Henry Huttleston Rogers

Pratt made Rogers foreman of his Brooklyn refinery, with a promise of a partnership if sales ran over $50,000 a year. The Rogers' family moved to Brooklyn. Rogers moved steadily from foreman to manager, and then superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery. He accomplished and exceeded the substantial sales increase goal which Pratt had set when recruiting him. As promised, Pratt gave Rogers an interest in the business. In 1867, with Henry Rogers as a partner, he established the firm of Charles Pratt and Company. In the next few years, Rogers became, in the words of Elbert Hubbard, Pratt's "hands and feet and eyes and ears" (Little Journeys to the Homes, 1909). As their family grew, Henry and Abbie continued to live in New York City, but vacationed frequently at Fairhaven.

While working with Pratt, Rogers invented an improved way of separating naphtha, a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds produced during the distillation of crude oil, from the oil. He was granted U.S. Patent # 120,539 on October 31, 1871.

In the early 1871-72, Pratt and Company and other refiners became involved in a conflict with John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Andrews, and Henry M. Flagler (of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, a Cleveland-based refining company) and the South Improvement Company. In developing what would become Standard Oil, Rockefeller, a manager of extraordinary abilities, and Flagler, an exceptional marketer, recognized that the costs and control of the shipment of crude oil would be key elements in competition with other refiners. With its combination of clever market manipulation, and hard-nosed dealings with the powerful Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), the South Improvement scheme was an example of the type of business tactics which Rockefeller and his associates used to become successful. Although Rockefeller became the target of many who decried Standard Oil's ruthlessness in subsequent years, the South Improvement rebate scheme was Flagler's idea.

South Improvement was basically a mechanism to obtain secret favorable net rates from Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and other railroads through secret rebates from the common carrier. A "common carrier" is somewhat like a utility, inasmuch as it often has certain rights, powers and monopolies on its services beyond those normally afforded regular business enterprises. A common carrier was expected to serve the public good and treat its customers uniformly. Rates in that era were promulgated and published in what was called "tariffs" and were public information. The rebate scheme was done outside of that process. As an opposite effect, normally afforded "tariffs" were increased and charged to customers not privy to the scheme.

Newspapers were quick to publicize the issue. The injustice of the South Improvement scheme outraged many independent oil producers and owners of refineries. Rogers led the opposition among the New York refiners. The New York interests formed an association, and about the middle of March 1872 sent a committee of three, with Rogers as head, to Oil City to consult with the Oil Producers' Union. Working with the Pennsylvania independents, Rogers and the New York delegation managed to forge an agreement with the railroads, whose leaders eventually agreed to open their rates to all and promised to end their shady dealings with South Improvement.

Rockefeller and his associates quickly started another approach, which frequently included buying up opposing interests. Their dominance of the growing industry and the squeezing out of smaller competitors continued and expanded. But, the South Improvement incident prompted growing public sentiment to support governmental oversight and regulation of large businesses, including the railroads. Congress passed new antitrust laws, the administration created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), and the courts eventually ordered the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust in the early 20th century.

In 1874, Rockefeller approached Pratt with a plan to cooperate and consolidate their businesses. Pratt discussed it with Rogers, and they decided that the combination would benefit them. Rogers formulated terms, which guaranteed financial security and jobs for Pratt and himself. Rockefeller had apparently learned a lot about Rogers' talents and negotiating skills during the South Improvement conflict. He quietly accepted the offer on the exact terms Rogers had laid out. In this manner, Charles Pratt and Company (including Astral Oil) became one of the important independent refiners to join the Standard Oil Trust.

By this date, Charles Pratt was reaching an age to consider retirement, and he subsequently devoted much of his time and interests to activities such as founding the Pratt Institute. However, Pratt's son, Charles Millard Pratt (1858 to 1913), became Corporate Secretary of Standard Oil. As a part owner of Pratt and Company, Rogers, who was about 35 years old, now owned a share of Standard Oil himself. In the deal, Rockefeller had also added Henry Rogers to his team. He undoubtedly placed a high value on Rogers' potential. History does not tell us if he foresaw that the promising young man was destined to become one of his major partners.

Standard Oil was an oil refining conglomerate. Its successors continued to be among the world's biggest corporations over 140 years later. John D. Rockefeller, long regarded as the principal founder, was of a modest background and education. Born in New York in 1839, he moved with his family to Cleveland in 1855. His first job was as an assistant bookkeeper for a produce company. He delighted, as he later recalled, in "all the methods and systems of the office".[4] He became particularly well skilled at calculating transportation costs, a skill which would later serve him well. He worked in variety of small business enterprises during the next few years, owning interests in several.

