Success is rooted in reciprocity. He who does not benefit the world
is headed for bankruptcy on the high-speed clutch.
_H. H. Rogers_
[Illustration: H. H. ROGERS]
One proof that H. H. Rogers was a personage and not a person lies in the
fact that he was seldom mentioned in moderate language. Lawson passed
him a few choice tributes; Ida Tarbell tarred him with her literary
stick; Upton Sinclair declared he was this and that; Professor Herren
averred that he bore no likeness whatever to Leo Tolstoy--and he might
also have added, neither did he resemble Francis of Assisi or Simeon
Stylites. Those who did not like him usually pictured him by recounting
what he was not. My endeavor in this sketch will be simply to tell what
he was.
Henry Huddleston Rogers was a very human individual. He was born in the
village of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in the year Eighteen Hundred Forty.
He died in New York City in Nineteen Hundred Nine, in his seventieth
year. He was the typical American, and his career was the ideal one to
which we are always pointing our growing youth. His fault, if fault it
may be, was that he succeeded too well. Success is a hard thing to
forgive. Personality repels as well as attracts.
The life of H. H. Rogers was the complete American romance. He lived the
part--and he looked it. He did not require a make-up. The sub-cortex
was not for him, and even the liars never dared to say he was a
hypocrite. H. H. Rogers had personality. Men turned to gaze at him on
the street; women glanced, and then hastily looked, unnecessarily hard,
the other way; children stared.
The man was tall, lithe, strong, graceful, commanding. His jaw was the
jaw of courage; his chin meant purpose; his nose symboled intellect,
poise and power; his brow spelled brain. He was a handsome man, and he
was not wholly unaware of the fact. In him was the pride of the North
American Indian, and a little of the reserve of the savage. His silence
was always eloquent, and in it was neither stupidity nor vacuity. With
friends he was witty, affable, generous, lovable. In business
negotiation he was rapid, direct, incisive; or smooth, plausible and
convincing--all depending upon the man with whom he was dealing. He
often did to others what they were trying to do to him, and he did it
first. He had the splendid ability to say "No" when he should, a thing
many good men can not do. At such times his mouth would shut like a
steel trap and his blue eyes would send the thermometer below zero. No
one could play horse with H. H. Rogers. He, himself, was always in the
saddle.
The power of the man was more manifest with men than with women, yet he
was always admired by women, but more on account of his austerity than
his effort to please. He was not given to flattery; yet he was quick to
commend. He had in him something of the dash that existed when
knighthood was in flower. To the great of the earth, H. H. Rogers never
bowed the knee. He never shunned an encounter, save with weakness, greed
and stupidity. He met every difficulty, every obstacle, unafraid and
unabashed. Even death to him was only a passing event--death for him had
no sting, nor the grave a victory. He prepared for his passing, looking
after every detail, as he had planned trips to Europe. Jauntily,
jokingly, bravely, tremendously busy, keenly alive to beauty and
friendship, deciding great issues offhand, facing friend or foe, the
moments of relaxation chinked in with religious emotion and a glowing
love for humanity--so he lived, and so he died.
An executive has been described as a man who decides quickly, and is
sometimes right. H. H. Rogers was the ideal executive. He did not decide
until the evidence was all in; he listened, weighed, sifted, sorted and
then decided. And when his decision was made the case was closed.
Big men, who are doing big things that have never been done before, act
on this basis, otherwise they would be ironed out to the average, and
their dreams would evaporate like the morning mist. The one thing about
the dreams of H. H. Rogers is that he made them come true.
* * * * *
"Give me neither poverty nor riches," said the philosopher. The parents
of H. H. Rogers were neither rich nor poor. They had enough, but there
was never a surfeit. They were of straight New England stock. Of his
four great-grandfathers, three fought in the Revolutionary War.
According to Thomas Carlyle, respectable people were those who kept a
gig. In some towns the credential is that the family shall employ a
"hired girl." In Fairhaven the condition was that you should have a
washerwoman one day in the week. The soapy wash-water was saved for
scrubbing purposes--this was in Massachusetts--and if the man of the
house occasionally smoked a pipe he was requested to blow the smoke on
the plants in the south windows, so as to kill the vermin. Nothing was
wasted.
The child born into such a family where industry and economy are prized,
unless he is a mental defective and a physical cripple, will be sure to
thrive.
The father had made one trip in a whaler. He was gone three years and
got a one-hundred-and-forty-seventh part of the catch. The oil market
was on a slump, and so the net result for the father of a
millionaire-to-be was ninety-five dollars and twenty cents. This happy
father was a grocer, and later a clerk to a broker in whale-oil. Pater
had the New England virtues to such a degree that they kept him poor. He
was cautious, plus.
To make, you have to spend; to grow a crop, you have to plant the seed.
Here's where you plunge--it is a gamble, a bet on the seed versus the
eternal cussedness of things. It's you against the chances of a crop. If
the drought comes, or the flood, or the chinch-bug, or the brown-tailed
moth, you may find yourself floundering in the mulligatawney.
Aside from that one cruise to the whaling-grounds, Rogers Pere played
the game of life near home and close to shore. The easy ways of the
villagers are shown by a story Mr. Rogers used to tell about a good
neighbor of his--a second mate on a whaler. The bark was weighing anchor
and about to sail. The worthy mate tarried at a barroom over in New
Bedford. "Ain't you going home to kiss your wife good-by?" some one
asked. And the answer was: "What's the use? I'm only going to be gone
two years."
Half of Fairhaven was made up of fishermen, and the rest were widows and
the usual village contingent. The widows were the washerwomen.
