“You will have to ask Miss Tarbell,” Mr. McClure told him.
“Would Miss Tarbell see Mr. Rogers?” Mark Twain asked.
Mr. McClure was sure I would not ask anything better, which was quite true. And so an interview was arranged for one day early in January of 1902 at Mr. Rogers’ home, then at 26 East Fifty-seventh Street. I was a bit scared at the idea. I had met many kinds of people, but this was my first high-ranking captain of industry. Was I putting my head into a lion’s mouth? I did not think so. It had become more and more evident to me that any attempt to bite our heads off would be the stupidest thing the Standard Oil Company could do, its reputation being what it was. It was not that stupid, I told myself. However, it was one thing to tackle the Standard Oil Company in documents, as I had been doing, quite another thing to meet it face to face. And then would Mr. Rogers “come across”? Could I talk with him? So far my attempts to talk with members of the organization had been failures. I had been met with that formulated chatter used by those who have accepted a creed, a situation, a system, to baffle the investigator trying to find out what it all means.
My nervousness and my skepticism fell away when Mr. Rogers stepped forward in his library to greet me. He was frank and hearty. Plainly he wanted me to be at ease. In that way he knew that he could soon tell whether it was worth his while to spend further time on me or not.
Henry Rogers was a man of about sixty at this time, a striking figure, by all odds the handsomest and most distinguished figure in Wall Street. He was tall, muscular, lithe as an Indian. There was a trace of the early oil adventure in his bearing in spite of his air of authority, his excellent grooming, his manner of the quick-witted naturally adaptable man who has seen much of people. His big head with its high forehead was set off by a heavy shock of beautiful gray hair; his nose was aquiline, sensitive. The mouth, which I fancy must have been flexible, capable both of firm decision and of gay laughter, was concealed by a white drooping moustache. His eyes were large and dark, narrowed a little by caution, capable of blazing as I was to find out, shaded by heavy gray eyebrows giving distinction and force to his face.
I remember thinking as I tried to get my bearings: Now I understand why Mark Twain likes him so much. They are alike even in appearance. They have the bond of early similar experiences—Mark Twain in Nevada, Henry Rogers in the early oil regions.
“When and where did your interest in oil begin?” Mr. Rogers asked as he seated me—a full light on my face, I noticed.
“On the flats and hills of Rouseville,” I told him.
“Of course,” he cried, “of course! Tarbell’s Tank Shops. I knew your father. I could put my finger on the spot where those shops stood.”
We were off. We forgot our serious business and talked of our early days on the Creek. Mr. Rogers told me how the news of the oil excitement had drawn him from his boyhood home in New England, how he had found his way into Rouseville, gone into refining. He had married and put his first thousand dollars into a home on the hillside adjoining ours.
“It was a little white house,” he said, “with a high peaked roof.”
“Oh, I remember it!” I cried. “The prettiest house in the world, I thought it.” It was my first approach to the Gothic arch, my first recognition of beauty in a building.
We reconstructed the geography of our neighborhood, lingering over the charm of the narrow ravine which separated our hillsides, a path on each side.
“Up that path,” Mr. Rogers told me, “I used to carry our washing every Monday morning and go for it every Saturday night. Probably I’ve seen you hunting flowers on your side of the ravine. How beautiful it was! I was never happier.”
Could two strangers, each a little wary of the other, have had a more auspicious beginning for a serious talk? For what followed was serious with moments of strain.
“What are you basing your story on?” he asked finally.
“On documents. I am beginning with the South Improvement Company.”
He broke in to say: “Well, that of course was an outrageous business. That is where the Rockefellers made their big mistake.”
I knew of course that Mr. Rogers had fought that early raid tooth and nail; and I also knew that later he had joined “the conspirators,” as the Oil Region called them, in carrying out point by point the initial program. But I did not throw it up to him.
“Why did you not come to us at the start?” Mr. Rogers asked.
“It was unnecessary. You have written your history; besides, it would have been quite useless,” I told him.
“We’ve changed our policy,” he said. “We are giving out information.” As a matter of fact Mr. Rogers may be regarded, I think, as the first public relations counsel of the Standard Oil Company—the forerunner of Ivy Lee—and I was, so far as I know, the first subject on which the new policy was tried.
In the close to two hours I spent that afternoon with Henry Rogers we went over the history of the oil business. We talked of rebates and pipe lines, independent struggles and failures, the absorption of everything that touched their ambition. He put their side to me, the mightiness of their achievement, the perfection of their service. Also he talked of their trials, the persecution (as he called it) by their rivals, the attack of Lloyd: “I never understood how Harper could have published that book. Why, I knew Harry Harper socially.
“There has always been something,” he said a little ruefully. “Look at things now—Russia and Texas. There seems to be no end of the oil they have there. How can we control it? It looks as if something had the Standard Oil Company by the neck, something bigger than we are.”
The more we talked, the more at home I felt with him and the more I liked him. It was almost like talking with Mr. McClure and Mr. Phillips.
Finally we made a compact. I was to take up with him each case in their history as I came to it. He was to give me documents, figures, explanations, and justifications—anything and everything which would enlarge my understanding and judgment. I realized how big a contribution he would make if he continued to be as frank as he was in this preliminary talk. I made it quite clear to him, however, that while I should welcome anything in the way of information and explanation that he could give, it must be my judgment, not his, which prevailed.
“Of course, Mr. Rogers,” I told him, “I realize that my judgments may not stand in the long run; but I shall have to stand or fall by them.”
“Well,” he said as I rose to go, “I suppose we’ll have to stand it. Would you be willing to come to my office for these talks? It might be a little more convenient.”
“Certainly,” I replied.
He looked a bit surprised.
“Will you talk with Mr. Rockefeller?”
“Certainly,” I said.
“Well,” he said a little doubtfully, “I’ll try to arrange it.”
For two years our bargain was faithfully kept, I usually going to his office at 26 Broadway. That in itself at the start, for one as unfamiliar as I was with the scene and customs of big business, was an adventure. My entrance and exit to Mr. Rogers’ office were carried on with a secrecy which never failed to amuse me. The alert, handsome, businesslike little chaps who received me at the entrance to the Rogers’ suite piloted me unerringly by a route where nobody saw me and I saw nobody into the same small room opening on to a court, and it seemed never the same route. I was not slow in discovering that across the court in the window directly opposite there was always stationed a gentleman whose head seemed to be turned my way whenever I looked across. It may have meant nothing at all. I only record the fact.
The only person besides Mr. Rogers I ever met in those offices was his private secretary, Miss Harrison: a woman spoken of with awe at that date as having a $10,000 salary, one who knew her employer’s business from A to Z and whom he could trust absolutely. She radiated efficiency—business competency. Along with her competency went that gleam of hardness which efficient business women rarely escape. Miss Harrison appeared only on rare occasions when an extra document was needed. She was as impersonal as the chairs in the room.
We discussed in these interviews, with entire frankness, the laws which they had flouted. I could not shock Mr. Rogers with records—not even when I confronted him one day with the testimony he had given on a certain point which he admitted was not according to the facts. He curtly dismissed the subject. “They had no business prying into my private affairs.” As for rebates, “Somebody would have taken them if we had not.”
“But with your strength, Mr. Rogers,” I argued, “you could have forced fair play on the railroads and on your competitors.”
“Ah,” he said, “but there was always somebody without scruples in competition, however small that somebody might be. He might grow.”
There it was, the obsession of the Standard Oil Company, that danger lurked in small as well as great things, that nothing, however trivial, must live outside of its control.