During this time, Rockefeller became friends with Henry Morrison Flagler. The two men had much in common, as they were both conservative, hard-working, energetic, and driven to make money. Their backgrounds included working separately for a number of years in various retail enterprises, including the grain business. Although they were teetotalers personally, distilled spirits were a byproduct of the handling of corn, and both embraced the business opportunity that they presented; making money was clearly paramount.

In their separate forays into business, financial results for the two had been mixed. Flagler, nine years senior to Rockefeller, had been completely wiped out financially in a venture into salt. Only a loan from a relative, Stephen V. Harkness, allowed him to keep creditors at bay and stay out of total ruin.

In the second half of the 19th century, the United States began a transition from use of whale oil to petroleum for heating and lighting. Discovery of oil fields in western Pennsylvania in the late 1850s and the promise of increased industrial activity and economic growth after the end of the American Civil War combined to make the refining of crude oil seem an attractive business to Rockefeller. He and Flagler enlisted chemist Samuel Andrews and with his brother, William Rockefeller, Jabez Bostwick, and Flagler's relative and silent partner, Stephen V. Harkness, went into the refining business in Cleveland as Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler.

By all accounts, Rockefeller was an extraordinarily talented manager and financial planner, Flagler was an exceptional marketer, and Andrews had the know-how to oversee refining aspects. It was to be a very successful combination. As the demand for kerosene and a new byproduct, gasoline, grew in the United States, by 1868, what was to become Standard Oil was the world's largest oil refinery.

In 1870, Rockefeller formed Standard Oil Company of Ohio and started his strategy of buying up the competition and consolidating all oil refining under one company. It was during this period that the Pratt interests and Henry Rogers were brought into the fold. By 1878 Standard Oil held about 90% of the refining capacity in the United States.

Flagler's wife was in failing health due to what was later determined to be tuberculosis. On advice of her physician, he took her to Florida for the winter months beginning in 1877, and she did seem to improve with the gentle winter and cool ocean breezes there. While in Florida, Flagler was struck with the lack of good rail transportation south of Jacksonville, the equally poor availability of good lodging, and the potential the impoverished state held as a vacation destination for northerners. Sensing a major business opportunity, he began to invest and become a major developer of Florida's east coast in what many regard as his "second career." However, his ventures in Florida marked the beginning of his gradual reduction in management participation at Standard Oil.

In 1881 the company was reorganized as the Standard Oil Trust. In 1885, the headquarters were relocated from Cleveland to New York City. By this time, the three main men of Standard Oil Trust had become John D. Rockefeller, his brother William, and Henry Rogers, who had emerged as a key financial strategist. By 1890, Rogers was a vice president of Standard Oil and chairman of the organization's operating committee.

Petroleum pipelines were first developed in Pennsylvania in the 1860s to replace transport in wooden barrels loaded on wagons drawn by mules and driven by teamsters. This mule-drawn transportation was expensive and fraught with difficulties: leaking barrels, muddy trails, wagon breakdowns and mule/driver problems.

The first successful metal pipeline was completed in 1865, when Samuel Van Syckel built a four-mile (6 km) pipeline from Pithole, Pennsylvania, to the nearest railroad. This initial success led to the construction of pipelines to connect crude oil production, increasingly moving west as new fields were discovered and Pennsylvania fields declined, to refineries located near major demand centers in the Northeast. Biographer Z. James Varanini writes, "the completion of these pipelines represented a move towards a new type of interconnectivity of previously isolated states."

When Rockefeller observed this, he began to acquire many of the new pipelines. Soon, his Standard Oil companies owned a majority of the lines, which provided cheap, efficient transportation for oil. Cleveland, Ohio, became a center of the refining industry principally because of its transportation systems.

Rogers conceived the idea of long pipelines for transporting oil and natural gas. In 1881, the National Transit Company was formed by Standard Oil to own and operate Standard's pipelines. The National Transit Company remained one of Rogers' favorite projects throughout the rest of his life.[5]

East Ohio Gas Company (EOG) was incorporated on September 8, 1898, as a marketing company for the National Transit Company, the natural gas arm of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The company launched its business by selling to consumers in northeast Ohio gas produced by another National Transit subsidiary, Hope Natural Gas Company.

