Chapter X: Part 10

In the Fall of Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, when he went back to Fairhaven to claim his bride, Rogers was regarded as a rich man. His cruise to Pennsylvania had netted him as much as half a dozen whales. The bride and groom returned at once to Pennsylvania and the simple life. Henry and Abbie lived in a one-roomed shack on the banks of Oil Creek. It was love in a cottage all right, with an absolute lack of everything that is supposed to make up civilization. It wasn't exactly hardship, for nothing is really hardship to lovers in their twenties but separation. Still they thought, talked and dreamed of the bluefish, the blueberries, the blue waters, and the sea-breezes of Fairhaven.

About this time, Charles Pratt of Brooklyn, a dealer and refiner of oils, appeared upon the horizon. Pratt had bought whale-oil of Ellis in Fairhaven. Pratt now contracted for the entire output of Rogers and Ellis at a fixed price. All went well for a few months, when crude suddenly took a skyward turn, owing to the manipulation of speculators. Rogers and Ellis had no wells and were at the mercy of the wolves. They struggled on, trying to live up to their contract with Pratt, but soon their surplus was wiped out, and they found themselves in debt to Pratt to the tune of several thousand dollars.

Rogers went on to New York and saw Pratt, personally assuming the obligation of taking care of the deficit. Ellis disappeared in the mist.

The manly ways of Rogers so impressed Pratt that he decided he needed just such a man in his business. A bargain was struck, and Rogers went to work for Pratt. The first task of young Rogers was to go to Pennsylvania and straighten out the affairs of the Pennsylvania Salt Company, of which Pratt was chief owner. The work was so well done that Pratt made Rogers foreman of his Brooklyn refinery.

It was twenty-five dollars a week, with a promise of a partnership if sales ran over fifty thousand dollars a year.

How Henry Rogers moved steadily from foreman to manager, and then superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery, is one of the fairy-tales of America. Pratt finally gave Rogers an interest in the business, and Rogers got along on his twenty-five dollars a week, although the books showed he was making ten thousand dollars a year. He worked like a pack-mule. His wife brought his meals to the "works," and often he would sleep but three hours a night, as he could snatch the time, rolled up in a blanket by the side of a still.

Then comes John D. Rockefeller from Cleveland, with his plans of co-operation and consolidation. Pratt talked it over with Rogers, and they decided that the combination would steady the commercial sails and give ballast to the ship. They named their own terms. The Rockefellers sneezed, and then coughed. The next day John D. Rockefeller came back and quietly accepted the offer exactly as Rogers had formulated it.

The terms were stiff, but Rockefeller, a few years later, got even with the slightly arrogant Rogers by passing him this: "I would have paid you and Pratt twice as much if you had demanded it." "Which you are perfectly safe in saying now--since the past is a dry hole." And they shook hands solemnly. Rockefeller ordered a glass of milk and Rogers took ginger-ale.

Rockefeller was only one year older than Rogers, but seemed twenty. John D. Rockefeller was always old and always discreet; he never lost his temper; he was warranted non-explosive from childhood. Henry Rogers at times was spiritual benzine.

* * * * *

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two there were twenty-six separate oil-refineries in Cleveland. Refined oil sold to the consumer for twenty cents a gallon; and much of it was of an unsafe and uncertain quality--it was what you might call erratic. Some of the refineries were poorly equipped, and fire was a factor that made the owners sit up nights when they should have been asleep. Insurance was out of the question.

One of these concerns was the Acme Oil Company, of which John D. Archbold was President. Its capital was forty thousand dollars, some of which had been paid in, in cash. William Rockefeller was at the head of still another company; and John D. Rockefeller, brother of William, and two years older, had an interest in three more concerns.

Outbidding each other for supplies, hiring each other's men, with a production made up of a multiplicity of grades, made the business one of chaotic uncertainty. The rule was "dog eat dog."

