Part 40

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 r