Rubber-manufacturing city Akron, Ohio, was the first to take advantage of the lower prices for natural gas. It granted the East Ohio Gas Company a franchise in September 1898, the same month that the company was founded. During the winter of 1898–99, the National Transit Company built a 10-inch wrought iron pipeline that stretched from the Pipe Creek on the Ohio River to Akron, with branches to Canton, Massillon, Dover, New Philadelphia, Uhrichsville, and Dennison. The first gas from the pipeline burned in Akron on May 10, 1899.[6]

Andrew Carnegie, long the leading steel magnate of Pittsburgh, retired at the turn of the 20th century, and refocused his interests on philanthropy. His steel holdings were consolidated into the new United States Steel Corporation. Standard Oil's interest in steel properties led to Rogers becoming one of the directors when it was organized in 1901.[5]

In 1890 the U.S. Congress passed Sherman Antitrust Act. This act is the source of all American anti-monopoly laws. The law forbids every contract, scheme, deal, conspiracy to restrain trade. It also forbids inspirations to secure monopoly of a given industry. The Standard Oil Trust attracted attention from antitrust authorities. The Ohio Attorney General filed and won an antitrust suit in 1892.

Ida M. Tarbell, an American author and journalist, who was known as one of the leading muckrakers, criticized Standard Oil practices. Tarbell met Rogers, by then the most senior and powerful director of Standard Oil, through his friend, Mark Twain. They began to meet in January 1902 and continued for the next two years. As Tarbell brought up case histories, Rogers provided an explanation, documents and figures concerning the case. Rogers may have believed Tarbell intended a complimentary work, as he was apparently candid. Her interviews with him were the basis of her negative exposé of Standard Oil's questionable business practices. Tarbell's investigations of Standard Oil for McClure's, ran in 19 parts from November 1902 to October 1904. They were collected and published as The History of the Standard Oil Company in 1904.

Although public opposition to Rockefeller and Standard Oil existed prior to Tarbell's investigation, there had been general opposition to Standard Oil and trusts. Her book is widely credited with hastening the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil by the United States Supreme Court. "They had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me", Tarbell wrote about the company.

Tarbell blasted Standard Oil for dubious business practices, including subduing competitors and engaging in illegal transportation deals with the railroad companies to undercut competitors' prices.

Rogers joined in the organization of holding companies aimed at controlling natural gas production and distribution. In 1884, with associates, Rogers formed the Consolidated Gas Company, and thereafter for several years he was instrumental in gaining control of great city plants, fighting terrific battles with rivals for some of them, as in the case of Boston. Almost the whole story of his natural gas interests was one of business warfare.[7]

During the 1890s, Rogers became interested in Anaconda and other copper properties in the western United States. In 1899, with William Rockefeller, and Thomas W. Lawson, he formed the first $75,000,000 section of the gigantic trust, Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, which was the subject of much acrid criticism then and for years afterward. In the building of this great trust, some of the most ruthless strokes in modern business history were dealt: the $38,000,000 "watering" of the stock of the first corporation, its subsequent manipulation, the seizure of the copper property of the Butte & Boston Consolidated Mining Company, the using of the latter as a weapon against the Boston & Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company, the guerrilla warfare against certain private interests, and the wrecking of the Globe Bank of Boston.

A holding company aimed at controlling copper production and distribution, Amalgamated Copper controlled the copper mines of Butte, Montana and later became Anaconda Copper Company, a revert to its original name.

On July 1, 1892, Staten Island, New York's first trolley line opened, running between Port Richmond and Meiers Corners. Trolleys, which cost only a nickel a ride through most of their existence, help facilitate mass transit across the Island by reaching communities not serviced by trains. Henry H. Rogers was long-known as the Staten Island transit magnate, and was also involved with the Staten Island-Manhattan Ferry Service and the Richmond Power and Light Company.[5]

Rogers was also close associate of E. H. Harriman in the latter's extensive railroad operations. He was a director of the Santa Fe, St. Paul, Erie, Lackawanna, Union Pacific, and several other large railroads. However, he also involved himself in at least three West Virginia short-line railroad projects, one of which would grow much larger than he probably anticipated.

In mid-1890s, Rogers became president of the Ohio River Railroad, founded by Johnson Newlon Camden, a United States Senator from West Virginia who was also secretly involved with Standard Oil. Charles M. Pratt and Rogers were two of the largest owners and the Ohio River Railroad's General Manager was C.M. Burt. Its General Solicitor was former West Virginia governor William A. MacCorkle. The owners wished to sell the railroad, which was losing money.

Under Rogers' leadership, they formed a subsidiary, West Virginia Short Line Railroad, to build a new line between New Martinsville and Clarksburg to reach new coal mining areas, into territory already planned for expansion by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O). The expansion plans had the desired effect of essentially forcing B&O to purchase the Ohio River Railroad to block the competition in the new coal areas. The Ohio River Railroad was sold to B&O in 1898.