Then it was that John D. Rockefeller conceived the idea of combining all the companies in Cleveland and as many elsewhere as possible, under the name of The Standard Oil Company. The corporation was duly formed with a capital of one million dollars. The Pratt Oil Company, with principal works in Brooklyn, but a branch in Cleveland, was one of the twenty concerns that were absorbed. The stocks of the various concerns were taken up and paid for in Standard Oil certificates.

And so it happened that Henry H. Rogers, aged thirty-two, found himself worth a hundred thousand dollars, not in cash, but in shares that were supposed to be worth par, and should pay, if rightly managed, seven or eight per cent. He was one of the directors in the new company.

It was an enviable position for any young man. Of course there were the wiseheimers then as now, and statements were made that The Pratt Oil Company had been pushed to the wall, and would shortly have its neck wrung by John D. Rockefeller and have to start all over. But these prophets knew neither Rockefeller nor Rogers, and much less the resources and wants of the world. In very truth, neither the brothers Rockefeller, Rogers, nor Archbold, nor any one of that score of men who formed The Standard Oil Company, ever anticipated, even in their wildest dreams, the possibilities in the business. The growth of America in men and money has been a thing unguessed and unprophesied. Thomas Jefferson seemed to have had a more prophetic eye than any one else, but he never imagined the railroads, pipe-lines, sky-scrapers, iron steamships, telegraphs, telephones, nor the use of electricity and concrete. He did, however, see our public-school system, and he said that "by the year Nineteen Hundred the United States will have a population of fifty million people." This is why he made that real-estate deal with Napoleon, which most Americans of the time thought a bad bargain. Rogers had great hope and an exuberant imagination, but the most he saw for himself was an income of five thousand dollars a year, and a good house, unencumbered, with a library and a guest-room. In addition, he expected to own a horse and buggy. He would take care of the horse himself, and wash the buggy, also grease the axles. In fact, his thoughts were on flowers, books, education, and on cultivating his mental acreage.

John D. Rockefeller was sorely beset by business burdens. The Standard Oil Company had moved its headquarters to New York City, where its business was largely exporting. The brothers Rockefeller found themselves swamped under a mass of detail. Power flows to the men who can shoulder it, and burdens go to those who can carry them.

Here was a business without precedent, and all growing beyond human thought. To meet the issues as they arise the men at the head must grow with the business.

Rogers could make decisions, and he had strength like silken fiber. He could bend, but never break. His health was perfect; his mind was fluid; he was alive and alert to all new methods and plans; he had great good-cheer, and was of a kind to meet men and mold them. He set a pace which only the very strong could follow, but which inspired all. John D. Rockefeller worked himself to a physical finish, twenty years ago; and his mantle fell by divine right on "H. H." with John D. Archbold as understudy.

Since John D. Rockefeller slipped out from under the burden of active management of The Standard Oil Company, about the year Eighteen Hundred Eighty-eight, the business has more than quadrupled.

John D. Rockefeller never got mad, and Rogers and Archbold made it a rule never to get mad at the same time. When the stress and strife began to cause Rockefeller to lose his hair and his appetite, he once pulled down his long upper lip and placidly bewailed his inability to take a vacation. Like many another good man, he thought his presence was a necessity to the business.

"Go on with you," said H. H.; "am I not here? Then there is Archbold--he is always Johnny on the spot." Rockefeller smiled a sphinx-like smile, as near as he ever came to indulging in a laugh, and mosied out of the room. That night he went up to the Catskills. The next day a telegram came from Rockefeller addressed to "Johnny-on-the-Spot, Twenty-six Broadway." The message was carried directly to John D. Archbold, without question, and duly receipted for.

Since then the phrase has become almost a classic; but few people there be who know that it was Rogers who launched it, or who generally are aware that the original charter member of the On-the-Spot Club was Johnny Archbold.

* * * * *

H. H. Rogers was a trail-maker, and as a matter of course was not understanded of the people who hug close to the friendly backlog and talk of other days and the times that were.