Those who had the price hired a washerwoman one day in the week. This
was not so much because the mother herself could not do the work, as it
was to give work to the needy and prove the Jeffersonian idea of
equality. The wash-lady was always seated with the family at table, and
besides her wage was presented with a pie, a pumpkin, or some outgrown
garment. Thus were the Christian virtues liberated.
Where the gray mare is the better horse, her mate always lets up a bit
on his whiffletree and she draws most of the load. It was so here. The
mother planned for the household. She was the economist, bursar and
disburser. She was a member of the Congregational Church, with a liberal
bias, which believed in "endless consequences," but not in "endless
punishment." Later the family evolved into Unitarians by the easy
process of natural selection. The father said grace, and the mother led
in family prayers. She had ideas of her own and expressed them.
The family took the Boston "Weekly Congregationalist" and the Bedford
"Weekly Standard." In the household there was a bookcase of nearly a
hundred volumes. It was the most complete library in town, with the
exception of that of the minister.
The house where H. H. Rogers was born still stands. Its frame was made
in Sixteen Hundred Ninety--mortised, tenoned and pinned. In the garret
the rafters show the loving marks of the broadax--to swing which musical
instrument with grace and effectiveness is now a lost art.
How short is the life of man! Here a babe was born, who lived his
infancy, youth, manhood; who achieved as one in a million; who died: yet
the house of his birth--old at the time--still stubbornly stands as if
to make mock of our ambitions. A hundred years ago Fairhaven had a dozen
men or more who, with an auger, an adz, a broadax and a drawshave,
could build a boat or a house warranted to outlast the owner.
I had tea in this house where H. H. Rogers was born and where his
boyhood days were spent. I fetched an armful of wood for the housewife,
and would have brought a bucket of water for her from the pump, only the
pump is now out of commission, having been replaced by the newfangled
waterworks presented to the town by a Standard Oil magnate. Here Henry
Rogers brought chips in a wheelbarrow from the shipyard on baking-days;
here he hoed the garden and helped his mother fasten up the flaming,
flaring hollyhocks against the house with strips of old sailcloth and
tacks.
There were errands to look after, and usually a pig, and sometimes two,
that accumulated adipose on purslane and lamb's-quarters, with surplus
clams for dessert, also quahaugs to preserve the poetic unities. Then
there came a time when the family kept a cow, which was pastured on the
common, the herd being looked after by a man who had fought valiantly in
the War of Eighteen Hundred Twelve, and who used to tell the boys about
it, fighting the battles over with crutch and cane.
In the Winter the ice sometimes froze solid clean across Buzzards Bay.
The active and hustling boys had skates made by the village blacksmith.
Henry Rogers had two pair, and used to loan one pair out for two cents
an hour. Boys who had no skates and could not beg or borrow and who had
but one cent could sometimes get one skate for a while and thus glide
gracefully on one foot. There was good fishing through the ice, only it
was awful cold work and not much pay, for fish could hardly be given
away. In the Summer there were clams to dig, blueberries to gather, and
pond-lilies had a value--I guess so! Then in the early Spring folks
raked up their yards and made bonfires of the Winter's debris. Henry
Rogers did these odd jobs, and religiously took his money home to his
mother, who placed it in the upper right-hand corner of a bureau drawer.
The village school was kept by an Irishman who had attended Harvard. He
believed in the classics and the efficacy of the ferrule, and doted on
Latin, which he also used as a punishment. Henry Rogers was alive and
alert and was diplomatic enough to manage the Milesian pedagogue without
his ever knowing it. The lessons were easy to him--he absorbed in the
mass. Besides that, his mother helped nights by the light of a whale-oil
lamp, for her boy was going to grow up to be a schoolteacher--or
possibly a minister, who knows!
Out in Illinois, when the wanderlust used to catch the evolving youth,
who was neither a boy nor a man, he ran away and went Out West. In New
England the same lad would have shipped before the mast, and let his
parents guess where he was--their due punishment for lack of
appreciation.
To grow up on the coast and hear the tales of the seafaring men who have
gone down to the sea in ships, is to catch it sooner or later. At
fifteen Henry Rogers caught it, and was duly recorded to go on a whaler.
Luckily his mother got word of it, and canceled the deal. About then,
good fortune arrived in the form of Opportunity. The young man who
peddled the New Bedford "Standard" wanted to dispose of his route.
Henry bought the route and advised with his mother afterward, only to
find that she had sent the seller to him. Honors were even. His business
was to deliver the papers with precision. Later he took on the Boston
papers, also. This is what gave rise to the story that Henry Rogers was
a newsboy.
He was a newsboy, but he was a newsboy extraordinary. He took orders for
advertisements for the "Standard," and was also the Fairhaven
correspondent, supplying the news as to who was visiting whom; giving
names of good citizens who were shingling their chicken-houses, and
mentioning those enjoying poor health. Whether the news did anybody any
good or not matters little--the boy was learning to write. In
after-years he used to refer to this period of his life as his
"newspaper career." Superstitious persons have been agitated about that
word "Standard," and how it should have ominously come into the life of
H. H. Rogers at this early time.
When the railroad came in, Henry got a job as assistant baggageman. The
conductorship was in sight--twenty years away, but promised positively
by a kind relative--when something else appeared on the horizon, and a
good job was exchanged for a better one.
