Massachusetts Newsboy Gets an Attack
of Wanderlust and Finds Fortune in
Pennsylvania Wells.
H.H. Rogers, future master builder of industrial organizations, did odd
chores for the neighbors, in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, when a boy, and
earned on the average fifty cents a week. His first step in real business
was when he established a news route of forty-seven subscribers for the
New Bedford _Standard_. In one week he doubled the number and struck for
seventy-five cents more a week than the seventy-five cents he was
receiving. This was granted and he also got an increased commission on new
subscribers. A few months in a grocery store completed his Fairhaven
business experience, and then, with Charles Ellis, a schoolfellow, he went
to the Pennsylvania oil fields to make his fortune. Each had about two
hundred dollars and they started in the refining business. It did not go
the way Rogers wished, so he said to Ellis:
"Look here, I am going to learn the oil business. You run the office."
Rogers put on overalls and went to work at the pumps and stills. He was
there early and late, working at everything, investigating, getting a grip
on every detail, learning how the business could be run on the most
economical basis and at the same time give the best quality of product.
When he returned to office work the organization of the Standard Oil was
under way. It was the knowledge he had gained at the stills that enabled
him to figure down the cost of production to the fraction of a cent. It
was he, also, who was the leading factor in the elimination of
competition.