One proof that H. H. Rogers was a personage and not a person lies in the fact that he was seldom mentioned in moderate language. Lawson passed him a few choice tributes; Ida Tarbell tarred him with her literary stick; Upton Sinclair declared he was this and that; Professor Herren averred that he bore no likeness whatever to Leo Tolstoy—and he might also have added, neither did he resemble Francis of Assisi or Simeon Stylites. Those who did not like him usually pictured him by recounting what he was not. My endeavor in this sketch will be simply to tell what he was.
Henry Huddleston Rogers was a very human individual. He was born in the village of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in the year Eighteen Hundred Forty. He died in New York City in Nineteen Hundred Nine, in his seventieth year. He was the typical American, and his career was the ideal one to which we are always pointing our growing youth. His fault, if fault it may be, was that he succeeded too well. Success is a hard thing to forgive. Personality repels as well as attracts.
The life of H. H. Rogers was the complete American romance. He lived the part—and he looked it. He did not require a make-up. The sub-cortex was not for him, and even the liars never dared to say he was a hypocrite. H. H. Rogers had personality. Men turned to gaze at him on the street; women glanced, and then hastily looked, unnecessarily hard, the other way; children stared.
The man was tall, lithe, strong, graceful, commanding. His jaw was the jaw of courage; his chin meant purpose; his nose symboled intellect, poise and power; his brow spelled brain. He was a handsome man, and he was not wholly unaware of the fact. In him was the pride of the North American Indian, and a little of the reserve of the savage. His silence was always eloquent, and in it was neither stupidity nor vacuity. With friends he was witty, affable, generous, lovable. In business negotiation he was rapid, direct, incisive; or smooth, plausible and convincing—all depending upon the man with whom he was dealing. He often did to others what they were trying to do to him, and he did it first. He had the splendid ability to say "No" when he should, a thing many good men can not do. At such times his mouth would shut like a steel trap and his blue eyes would send the thermometer below zero. No one could play horse with H. H. Rogers. He, himself, was always in the saddle.
The power of the man was more manifest with men than with women, yet he was always admired by women, but more on account of his austerity than his effort to please. He was not given to flattery; yet he was quick to commend. He had in him something of the dash that existed when knighthood was in flower. To the great of the earth, H. H. Rogers never bowed the knee. He never shunned an encounter, save with weakness, greed and stupidity. He met every difficulty, every obstacle, unafraid and unabashed. Even death to him was only a passing event—death for him had no sting, nor the grave a victory. He prepared for his passing, looking after every detail, as he had planned trips to Europe. Jauntily, jokingly, bravely, tremendously busy, keenly alive to beauty and friendship, deciding great issues offhand, facing friend or foe, the moments of relaxation chinked in with religious emotion and a glowing love for humanity—so he lived, and so he died.
An executive has been described as a man who decides quickly, and is sometimes right. H. H. Rogers was the ideal executive. He did not decide until the evidence was all in; he listened, weighed, sifted, sorted and then decided. And when his decision was made the case was closed.
Big men, who are doing big things that have never been done before, act on this basis, otherwise they would be ironed out to the average, and their dreams would evaporate like the morning mist. The one thing about the dreams of H. H. Rogers is that he made them come true.
"Give me neither poverty nor riches," said the philosopher. The parents of H. H. Rogers were neither rich nor poor. They had enough, but there was never a surfeit. They were of straight New England stock. Of his four great-grandfathers, three fought in the Revolutionary War.