https://www.cityofsmoke.com New York in History and Anecdote Sat, 26 Dec 2015 02:30:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1638 https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1638#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2015 23:24:02 +0000 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=1638 At her death, the Witch of Wall Street was worth more than J. P. Morgan, and nearly all of it was in cash. Yet Hetty Green had worn the same dress for thirty years and lived in squalor. The Witch's son Ned was another matter, a six-foot, four-inch, 300-pound eccentric]]> https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1638/feed 1 https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1585 https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1585#respond Sat, 14 Feb 2015 03:43:33 +0000 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=1585 Some years ago, while researching William Cowper Brann, editor of The Iconoclast, a turn-of-the-century Waco, Texas monthly, I encountered the multi-talented New York–born George Graham Rice, one of America's most successful and unscrupulous promoter-swindlers. This resulted from a natural confusion: one of Rice's stock market tout sheets was also named The Iconoclast.]]> https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1585/feed 0 https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/868 Tue, 03 Feb 2015 21:40:33 +0000 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=868 Occasionally, we think about investments we  could have made that might have made us rich. Armed with clairvoyance, who would not have sunk the farm into Microsoft, back when Bill Gates was a nebbish? But we probably would have put our money into AT&T, U.S. Steel or Western]]> https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/638 Fri, 30 Jan 2015 03:50:23 +0000 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=638 Who's Who in the United States often rewards the casual reader because it reveals how its subjects view themselves. In the 1905 edition, the great J. Pierpoint Morgan modestly calls himself a banker and William Randolph Hearst a publisher. John W. Gates bluntly calls himself a capitalist. He lists no honorary doctorates, philanthropies, or hobbies. A reckless bravo who won and lost fortunes on the toss of a coin or the turn of a card, he had entered American folklore as "Bet-a-Million" Gates, who flinched at no stakes and feared no odds.]]>