Until within sixty years, the world thought that petroleum was one simple substance. Now we find it is a thousand, mixed and fused and blended in the crucible of Time.
Science sifts, separates, dissolves, analyzes, classifies. The perfumes gathered by the tendrils of violet and rose, 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?"