The Kanawha and Pocahontas Railroad Company was incorporated in West Virginia in 1898 by either a son of Charles Pratt or the estate of Charles Pratt. Its line ran 15 miles (24 km) from the Kanawha River up a tributary called Paint Creek. Once again, new coal mining territory was involved. Rogers, acting on behalf of Charles Pratt and Company negotiated its lease to the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) in 1901 and its sale to a newly formed C&O subsidiary, Kanawha and Paint Creek Railway Company, in 1902. (I have never seen any documentation that involves Rogers in this railroad, and comments by Gov. MacCorkle in his book suggest that Rogers was not involved with this deal.) TWS

His final achievement, working with Consulting Engineer William Nelson Page, was the building of the Virginian Railway (VGN), which eventually extended 600 miles (970 km) from the coal fields of southern West Virginia to port near Norfolk at Sewell's Point, Virginia in the harbor of Hampton Roads.

Initially, Rogers' involvement in the project began in 1902 with Page's Deepwater Railway, planned as an 80-mile (130 km) short line to reach untapped coal reserves in a very rugged portion of southern West Virginia, and interchange its traffic with the C&O and/or the N&W. Some speculate that the Deepwater Railway was probably intended for resale in the manner of the earlier two West Virginia short lines. However, if so, the ploy was foiled by collusion of the bigger railroads, who were both controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad and agreed with each other to neither purchase it or grant favorable interchange rates.

Page was the "front man" for the Deepwater project, and it is likely the leaders of the big railroads were unaware that their foe was backed by the wealthy Rogers, who did not give up a good fight easily. Instead of abandoning the project, Page and Rogers secretly developed a plan to extend their new railroad all the way across West Virginia and Virginia to port at Hampton Roads. They modified the Deepwater Railway charter to reach the Virginia-state line. A Rogers coal property attorney in Staunton, Virginia formed another intrastate railroad in Virginia, the Tidewater Railway.

The battle for the Tidewater Railway's rights-of-way displayed Rogers at his most crafty and ingenious. He was able to persuade the leading citizens of Roanoke and Norfolk, both strongholds of the rival Norfolk and Western, that his new railroad would be a boon to both communities, secretly securing crucial rights-of-way in the process. In 1907, the name of the Tidewater Railway was changed to The Virginian Railway Company, and it acquired the Deepwater Railway to form the needed West Virginia-Virginia link.

Financed almost entirely from Rogers' own resources, and completed in 1909, instead of interchanging, the new Virginian Railway competed with the much larger Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and Norfolk and Western Railway for coal traffic. Built following his policy of investing in the best route and equipment on initial selection and purchase to save operating expenses, the VGN enjoyed a more modern pathway built to the highest standards, and provided major competition to its larger neighboring railroads, each of whom tried several times unsuccessfully to acquire it after they realized it could not be blocked from completion.

However, the time and enormous effort Rogers expended on the project continued to undermine his already declining health, not only because of his Herculean work but also because of the uncertain economy of the period, exacerbated by the financial Panic of 1907 which began in March of that year. To obtain the needed financing, he was forced to pour many of his own assets into the railroad. Management of the funding Rogers was providing was handled by Boston financier Godfrey M. Hyams, with whom he had also worked on the Anaconda Company, and many other natural resource projects.

On July 22, 1907, he suffered a debilitating stroke. Over a period of about five months, he gradually recovered. In 1908, he put the remaining financing in place needed to see his railroad to completion. When completed the following year, the Virginian Railway was called by the newspapers "the biggest little railway in the world" and proved both viable and profitable.

Many historians consider the Virginian Railway to be one of Henry Rogers' greatest legacies. The 600-mile (970 km) Virginian Railway (VGN) followed his philosophy regarding investing in the best equipment and paying its employees and vendors well throughout its profitable history. It operated some of the largest and most powerful steam, electric, and diesel locomotives throughout its 50-year history. Chronicled by rail historian and rail photographer H. Reid in The Virginian Railway (Kalmbach, 1961), the VGN gained a following of railway enthusiasts which continues to the present day.

The VGN was merged into the Norfolk & Western in 1959. However, almost all of the former VGN mainline trackage in West Virginia and about 50% of that in Virginia is still in use in 2006 as the preferred route for eastbound coal trains for Norfolk Southern Corporation due to the more favorable gradients while crossing the Allegheny Mountains' continental divide and the Blue Ridge Mountains east of Roanoke, while most westbound traffic of empty coal cars uses the original Norfolk and Western main line.