An enterprising Boston man had established a chain of grocery-stores
along the coast, and was monopolizing the business or bidding fair to do
so. By buying for many stores, he could buy cheaper than any other one
man could. But the main point of the plan was the idea of going to the
home, taking the order and delivering the goods. Before that, if you
wanted things you went to the store, selected them and carried them
home. To have asked the storekeeper to deliver the goods to your house
would have given that gentleman heart-failure. He did mighty well to
carry in stock the things that people needed. But here was a
revolutionary method--a new deal. Henry Rogers' father said it was
initiative gone mad, and would last only a few weeks. Henry Rogers'
mother said otherwise, and Henry agreed with her. He had clerked in his
father's grocery, and so knew something of the business. Moreover, he
knew the people--he knew every family in Fairhaven by name, and almost
every one for six miles around as well.
He started in at three dollars a week, taking orders and driving the
delivery-wagon. In six months his pay was five dollars a week and a
commission. In a year he was making twenty dollars a week. He was only
eighteen--slim, tall, bronzed and strong. He could carry a hundred
pounds on his shoulder. The people along the route liked him: he was
cheerful and accommodating.
Not only did he deliver the things, but he put them away in cellar,
barn, closet, garret or cupboard. He did not only what he was paid to
do, but more. He anticipated Ali Baba, who said, "Folks who never do any
more than they get paid for, never get paid for anything more than they
do." It was the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, and Henry Rogers was
making money. He owned his route, and the manager of the stores was
talking about making him assistant superintendent. Had he stuck to his
job he might have become a partner in the great firm of Cobb, Bates and
Yerxa, and put Bates to the bad. It would have then been Cobb, Rogers
and Yerxa--and later, H. H. Rogers, Dealer in Staple and Fancy
Groceries. But something happened about this time that shook New Bedford
to its center, and gave Fairhaven a thrill.
Whale-oil was whale-oil then, and whale-oil and New Bedford were
synonymous. Now, a man out in Pennsylvania had bored down into the
ground and struck a reservoir. A sort of spouting sperm-whale! But with
this important difference: whales spout sea-water, while this gusher
spouted whale-oil, or something just as good.
* * * * *
The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine is an unforgetable date--a date
that ushers in the Great American Renaissance, in which we now live.
Three very important events occurred that year. One was the hanging of
Old John Brown, who was fifty-nine years old, and thus not so very old.
This event made a tremendous stir in Fairhaven, just as it did
everywhere, especially in rural districts. The second great event that
happened in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine was the publication of a book by
a man born in Eighteen Hundred Nine, the same year that Lincoln was
born. The man's name was Charles Darwin, and his book was "The Origin of
Species." His volume was to do for the theological world what John
Brown's raid did for American politics. The third great event that
occurred in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine was when a man by the name of
Edwin L. Drake, Colonel by grace, bored a well and struck "rock-oil" at
Titusville, Pennsylvania.
At that time "rock-oil" or "coal-oil" was no new thing. It had been
found floating on the water of streams in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio
and Pennsylvania.
There were rumors that some one in digging for salt had tapped a
reservoir of oil that actually flowed a stream. There were oil-springs
around Titusville and along Oil Creek. The oil ran down on the water and
was skimmed off by men in boats. Several men were making modest fortunes
by bottling the stuff and selling it as medicine. In England it was
sold as "American Natural Oil," and used for a liniment. The Indians had
used it, and the world has a way of looking to aborigines for medicine,
even if not for health. Spiritualistic mediums and doctors bank heavily
on Indians. This natural oil was known to be combustible. Out of doors
it helped the campfire. But if burned indoors it made a horrible smoke
and a smell to conjure with. Up to that time whale-oil mostly had been
used for illuminating and lubricating purposes. But whale-oil was
getting too high for plain people. It looked as if there were a "whale
trust." Some one sent a bottle of this "natural" oil down to Professor
Silliman of Yale to have it analyzed. Professor Silliman reported that
the oil had great possibilities if refined, both as a luminant and as a
lubricant.
To refine it, a good man who ran a whisky-still tried his plan of the
worm that never dies, with the oil. The vapor condensed and was caught
in the form of an oil that was nearly white. This oil burned with a
steady flame, if protected by a lamp-chimney.
Rock-oil in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight was worth twenty dollars a
barrel. Lumbermen out of a job turned skimmers, and often collected a
barrel a day, becoming as it were members of the cult known as the
Predatory Rich.
This is what tempted Colonel Drake to bore his well, and see if he might
possibly strike the vein that was making the skimmers turn octopi. It
took Drake nearly a year to drill his well. He met with various
obstacles and difficulties, but on August Twenty-second, Eighteen
Hundred Fifty-nine, that neck of the woods was electrified by the news
that Drake's Folly was gushing rock-oil.
Soon there were various men busily boring all round the neighborhood,
with the aid of spring-poles and other rude devices. Several struck it
rich, but many had their labor for their pains. One man was getting
sixty-five barrels a day and selling the oil for eighteen dollars a
barrel.
The trouble was to transport the oil. Barrels were selling for five
dollars each, and there were no tanks. This was a lumber country, with
no railroads within a hundred miles. One enterprising man went down to
Pittsburgh and bought a raft-load of barrels, which he towed up the
Allegheny River to the mouth of Oil Creek. Then for ten dollars a day he
hired farmers with teams to take the barrels to Titusville and fill them
and bring them back. The oil was floated down to Pittsburgh and sold at
a big profit. Stills were made to refine the oil, which was sold to the
consumer at seventy-five cents a gallon. The heavy refuse-oils were
thrown away.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty began the making of lamp-chimneys, a most
profitable industry. The chimneys sold for fifty cents each, and with
the aid of Sir Isaac Newton's invention did not long survive life's
rude vicissitudes.
