"He was a royal gentleman," said Booker T. Washington to me. "When I was in need, I held H. H. Rogers in reserve until all others failed me, then I went to him and frankly told my needs. He always heard me through, and then told me to state the figure. He never failed me."
Rogers gave with a lavish hand, but few of his benefactions, comparatively, were known. The newspapers have made much of his throwing a hawser to Mark Twain and towing the Humorist off a financial sand-bar. Also, we have heard how he gave Helen Keller to the world; for without the help of H. H. Rogers that wonderful woman would still be like unto the eyeless fish in the Mammoth Cave. As it is, her soul radiates an inward light and science stands uncovered. But there were very many other persons and institutions that received very tangible benefits from the hands of H. H. Rogers.
One method he had of giving help to ambitious young men was to invest in stock in companies that were not quite strong enough financially to weather a gale. And very often these were very bad investments. Had Rogers stuck to Standard Oil his fortune would have been double what it was. But for the money he did not much care—he played the game.
Mr. Rogers was too wise to give to individuals. He knew that mortal tendency referred to by Saint Andre de Ligereaux as "Hubbard's Law," or the Law of Altruistic Injury. This law provides that whenever you do for a person a service which he is able and should do for himself, you work him a wrong instead of a benefit. H. H. Rogers sought to give opportunity, not things. When he invested a million dollars in a tack-factory in Fairhaven, it was with intent to supply employment to every man or woman, or boy or girl, in Fairhaven, who desired work.
He wanted to make poverty inexcusable. Yet he realized that there were cases where age and disease had sapped the person's powers, and to such he gave by stealth, or through friends whom he loved and trusted. Mrs. W. P. Winsor, of Fairhaven, for instance, worked days and months overtime on the bidding of Mr. Rogers, caring for emergency cases, where girls and boys were struggling to get an education and care for aged parents and invalid brothers and sisters; or where Fate had been unkind and God, seemingly, had forgot.
Houses were painted, mortgages were lifted, taxes paid, monuments erected, roadways laid out, books furnished, trees planted, ditches dug, bathrooms installed, swamps drained, bridges built, in hundreds of instances.
This is not philanthropy of a high order, perhaps, but Rogers hated both the words "charitable" and "philanthropic" as applied to himself. All he claimed to be was a businessman who paid his debts and who tried to make others pay theirs. The people he helped were the people he knew, or had known, and they were folks who had helped him. He never forgot a benefit—nor a wrong. He was a very human individual. To give to a person where the account is not balanced by a mutual service is, probably, to add an enemy to your list. You have uncovered the weakness of your man—he is an incompetent—and he will never forgive you for making the discovery.
When H. H. Rogers paid off Mark Twain's indebtedness to the tune of ninety thousand dollars, he did not scratch a poet and find an ingrate. What he actually discovered was a philosopher and a prophet without a grouch.
Somewhere I have said that there were only two men in America who could be safely endowed. One is Luther Burbank and the other Booker T. Washington. These men have both made the world their debtors. They are impersonal men—sort of human media through which Deity is creating. They ask for nothing: they give everything.
Mark Twain belongs in the same select list. The difference between Mark Twain and Luther Burbank is this: Mark hoes his spiritual acreage in bed, while Luther Burbank works in the garden. Luther produces spineless cacti, while Mark gives spineless men a vertebra. Mark makes us laugh, in order that he may make us think.