Part 39

s 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,