Men were crowding into the oil country, lured by the tales of enormous
fortunes and rich finds. No one could say what you might discover by
digging down into the ground. One man claimed to have struck a vein of
oyster-soup. And anyway he sold oyster-soup over his counter at a dollar
a dish. Gas-gushers were lighted and burned without compunction as to
waste. Gamblers were working overtime.
The first railroad into the oil country came from Pittsburgh, and was
met with fight and defiance by the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Teamsters,
who saw their business fading away. The farmers, too, opposed the
railroad, as they figured that it meant an end to horse-flesh, except as
an edible. But the opposition wore itself out, and the railroads
replaced its ripped-up rails, and did business on its grass-grown right
of way and streaks of rust.
The second railroad came from Cleveland, which city was a natural
distributing-point to the vast consuming territory lying along the Great
Lakes.
John D. Rockefeller, a clerk in a Cleveland commission-house, became
interested in the oil business in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two. He was
then twenty-three years old, and had five hundred dollars in the bank
saved from his wages. He put this money into a refining-still at
Titusville, with several partners, all workingmen. John peddled the
product and became expert on "pure white" and "straw color." He also saw
that a part of the so-called refuse could be re-treated and made into a
product that was valuable for lubricating purposes.
Other men about the same time made a like discovery. It was soon found
that refined oil could not be shipped with profit; the barrels often had
to be left in the sunshine or exposed to the weather, and transportation
facilities were very uncertain. The still was then torn out and removed
to Cleveland.
The oil business was a most hazardous one. Crude oil had dropped from
twenty dollars a barrel to fifty cents a barrel. No one knew the value
of oil, for no one knew the extent of the supply. An empty barrel was
worth two dollars, and the crude oil to fill it could be bought for less
than half that.
* * * * *
At twenty-one, two voices were calling to Henry Rogers: love of country
and business ambition. The war was coming and New England patriotism
burned deep in the Rogers heart. But this young man knew that he had a
genius for trade. He was a salesman--that is to say, he was a diplomat
and an adept in the management of people. Where and how could he use his
talent best?
When Sumter was fired upon, it meant that no ship flying the Stars and
Stripes was safe. The grim aspect of war came home to New Bedford with a
reeling shock, when news arrived that a whaler, homeward bound, had been
captured, towed into Charleston Harbor, and the ship and cargo
confiscated. It was a blow of surprise to the captain and sailors on
this ship, too, for they had been out three years and knew nothing of
what was going on at home. Then certain Southern privateers got lists of
the New England whale-ships that were out, and lay in wait for them as
whalers lie in wait for the leviathan.
Prices of whale-oil soared like balloons. New England ships at home tied
up close or else were pressed into government service. The high price of
oil fanned the flame of speculation in Pennsylvania.
Henry H. Rogers was twenty-one. It was a pivotal point in his life. He
was in love with the daughter of the captain of a whaler. They were
neighbors and had been schoolmates together. Henry talked it over with
Abbie Gifford--it was war or the oil-fields of Pennsylvania! And love
had its way, just as it usually has. The ayes had it, and with nearly a
thousand dollars of hard-earned savings he went to the oil-fields. At
that time most of the crude oil was shipped to tidewater and there
refined. In the refining process, only twenty-five per cent of the
product was saved, seventy-five per cent being thrown away as worthless.
It struck young Rogers that the refining should be done at the wells,
and the freight on that seventy-five per cent saved. To that end he
entered into a partnership with Charles Ellis, and erected a refinery
between Titusville and Oil City.
Rogers learned by doing. He was a practical refiner, and soon became a
scientific one. The first year he and Ellis divided thirty thousand
dollars between them.
In the Fall of Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, when he went back to
Fairhaven to claim his bride, Rogers was regarded as a rich man. His
cruise to Pennsylvania had netted him as much as half a dozen whales.
The bride and groom returned at once to Pennsylvania and the simple
life. Henry and Abbie lived in a one-roomed shack on the banks of Oil
Creek. It was love in a cottage all right, with an absolute lack of
everything that is supposed to make up civilization. It wasn't exactly
hardship, for nothing is really hardship to lovers in their twenties but
separation. Still they thought, talked and dreamed of the bluefish, the
blueberries, the blue waters, and the sea-breezes of Fairhaven.
About this time, Charles Pratt of Brooklyn, a dealer and refiner of
oils, appeared upon the horizon. Pratt had bought whale-oil of Ellis in
Fairhaven. Pratt now contracted for the entire output of Rogers and
Ellis at a fixed price. All went well for a few months, when crude
suddenly took a skyward turn, owing to the manipulation of speculators.
Rogers and Ellis had no wells and were at the mercy of the wolves. They
struggled on, trying to live up to their contract with Pratt, but soon
their surplus was wiped out, and they found themselves in debt to Pratt
to the tune of several thousand dollars.
Rogers went on to New York and saw Pratt, personally assuming the
obligation of taking care of the deficit. Ellis disappeared in the mist.
The manly ways of Rogers so impressed Pratt that he decided he needed
just such a man in his business. A bargain was struck, and Rogers went
to work for Pratt. The first task of young Rogers was to go to
Pennsylvania and straighten out the affairs of the Pennsylvania Salt
Company, of which Pratt was chief owner. The work was so well done that
Pratt made Rogers foreman of his Brooklyn refinery.
It was twenty-five dollars a week, with a promise of a partnership if
sales ran over fifty thousand dollars a year.
How Henry Rogers moved steadily from foreman to manager, and then
superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery, is one of the
fairy-tales of America. Pratt finally gave Rogers an interest in the
business, and Rogers got along on his twenty-five dollars a week,
although the books showed he was making ten thousand dollars a year. He
worked like a pack-mule. His wife brought his meals to the "works," and
often he would sleep but three hours a night, as he could snatch the
time, rolled up in a blanket by the side of a still.