Rogers was an economist--perhaps the greatest economist of his time. And an economist deals with conditions, not theories; facts, not fancies.

A few years ago, all retail grocers sold kerosene. The kerosene-can with its spud on the spout was a household sign. Moreover, we not only had kerosene in the can, but we had it on the loaf of bread, and on almost everything that came from the grocer's. For, if the can did not leak, it sweat, and the oil of gladness was on the hands and clothes of the clerk. The grocers lifted no howl when the handling of kerosene was taken out of their hands. In truth, they were never so happy, as kerosene was hazardous to handle and entailed little profit--the stuff was that cheap! Besides that, a barrel of forty-two gallons measured out to the user about thirty-eight gallons. Loaded into cars, bumped out, lying in the sun on station-platforms, it always and forever hunted the crevices. Schemes were devised to line the inside of barrels with rosin, but always the stuff stole forth to freedom. Freight, cartage, leakage, cooperage and return of barrels meant loss of temper, trade and dolodocci. Realizing all these things, H. H. Rogers, aided by his able major-general, John D. Archbold, revolutionized the trade.

The man who now handles your kerosene does not handle your sugar. He is a specialist.

In every town in America of more than one thousand people is a Standard Oil agency. The oil is delivered from tank-cars into iron tanks. From there it is piped into tank-wagons. This wagon comes to your door, and the gentlemanly agent sees that your little household tank is kept filled. All you have to do is to turn a faucet. Aye, in this pleasant village of East Aurora is a Standard Oil agent who will fill your lamp and trim the wick, provided you buy your lamps, chimneys and wicks of him.

And this service is Standard Oil Service--it extends from Halifax to San Diego; from New Orleans to Hudson Bay. In very truth, it covers the world.

This service, with prohibition in the South, has ruined the cooper's trade, the trade that introduced H. M. Flagler into the Standard Oil Company.

The investment in cooperage used in the oil business has shrunk from a hundred millions to less than five millions, while the traffic in oil has doubled.

And the germ of this service to the consumer came from the time when Henry Rogers worked a grocery route for a co-operative concern that cut out the expensive middleman and instead focused on a faultless service to the consumer.

* * * * *

The name "petroleum" is Latin. The word has been in use since the time of Pliny, who lived neighbor to Paul in Rome, when the Apostle abided in his own hired house, awaiting trial under an indictment for saying things about the Established Religion.

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?"

To lift out samples here and there and hold them up does not give us the man, any more than a sample brick gives you a view of the house. And viewing the life of Rogers for years, from the time he saw the light of a whale-oil lamp in Fairhaven, to the man as we behold him now, we must acknowledge his initiative and his power. He gave profitable work to millions. He directly made homes and comforts possible for thousands upon thousands. He helped the young, without number, to find themselves in their work and at their work. In a material way he added vast millions to the wealth of the world by the utilization of products which were considered worthless.

He gloried in the fresh air, in the blasts of Winter, or in the zephyrs of Spring. The expanse of heaving, tossing ice was just as beautiful to him as the smooth flow of Hendrick Hudson's waters, as they hasten to the sea.

The storied "Twenty-six Broadway" is no den of ogres, no gambling-resort of dark and devious ways. It is simply an office-building, full of busy men and women--workers who waste neither time nor money. You will find there no figureheads, no gold lace, no pomps and ceremonies. If you have business there, you locate your man without challenge. All is free, open, simple and direct.

On the top floor is a restaurant, where all lunch in a common, fraternal way, jolly and jocund, as becomes men who carry big burdens.

The place is democratic to a fault, for the controlling spirits of Twenty-six Broadway are men who have come by a rocky road, having conquered great difficulties, overcome great obstacles, and while often thirsting for human sympathy have nevertheless been able to do without it.

Success is apt to sour, for it begets an opposition that is often cruel and unjust. Reorganization gives the demagogue his chance; and often his literary lyddite strikes close.

But Rogers was great enough to know that the penalty of success must be paid. He took his medicine, and smiled.

