-cases filled I had them taken to Oro Grande to be smelted. This is how I began 10 -work my first mine."

Mrs. R.ikert's days of poverty ant anxiety were ended, and from that time fortune smiled consistently on all lie;efforts. She discovered one rich mine after another —the Calico M ne in San Bernardino County, the Pino Blanco, the Oro Madre, the other gold properties in tli.e Tuoomme County and within a few years from the day when she plunged into the Mojam desert on tvliat seemed a hopeless search, she Had •i yearly income running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But such stories are almost commonplace across the Atlantic, ho.lever rare, even impossible, they may be to ih. Among many such we ro. all that of Miss Clara Adow. who went to Montana to do clerk's work, with less than £1(50 to i all her own. By shrewd and successful dealings in land she was able to raise £II,OOO. with which she purchased the abandoned •"Spotted Horse Mine," whcli yielded IOO.OfIO dollars v.orth of go d within the first \ear of working, the early trail- of tlie mllliens which were to 10110-.v l'-oin that, and other equally lucky v,ii-ures. And, again, those stories of Mi-s Hilton and Mrs. S,v-' khoiiiKV, who from poverty blossomed into millionaires as the rcsiiit, of dis. ovenng valua we mines in Ar - zona and Cat fornia. But for every woman who has made e niiilion by her cleverness and industry the'e are probably ;i doxen who have nherited millions, and not n lew of them tike very high r-tik indeed m the world's p!sit<>.-racy. Mrs. Creel is not only the ri< hu>t woman in the di,>lomatie world. hut also one of th" wealthiest on earth, with an income esiiinated at £1 .DOO.IHIO a year, and yet with simple tastes she could gratfy on an annual £o"0. "They s\v I am very rich." slip nnee remarked. "I have 2S'i (l!H) n res of very good land; I have 'attle —(IHO,OOO very good ones; 1 have nines from which many millions at

precious metal have been taken; and yet 1 have hut little use for all this wealth. My tastes are so simple that seldom spend moiv than £3 on a dress, or thirty shillings on a hat, and all my other tastes are on an equally modest scale. I know that some women spend £o,ooo to £ 10,000 a year on dress, but a woman who says that such an expenditure is necessary in order to enable her to move in Society talks sheer nonsense Why, when my lather had 400.000 cattle on the plains of Chihuahua, 1 did not have five shillings a week spendingmonoy. I bought my owiT gowns—cotton ones—and danced in them, too!" But even Mrs. Creel's fortune, colossal as it is, is quite thrown into the shade by that of Senora Cousno, Chilian lady, who is said to be worth £40,000,000, aud thus can claim to be, with one exception—thai of Mr. J. D. Rockefeller—the richest person in the world. From only one of her storehouses of wealth she supplies threefourths of Europe witn copper from nor imense mines in Peru and Chile. She owns mines, and potteries which supply all South America with earthenware; coal mines of enormous value, vineyards, fleets of ships and hundreds of square miles ol rich farmland. She lives like a princess in one or other < ■ her three palaces, equipped with the costliest treasures of art and furniture brought from all parts <Jf the world. "Slw thinks nothing." we are told, "of giving away a million dollars to anyone she may fancy, and she entertains on a scale which few sovereigns of Europe could rival. When the American fleet was at Valpariso some years ajo she invited Admiral Upshur and his officers to visit her. She sent a specsr' train for them, spent £IO,OOO on lav,»h hospitality, and placed the whole city of Santiago at their disposal, entirely fir.3 of cost, during their stay. Mrs. Russell Sage, who, sixty years and more ago began her wedded life in a tiny frame-house on the precario is equivalent of thirty shillings a week, linds herself >:n her old age and widowhood burdened with a fortune of £l< ,00(3,000. the life accumulations her late husband, the famous Wall Street "wizard," which she is doing her best to distribute in charitable channels. "But oh! the burden of it,'' shn pathetically exclaimed not long ago, " I am much too old a woman to have such a heavy responsibility. AH 1 want is peace and rest, and I would gladly exchange all m.v millions for a year i f niy early wedded life, when I often didn't knew where the next day's moais were to come from.''

Mrs. Weightman Walker's pile of gold is little smaller than that of Mrs. >Sage, for. on the death of her fatner, tho rich Philadelphia ; ma]Uufac>turin<j: chemist, known to fame as tho "Qumino King," she inherited the gigantic fortune of £12,000,000. After her father's death Mrs. Walker showed splendid qualities as a business woman Every morning, it is said, she was at her desk in the office, working as industriously as if her livelihood depended on her zeal, controlling the gigantic business with the hand of a master, and the amalgamation of the firm vuh its chief competitors was entirely due to her initiative and diplomatic skill. Madamo Woleska, who is said to be the wealthiest of all the Tsar's subject ; with an estimated fortune exceeding £10,000,000', is a miniature queen, the owner of villages and towns, and herself conducts the afijiirs of her "kingdom" with a skill few men could rival. Nor must we forget afnong tbc.se women owners of millions Fran von Bohlen (Bertha Kt'upp), propreto - * with her sister of the town of Essen, with its scores of thousands of workers, and with possessions of her owa said to exceed £15,000,000. France ,too, boasts at least one lad? multi-millionaire in Princess Marie Bonaparte, who nherited the fabulous fortune ieft by her grandfather, 51. Blanc, the famous proprietor of the Casino at Monte Carlo. What her for tune amounts to who can say? Parisians shake their heads in eloquent des pair when they speak of its dimensions, But it is not possible witlwn the com pass of this article to do anything likejustice to the long list of lady owners of millions. T must suffice to mention Miss Anna Gould, daughter of that matj'cian of money-making. Jay Gould, and one of the most charitable women in the world, who is said to have give:* away many millions of dollars; .Mri Potter, wife of the Bishop of New Voir, who is such a generous dispenser of th' £4.000,000 she possesses in her owu right; the Marchioness of Graham, on'/ daughter of the late Duke of Ham:'lt or whose gigantic estates yield her an annual income of £114,000. and, among tho many millionaire brides, whoso wealth has enriched our own nobility, the Duchess of Roxburghe (nee Mav Goelet), who is credited with a fortune of £8,0f)0.000,or four b ; mes the dowet o r the Duchess of Marlborough.