Then comes John D. Rockefeller from Cleveland, with his plans of
co-operation and consolidation. Pratt talked it over with Rogers, and
they decided that the combination would steady the commercial sails and
give ballast to the ship. They named their own terms. The Rockefellers
sneezed, and then coughed. The next day John D. Rockefeller came back
and quietly accepted the offer exactly as Rogers had formulated it.
The terms were stiff, but Rockefeller, a few years later, got even with
the slightly arrogant Rogers by passing him this: "I would have paid you
and Pratt twice as much if you had demanded it." "Which you are
perfectly safe in saying now--since the past is a dry hole." And they
shook hands solemnly. Rockefeller ordered a glass of milk and Rogers
took ginger-ale.
Rockefeller was only one year older than Rogers, but seemed twenty. John
D. Rockefeller was always old and always discreet; he never lost his
temper; he was warranted non-explosive from childhood. Henry Rogers at
times was spiritual benzine.
* * * * *
In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two there were twenty-six separate
oil-refineries in Cleveland. Refined oil sold to the consumer for twenty
cents a gallon; and much of it was of an unsafe and uncertain
quality--it was what you might call erratic. Some of the refineries were
poorly equipped, and fire was a factor that made the owners sit up
nights when they should have been asleep. Insurance was out of the
question.
One of these concerns was the Acme Oil Company, of which John D.
Archbold was President. Its capital was forty thousand dollars, some of
which had been paid in, in cash. William Rockefeller was at the head of
still another company; and John D. Rockefeller, brother of William, and
two years older, had an interest in three more concerns.
Outbidding each other for supplies, hiring each other's men, with a
production made up of a multiplicity of grades, made the business one of
chaotic uncertainty. The rule was "dog eat dog."
Then it was that John D. Rockefeller conceived the idea of combining all
the companies in Cleveland and as many elsewhere as possible, under the
name of The Standard Oil Company. The corporation was duly formed with a
capital of one million dollars. The Pratt Oil Company, with principal
works in Brooklyn, but a branch in Cleveland, was one of the twenty
concerns that were absorbed. The stocks of the various concerns were
taken up and paid for in Standard Oil certificates.
And so it happened that Henry H. Rogers, aged thirty-two, found himself
worth a hundred thousand dollars, not in cash, but in shares that were
supposed to be worth par, and should pay, if rightly managed, seven or
eight per cent. He was one of the directors in the new company.
It was an enviable position for any young man. Of course there were the
wiseheimers then as now, and statements were made that The Pratt Oil
Company had been pushed to the wall, and would shortly have its neck
wrung by John D. Rockefeller and have to start all over. But these
prophets knew neither Rockefeller nor Rogers, and much less the
resources and wants of the world. In very truth, neither the brothers
Rockefeller, Rogers, nor Archbold, nor any one of that score of men who
formed The Standard Oil Company, ever anticipated, even in their wildest
dreams, the possibilities in the business. The growth of America in men
and money has been a thing unguessed and unprophesied. Thomas Jefferson
seemed to have had a more prophetic eye than any one else, but he never
imagined the railroads, pipe-lines, sky-scrapers, iron steamships,
telegraphs, telephones, nor the use of electricity and concrete. He did,
however, see our public-school system, and he said that "by the year
Nineteen Hundred the United States will have a population of fifty
million people." This is why he made that real-estate deal with
Napoleon, which most Americans of the time thought a bad bargain. Rogers
had great hope and an exuberant imagination, but the most he saw for
himself was an income of five thousand dollars a year, and a good house,
unencumbered, with a library and a guest-room. In addition, he expected
to own a horse and buggy. He would take care of the horse himself, and
wash the buggy, also grease the axles. In fact, his thoughts were on
flowers, books, education, and on cultivating his mental acreage.
John D. Rockefeller was sorely beset by business burdens. The Standard
Oil Company had moved its headquarters to New York City, where its
business was largely exporting. The brothers Rockefeller found
themselves swamped under a mass of detail. Power flows to the men who
can shoulder it, and burdens go to those who can carry them.
Here was a business without precedent, and all growing beyond human
thought. To meet the issues as they arise the men at the head must grow
with the business.
Rogers could make decisions, and he had strength like silken fiber. He
could bend, but never break. His health was perfect; his mind was fluid;
he was alive and alert to all new methods and plans; he had great
good-cheer, and was of a kind to meet men and mold them. He set a pace
which only the very strong could follow, but which inspired all. John D.
Rockefeller worked himself to a physical finish, twenty years ago; and
his mantle fell by divine right on "H. H." with John D. Archbold as
understudy.
Since John D. Rockefeller slipped out from under the burden of active
management of The Standard Oil Company, about the year Eighteen Hundred
Eighty-eight, the business has more than quadrupled.
John D. Rockefeller never got mad, and Rogers and Archbold made it a
rule never to get mad at the same time. When the stress and strife began
to cause Rockefeller to lose his hair and his appetite, he once pulled
down his long upper lip and placidly bewailed his inability to take a
vacation. Like many another good man, he thought his presence was a
necessity to the business.
"Go on with you," said H. H.; "am I not here? Then there is Archbold--he
is always Johnny on the spot." Rockefeller smiled a sphinx-like smile,
as near as he ever came to indulging in a laugh, and mosied out of the
room. That night he went up to the Catskills. The next day a telegram
came from Rockefeller addressed to "Johnny-on-the-Spot, Twenty-six
Broadway." The message was carried directly to John D. Archbold, without
question, and duly receipted for.
