Part 41

ose, 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 hims