When the newly formed Mutual Alliance Trust Company opened for business in New York on the Tuesday after June 29, 1902, there were 13 directors, including Emanuel Lehman, William Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Rogers.[8]

By 1907, Rogers was a member of the Consolidated Stock Exchange of New York, one of around 13,000.[9]

Mark Twain and Henry Huttleston Rogers in 1908

In 1893, a mutual friend introduced Rogers to humorist Mark Twain. Rogers reorganized Twain's tangled finances, and the two became close friends for the rest of Rogers' life. By the 1890s, Twain's fortunes began to decline; in his later life, Twain suffered from depression. He lost three of his four children, and his wife, Olivia Langdon, before his death in 1910.

Twain had some very bad times with his businesses. His publishing company ended up going bankrupt, and he lost thousands of dollars on a typesetting machine that was never quite perfected for commercial use. He also lost a great deal of revenue on royalties from his books being plagiarized before he had a chance to publish them himself.

Rogers and Twain enjoyed a more than 16-year friendship. Rogers' family became Twain's surrogate family, and he was a frequent guest at the Rogers townhouse in New York City. Earl J. Dias described the relationship in these words: "Rogers and Twain were kindred spirits—fond of poker, billiards, the theater, practical jokes, mild profanity, the good-natured spoof. Their friendship, in short, was based on a community of interests and on the fact that each, in some way, needed the other."[12] Their letters were published as Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893–1909,[13] They had a standing joke that Twain was inclined to pilfer items from the Rogers household whenever he spent the night there as a guest. Two letters provide an illustration. Twain wrote to Anne Rogers that he had packed:

some articles that was laying around....two books, Mr. Rogers' brown slippers, and a ham. I thought it was one of ourn. It looked like one we used to have, but it shan't occur again, and don't you worry. He will temper the wind to the shorn lamb, and I will send some of the things back if there is some that won't keep. Yores in Jesus, S.L.C.

Rogers responded on October 31, 1906 with the following:

Before I forget it, let me remind you that I shall want the trunk and the things you took away from my house as soon as possible. I learn that instead of taking old things, you took my best. Mrs. Rogers is at the White Mountains. I am going to Fairhaven this afternoon. I hope you will not be there. By the way, I have been using a pair of your gloves in the Mountains, and they don't seem to be much of an attraction.

In April 1907, they traveled together on the Kanawha to the Jamestown Exposition in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown Colony. Twain returned to Norfolk, Virginia with Rogers in April 1909, and was the guest speaker at the dedication dinner held for the newly completed Virginian Railway, a "Mountains to Sea" engineering marvel of the day. The construction of the new railroad had been solely financed by industrialist Rogers.

In May 1896, at the home in New York City of editor-essayist Laurence Hutton, Rogers and Mark Twain first saw Helen Keller, then sixteen years old.[14] Although she had been made blind and deaf by illness as a young child, she had been reached by her teacher-companion, Anne Sullivan. When she was 20, Keller passed with distinction the entrance examination to Radcliffe College. Twain praised "this marvelous child" and hoped that Helen would not be forced to retire from her studies because of poverty. He urged the Rogers' to aid Keller and to solicit other Standard Oil chiefs to help her. Rogers helped pay for her education at Radcliffe and arranged a monthly stipend.[15][16]

Keller dedicated her book, The World I Live In, "To Henry H. Rogers, my Dear Friend of Many Years." On the fly leaf of Rogers' copy, she wrote:
To Mrs Rogers The best of the world I live in is the kindness of friends like you and Mr Rogers[17]

Handbill from 1909 tour of southern Virginia and West Virginia

Around 1894, Rogers attended one of Booker T. Washington's speeches at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The next day, Rogers contacted the educator and invited him to his offices. They had common ground in relatively humble beginnings and became strong friends. Washington became a frequent visitor to Rogers' office, his 85-room mansion in Fairhaven, and the yacht.

Although Rogers had died suddenly a few weeks earlier, in June 1909 Dr. Washington went on a previously arranged speaking tour along the newly completed Virginian Railway. He rode in Rogers' personal rail car, Dixie, making speeches at many locations over a seven-day period. Washington said Rogers had urged the trip to explore how to improve race relations and economic conditions for African Americans along the route of the new railway. It connected many previously isolated rural communities in the southern portions of Virginia and West Virginia.

Washington told about Rogers' philanthropy: "funding the operation of at least 65 small country schools for the education and betterment of African Americans in Virginia and other portions of the South, all unknown to the recipients." Rogers had also generously provided support to Tuskegee Institute and Hampton Institute. Rogers supported projects with at least partial matching funds, in order to achieve more work, and to ensure recipients were also stakeholders.

• Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893–1909, ed. by Lewis Leary (1969). Contains 464 letters by Rogers.