Since then the phrase has become almost a classic; but few people there
be who know that it was Rogers who launched it, or who generally are
aware that the original charter member of the On-the-Spot Club was
Johnny Archbold.
* * * * *
H. H. Rogers was a trail-maker, and as a matter of course was not
understanded of the people who hug close to the friendly backlog and
talk of other days and the times that were.
Rogers was an economist--perhaps the greatest economist of his time. And
an economist deals with conditions, not theories; facts, not fancies.
A few years ago, all retail grocers sold kerosene. The kerosene-can with
its spud on the spout was a household sign. Moreover, we not only had
kerosene in the can, but we had it on the loaf of bread, and on almost
everything that came from the grocer's. For, if the can did not leak, it
sweat, and the oil of gladness was on the hands and clothes of the
clerk. The grocers lifted no howl when the handling of kerosene was
taken out of their hands. In truth, they were never so happy, as
kerosene was hazardous to handle and entailed little profit--the stuff
was that cheap! Besides that, a barrel of forty-two gallons measured out
to the user about thirty-eight gallons. Loaded into cars, bumped out,
lying in the sun on station-platforms, it always and forever hunted the
crevices. Schemes were devised to line the inside of barrels with rosin,
but always the stuff stole forth to freedom. Freight, cartage, leakage,
cooperage and return of barrels meant loss of temper, trade and
dolodocci. Realizing all these things, H. H. Rogers, aided by his able
major-general, John D. Archbold, revolutionized the trade.
The man who now handles your kerosene does not handle your sugar. He is
a specialist.
In every town in America of more than one thousand people is a Standard
Oil agency. The oil is delivered from tank-cars into iron tanks. From
there it is piped into tank-wagons. This wagon comes to your door, and
the gentlemanly agent sees that your little household tank is kept
filled. All you have to do is to turn a faucet. Aye, in this pleasant
village of East Aurora is a Standard Oil agent who will fill your lamp
and trim the wick, provided you buy your lamps, chimneys and wicks of
him.
And this service is Standard Oil Service--it extends from Halifax to San
Diego; from New Orleans to Hudson Bay. In very truth, it covers the
world.
This service, with prohibition in the South, has ruined the cooper's
trade, the trade that introduced H. M. Flagler into the Standard Oil
Company.
The investment in cooperage used in the oil business has shrunk from a
hundred millions to less than five millions, while the traffic in oil
has doubled.
And the germ of this service to the consumer came from the time when
Henry Rogers worked a grocery route for a co-operative concern that cut
out the expensive middleman and instead focused on a faultless service
to the consumer.
* * * * *
The name "petroleum" is Latin. The word has been in use since the time
of Pliny, who lived neighbor to Paul in Rome, when the Apostle abided in
his own hired house, awaiting trial under an indictment for saying
things about the Established Religion.
Until within sixty years, the world thought that petroleum was one
simple substance. Now we find it is a thousand, mixed and fused and
blended in the crucible of Time.
Science sifts, separates, dissolves, analyzes, classifies. The perfumes
gathered by the tendrils of violet and rose, in their divine desire for
expression, are found in petroleum. Aye, the colors and all the delicate
tints of petal, of stamen and of pistil, are in this substance stored in
the dark recesses of the earth.
Petroleum has yielded up over two thousand distinct substances, wooed by
the loving, eager caress of the chemist. All the elements that go to
make up the earth are there. Hundreds of articles used in commerce and
in our daily lives are gotten from petroleum. To secure these in a form
fit for daily use was the tireless task of Henry H. Rogers. Not by his
own hands, of course, for life is too short for that, but the
universities of the round world have been called upon for their men of
brains.
Rogers' business was to discover men. This is a phase of the history of
The Standard Oil Company that has not yet been written, but which is of
vastly greater importance than the motions of well-meaning but
non-producing attorneys, whose mental processes are "dry holes."
"Science is classification," said Aristotle to his bad boy pupil,
Alexander, three hundred forty years before Christ. "Science is
commonsense classified," said Herbert Spencer. "Science eliminates the
worthless and the useless and then makes use of it in something else,"
said Thomas A. Edison.
H. H. Rogers utilized the worthless; and the dividends of The Standard
Oil Company are largely a result of cashing-in by-products. Rogers not
only rendered waste products valuable, but he utilized human energies,
often to the great surprise of the owner.
That gentle Tarbell slant to the effect that "even the elevator-boys in
The Standard Oil offices are hired with an idea of their development,"
is a great compliment to a man who was not only a great businessman, but
a great teacher. And all influential men are teachers--whether they know
it or not. Perhaps we are all teachers--of good or ill--I really do not
know.
But the pedagogic instinct was strong in Rogers. He barely escaped a
professorship. He built schoolhouses, and if he had had time he would
have taught in them. He looked at any boy, not for what he was, but for
what he might become. He analyzed every man, not for what he was, but
for what he might have been, or what he would be.
Humanity was Rogers' raw stock, not petroleum. And his success hinged on
bringing humanity to bear on petroleum, or, if you please, by mixing
brains with rock-oil, somewhat as Horace Greeley advised the farmer to
mix brains with his compost.
In judging a man we must in justice to ourselves ask, "What effect has
this man's life, taken as a whole, had on the world?"
To lift out samples here and there and hold them up does not give us the
man, any more than a sample brick gives you a view of the house. And
viewing the life of Rogers for years, from the time he saw the light of
a whale-oil lamp in Fairhaven, to the man as we behold him now, we must
acknowledge his initiative and his power. He gave profitable work to
millions. He directly made homes and comforts possible for thousands
upon thousands. He helped the young, without number, to find themselves
in their work and at their work. In a material way he added vast
millions to the wealth of the world by the utilization of products which
were considered worthless.
