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Henry Huttleston Rogers (January 29, 1840 – May 19, 1909) was a United States capitalist, businessman, industrialist, financier, and philanthropist.
Youth and education
Henry Huttleston Rogers was born into a working-class family in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, on January 29, 1840. He was the son of Rowland Rogers, a former ship captain, bookkeeper, and grocer, and Mary Eldredge Huttleston Rogers. Both parents descended from the 'Pilgrims', who arrived in the 17th century aboard the Mayflower . His mother's family earlier had used the spelling "Huddleston" rather than "Huttleston." (Consequently, Henry Rogers' name is often misspelled.)
The family moved to nearby Fairhaven, Massachusetts, a fishing village across the Acushnet River from the great whaling port, New Bedford. Fairhaven is a small seaside town on the south coast of Massachusetts. It borders the Acushnet River to the west and Buzzards Bay to the south. Fairhaven was incorporated in 1812 and was already steeped in history when "Hen" Rogers was just a boy. Fort Phoenix is in Fairhaven. There, during the American Revolution, British troops once stormed the area. Also within sight of the fort, the first naval battle of the American Revolution took place on May 14, 1775.
In the mid 1850s, whaling was already an industry in decline in New England. The emergence of petroleum and later natural gas as a replacement fuel for lighting in the second half of the 19th century caused a much further decline.
Henry Rogers' father was one of the many men of New England who changed from a life on the sea to other work to provide for their families. As a teenager, "Hen" Rogers carried newspapers and he worked in his father's grocery store, making deliveries by wagon. He was only an average student, and was in the first graduating class of the local high school in 1857. Continuing to live with his parents, he hired on with the Fairhaven Branch Railroad, an early precursor of the Old Colony Railroad, as an expressman and brakeman, working for 3–4 years while carefully saving his earnings.
Seeking his fortune
In 1861, 21-year-old Henry pooled his savings of approximately US$600 with a friend, Charles P. Ellis. They set out to western Pennsylvania and its newly discovered oil fields. Borrowing another US$600, the young partners began a small refinery at McClintocksville near Oil City. They named their new enterprise Wamsutta Oil Refinery.
The old Native American name "Wamsutta" was apparently selected in honor of their hometown area of New England, where Wamsutta Company in nearby New Bedford had opened in 1846, and was a major employer. The Wamsutta Company was the first of many textile mills that gradually came to supplant whaling as the principal employer in New Bedford.
Rogers and Ellis and their tiny refinery made US$30,000 their first year. This amount was more than three entire whaling ship trips from back home could hope to earn during an average voyage of more than a year's duration. Of course, he was regarded as very successful when Rogers returned home to Fairhaven for a short vacation the next year.
Abbie, Henry and Anne in Pennsylvania
While vacationing in Fairhaven in 1862, Rogers married his childhood sweetheart, Abbie Palmer Gifford, who was also of Mayflower lineage. She returned with him to the oil fields where they lived in a one-room shack along Oil Creek where her young husband and Ellis worked the Wamsutta Oil Refinery. While they lived in Pennsylvania, their first daughter, Anne, was born in 1865.
In Pennsylvania, Rogers was introduced to Charles Pratt (1830–91). Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, Pratt had been one of eleven children. His father, Asa Pratt, was a carpenter. Of modest means, he spent three winters as a student at Wesleyan Academy, and is said to have lived on a dollar a week at times. In nearby Boston, Massachusetts, Pratt joined a company specializing in paints and whale oil products. In 1850 or 1851, he came to New York City, where he worked for a similar company handling paint and oil.
Pratt was also a pioneer of the natural oil industry, and established his kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York. Pratt's product later gave rise to the slogan, "The holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil". He also later founded the Pratt Institute.
When Pratt met Rogers at McClintocksville on a business trip, he already knew Charles Ellis, having earlier bought whale oil from him back east in Fairhaven. Although Ellis and Rogers had no wells and were dependent upon purchasing crude oil to refine and sell to Pratt, the two young men agreed to sell the entire output of their small Wamsutta refinery to Pratt's company at a fixed price. This worked well at first. Then, a few months later, crude oil prices suddenly increased due to manipulation by speculators. The young entrepreneurs struggled to try to live up to their contract with Pratt, but soon their surplus was wiped out. Before long, they were heavily in debt to Pratt.
Charles Ellis gave up, but in 1866, Henry Rogers went to Pratt in New York and told him he would take personal responsibility for the entire debt. This so impressed Pratt that he immediately hired him for his own organization.
Moving to New York, oil refining
Pratt made Rogers foreman of his Brooklyn refinery, with a promise of a partnership if sales ran over fifty thousand dollars a year. Henry, Abbie, and young Anne moved to Brooklyn. The Rogers family continued to live frugally and he worked very hard. Abbie brought his meals to the "works," and often he would sleep but three hours a night rolled up in a blanket by the side of a still. Rogers moved steadily from foreman to manager, and then superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery.
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 light oil similar to kerosene, from crude oil. He was granted U.S. Patent # 120,539 on October 31, 1871.
Fighting, joining Rockefeller
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) and the infamous South Improvement Company. South Improvement was basically a scheme to obtain secret favorable net rates from Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and other railroads through secret rebates. The unfairness of the scheme outraged many independent oil producers and owners of refineries far and new alike.
The opposition among the New York refiners was led by Henry Rogers. 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. Their arrival in the oil regions was a matter of great satisfaction to the local oil workers. 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. The independent oil men were most exultant, but their joy was to be short-lived. Rockefeller and his associates were busy trying another approach, which frequently included buying-up opposing interests.
In 1874, Rockefeller approached Pratt with his plans of cooperation and consolidation. Pratt talked it over with Rogers, and they decided that the combination would benefit them. Rogers formulated terms, which guaranteed financial security and jobs for Pratt and himself. John D. Rockefeller quietly accepted the offer on Rogers' exact terms. Charles Pratt and Company (including Astral Oil) was one of the important independent refiners to become part of the Standard Oil Trust. Pratt's son, Charles Millard Pratt (1858 to 1913), became Corporate Secretary of Standard Oil.
Standard Oil Trust: Rogers in contradictory roles
Around 1874, the Pratt & Company oil interests, including Rogers who helped negotiate the deal, had joined John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil organization. By 1890, Rogers had become one of the key men, a vice president and chairman of its operating committee. His later interviews with investigative journalist Ida M. Tarbell beginning in 1902 would later help bring what was by then also known as the Standard Oil Trust under additional regulatory control.
Typical of his seemingly dualist nature, Rogers both helped build and operate Standard Oil, and through his interviews with Tarbell, he (perhaps unintentionally) helped bring it under better control in the public interest.
Building Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller
Standard Oil was an oil refining conglomerate whose predecessor companies were founded by marketeer John D. Rockefeller, chemist Samuel Andrews, and other partners beginning in 1863. Borrowing heavily to expand his business, he drew five big refineries including the business concern of Henry Morrison Flagler into one firm, Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler. By 1868, what was to become Standard Oil was the world's l
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