He gloried in the fresh air, in the blasts of Winter, or in the zephyrs
of Spring. The expanse of heaving, tossing ice was just as beautiful to
him as the smooth flow of Hendrick Hudson's waters, as they hasten to
the sea.
The storied "Twenty-six Broadway" is no den of ogres, no
gambling-resort of dark and devious ways. It is simply an
office-building, full of busy men and women--workers who waste neither
time nor money. You will find there no figureheads, no gold lace, no
pomps and ceremonies. If you have business there, you locate your man
without challenge. All is free, open, simple and direct.
On the top floor is a restaurant, where all lunch in a common, fraternal
way, jolly and jocund, as becomes men who carry big burdens.
The place is democratic to a fault, for the controlling spirits of
Twenty-six Broadway are men who have come by a rocky road, having
conquered great difficulties, overcome great obstacles, and while often
thirsting for human sympathy have nevertheless been able to do without
it.
Success is apt to sour, for it begets an opposition that is often cruel
and unjust. Reorganization gives the demagogue his chance; and often his
literary lyddite strikes close.
But Rogers was great enough to know that the penalty of success must be
paid. He took his medicine, and smiled.
* * * * *
Time was when a millionaire was a man worth a million dollars. But that
day is past.
Next, a millionaire was a man who made a million dollars a year. That,
too, is obsolete. The millionaire now is the man who spends a million
dollars a year. In this new and select class, a class which does not
exist outside of America, H. H. Rogers was a charter member.
"He was a royal gentleman," said Booker T. Washington to me. "When I was
in need, I held H. H. Rogers in reserve until all others failed me, then
I went to him and frankly told my needs. He always heard me through, and
then told me to state the figure. He never failed me."
Rogers gave with a lavish hand, but few of his benefactions,
comparatively, were known. The newspapers have made much of his throwing
a hawser to Mark Twain and towing the Humorist off a financial sand-bar.
Also, we have heard how he gave Helen Keller to the world; for without
the help of H. H. Rogers that wonderful woman would still be like unto
the eyeless fish in the Mammoth Cave. As it is, her soul radiates an
inward light and science stands uncovered. But there were very many
other persons and institutions that received very tangible benefits from
the hands of H. H. Rogers.
One method he had of giving help to ambitious young men was to invest in
stock in companies that were not quite strong enough financially to
weather a gale. And very often these were very bad investments. Had
Rogers stuck to Standard Oil his fortune would have been double what it
was. But for the money he did not much care--he played the game.
Mr. Rogers was too wise to give to individuals. He knew that mortal
tendency referred to by Saint Andre de Ligereaux as "Hubbard's Law," or
the Law of Altruistic Injury. This law provides that whenever you do for
a person a service which he is able and should do for himself, you work
him a wrong instead of a benefit. H. H. Rogers sought to give
opportunity, not things. When he invested a million dollars in a
tack-factory in Fairhaven, it was with intent to supply employment to
every man or woman, or boy or girl, in Fairhaven, who desired work.
He wanted to make poverty inexcusable. Yet he realized that there were
cases where age and disease had sapped the person's powers, and to such
he gave by stealth, or through friends whom he loved and trusted. Mrs.
W. P. Winsor, of Fairhaven, for instance, worked days and months
overtime on the bidding of Mr. Rogers, caring for emergency cases, where
girls and boys were struggling to get an education and care for aged
parents and invalid brothers and sisters; or where Fate had been unkind
and God, seemingly, had forgot.
Houses were painted, mortgages were lifted, taxes paid, monuments
erected, roadways laid out, books furnished, trees planted, ditches
dug, bathrooms installed, swamps drained, bridges built, in hundreds of
instances.
This is not philanthropy of a high order, perhaps, but Rogers hated both
the words "charitable" and "philanthropic" as applied to himself. All he
claimed to be was a businessman who paid his debts and who tried to make
others pay theirs. The people he helped were the people he knew, or had
known, and they were folks who had helped him. He never forgot a
benefit--nor a wrong. He was a very human individual. To give to a
person where the account is not balanced by a mutual service is,
probably, to add an enemy to your list. You have uncovered the weakness
of your man--he is an incompetent--and he will never forgive you for
making the discovery.
When H. H. Rogers paid off Mark Twain's indebtedness to the tune of
ninety thousand dollars, he did not scratch a poet and find an ingrate.
What he actually discovered was a philosopher and a prophet without a
grouch.
Somewhere I have said that there were only two men in America who could
be safely endowed. One is Luther Burbank and the other Booker T.
Washington. These men have both made the world their debtors. They are
impersonal men--sort of human media through which Deity is creating.
They ask for nothing: they give everything.
Mark Twain belongs in the same select list. The difference between Mark
Twain and Luther Burbank is this: Mark hoes his spiritual acreage in
bed, while Luther Burbank works in the garden. Luther produces spineless
cacti, while Mark gives spineless men a vertebra. Mark makes us laugh,
in order that he may make us think.
The last time I saw H. H. Rogers was in his office at Twenty-six
Broadway. Out through a half-doorway, leading into a private
conference-room, I saw a man stretched out on a sofa asleep. A great
shock of white hair spread out over the pillow that held his head; and
Huck Finn snores of peace, in rhythmic measures, filled the room.
Mr. Rogers noticed my glance in the direction of the Morpheus music. He
smiled and said, "It's only Mark--he's taking a little well-earned
rest--he was born tired, you know."
If Mark Twain were not a rich man himself, rich in mines of truth,
fields of uncut fun, and argosies sailing great spiritual seas, coming
into port laden with commonsense, he would long since have turned on his
benefactor and nailed his hide on the barn-door of obliquity. As it is,
Mark takes his own, just as Socrates did from Mr. and Mrs. Pericles.
Aye, or as did Bronson Alcott, who once ran his wheelbarrow into the
well-kept garden of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Orphic One was loading up
with potatoes, peas, beans and one big yellow pumpkin, when he glanced
around and saw the man who wrote "Self-Reliance" gazing at him
seriously and steadily over the garden-wall. The father of the author of
"Little Women" winced, but bracing up, gave back stare for stare, and in
a voice flavored with resentment and defiance said, "I need them!"
And the owner of the garden grew abashed before that virtuous gaze,
murmured apologies, and retreated in good order.
And Mark Twain used to explain it thus: "You see, it is like this:
Rogers furnishes the plans and I foot the bills." And this was all there
was about it. Only a big man can take his own without abasement.
Mark Twain has made two grins grow where there was only a growl before.
I don't care where he gets his vegetables--nor where he takes a
well-earned nap--and neither does he.
* * * * *
The average millionaire believes in education, because he has heard the
commodity highly recommended in the newspapers. Usually, he is a man who
has not had college advantages, and so he is filled with the fallacy
that he has dropped something out of his life. We idealize the things
that are not ours. H. H. Rogers was an exception--he was at home in any
company. He took little on faith. He analyzed things for himself. And
his opinion was that the old-line colleges tended to destroy
individuality and smother initiative. He believed that the High School
was the key to the situation, and to carry the youth beyond this was to
run the risk of working his ruin. "The boy who leaves the High School at
seventeen, and enters actual business, stands a much better chance of
success than does the youth who comes out of college at twenty-one, with
the world yet before him," he said.
He himself was one of the first class that graduated from the old
Fairhaven Grammar School. He realized that his success in life came
largely from the mental ammunition that he had gotten there, and from
the fact that he made a quick use of his knowledge. Yet he realized that
the old Fairhaven High or Grammar School was not a model institution.
"It has a maximum of discipline and a minimum of inspiration," he used
to say. The changing order of education found a quick response in his
heart. He never brooded over his lack of advantages. On the other hand,
he used often to refer to the fact that his childhood was ideal. But all
around he saw children whose surroundings were not ideal, and these he
longed to benefit and bless.
And so in Eighteen Hundred Eighty, when he was forty years of age, he
built a Grammar Manual-Training School and presented it to the town. It
was called the Rogers School. Such a gift to a town is enough to work
the local immortality of the giver. But the end was not yet. In a few
years, Rogers--or Mrs. Rogers, to be exact--presented to the village a
Town Hall, beautiful and complete, at a cost of something over two
hundred fifty thousand dollars. Next came the Millicent Public Library,
in memory of a beloved daughter.
When his mother passed away, as a memorial to her he built a church and
presented it to the Unitarian denomination. It is probably the most
complete and artistic church in America. Its cost was a million dollars.
The Fairhaven Waterworks System was a present from Mr. Rogers. And
lastly was the Fairhaven High School, as fair and fine an edifice, and
as completely equipped, as genius married to money could supply. The
only rival this school has in America is the Stout High School in
Menominee, Wisconsin, which is also the gift of an individual. No
municipality in the world has ever erected and completed so good a
school--the taxpayers would not allow it. Into our schoolteaching go the
cheese-paring policies of the average villager. In truth, George
Bernard Shaw avers that we are a nation of villagers.
The big deeds of the world are always done by individuals. One-man power
is the only thing that counts. The altruistic millionaire is a necessity
of progress--he does magnificent things, which the many will not and can
not do. So we find the model town of Fairhaven molded and fashioned by
her First Citizen. Everywhere are the marks of his personality, and the
tangible signs of his good taste.
The only political office to which Henry H. Rogers ever aspired was that
of Street Commissioner of Fairhaven. He filled the office to the
satisfaction of his constituents, and drew his stipend of three dollars
a day for several years. Good roads was his hobby. Next to this came
tree-planting and flowers. His dream was to have the earth transformed
into a vast flower-garden and park and given to the people.
His last item of public work was an object-lesson as to what the
engineering skill of man can do. He took a great bog or swamp that lay
to the north of the village and was used as a village dumping-ground. He
drained this tract, filled in with gravel, and then earth, and
transformed it into a public park of marvelous beauty.
The last great business effort of H. H. Rogers was the building of the
Virginian Railroad. This road connects the great coal-fields of West
Virginia with tidewater. The route is four hundred forty-three miles
long. "By this line a thousand million dollars' worth of coal is made
available to the world," said a great engineer to me. And then he added,
"It will take twenty years, however, to prove fully the truth of H. H.
Rogers' prophetic vision." This was the herculean task of a man in his
thirties--not for one approaching his seventieth milestone.
But Rogers built this road alone. He constructed and equipped it in a
style so complete that it has set a pace in railroading. You who know
the history of railroads realize that the first thing is to get the line
through. Two streaks of rust, a teakettle, and a right of way make a
railroad. This allows you to list your bonds. But H. H. Rogers had
neither bonds nor stock for sale. What other man ever put forty millions
of money and his lifeblood into a railroad? Was the work worth the
price? It were vain to ask. The work is done, the man is dead; and that
his death was hastened by the work no one can doubt.
Rogers had the invincible heart of youth. He died as he had lived,
always and forever in the thick of the fight. He had that American
trinity of virtues, pluck, push and perseverance. Courage, endurance,
energy, initiative, ambition, industry, good-cheer, sympathy and
wonderful executive ability were his attributes.