* * * * *

Time was when a millionaire was a man worth a million dollars. But that day is past.

Next, a millionaire was a man who made a million dollars a year. That, too, is obsolete. The millionaire now is the man who spends a million dollars a year. In this new and select class, a class which does not exist outside of America, H. H. Rogers was a charter member.

"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.

The last time I saw H. H. Rogers was in his office at Twenty-six Broadway. Out through a half-doorway, leading into a private conference-room, I saw a man stretched out on a sofa asleep. A great shock of white hair spread out over the pillow that held his head; and Huck Finn snores of peace, in rhythmic measures, filled the room.

Mr. Rogers noticed my glance in the direction of the Morpheus music. He smiled and said, "It's only Mark--he's taking a little well-earned rest--he was born tired, you know."

If Mark Twain were not a rich man himself, rich in mines of truth, fields of uncut fun, and argosies sailing great spiritual seas, coming into port laden with commonsense, he would long since have turned on his benefactor and nailed his hide on the barn-door of obliquity. As it is, Mark takes his own, just as Socrates did from Mr. and Mrs. Pericles. Aye, or as did Bronson Alcott, who once ran his wheelbarrow into the well-kept garden of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Orphic One was loading up with potatoes, peas, beans and one big yellow pumpkin, when he glanced around and saw the man who wrote "Self-Reliance" gazing at him seriously and steadily over the garden-wall. The father of the author of "Little Women" winced, but bracing up, gave back stare for stare, and in a voice flavored with resentment and defiance said, "I need them!"

And the owner of the garden grew abashed before that virtuous gaze, murmured apologies, and retreated in good order.

And Mark Twain used to explain it thus: "You see, it is like this: Rogers furnishes the plans and I foot the bills." And this was all there was about it. Only a big man can take his own without abasement.

Mark Twain has made two grins grow where there was only a growl before. I don't care where he gets his vegetables--nor where he takes a well-earned nap--and neither does he.

* * * * *

The average millionaire believes in education, because he has heard the commodity highly recommended in the newspapers. Usually, he is a man who has not had college advantages, and so he is filled with the fallacy that he has dropped something out of his life. We idealize the things that are not ours. H. H. Rogers was an exception--he was at home in any company. He took little on faith. He analyzed things for himself. And his opinion was that the old-line colleges tended to destroy individuality and smother initiative. He believed that the High School was the key to the situation, and to carry the youth beyond this was to run the risk of working his ruin. "The boy who leaves the High School at seventeen, and enters actual business, stands a much better chance of success than does the youth who comes out of college at twenty-one, with the world yet before him," he said.

He himself was one of the first class that graduated from the old Fairhaven Grammar School. He realized that his success in life came largely from the mental ammunition that he had gotten there, and from the fact that he made a quick use of his knowledge. Yet he realized that the old Fairhaven High or Grammar School was not a model institution. "It has a maximum of discipline and a minimum of inspiration," he used to say. The changing order of education found a quick response in his heart. He never brooded over his lack of advantages. On the other hand, he used often to refer to the fact that his childhood was ideal. But all around he saw children whose surroundings were not ideal, and these he longed to benefit and bless.

And so in Eighteen Hundred Eighty, when he was forty years of age, he built a Grammar Manual-Training School and presented it to the town. It was called the Rogers School. Such a gift to a town is enough to work the local immortality of the giver. But the end was not yet. In a few years, Rogers--or Mrs. Rogers, to be exact--presented to the village a Town Hall, beautiful and complete, at a cost of something over two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Next came the Millicent Public Library, in memory of a beloved daughter.

When his mother passed away, as a memorial to her he built a church and presented it to the Unitarian denomination. It is probably the most complete and artistic church in America. Its cost was a million dollars.

The Fairhaven Waterworks System was a present from Mr. Rogers. And lastly was the Fairhaven High School, as fair and fine an edifice, and as completely equipped, as genius married to money could supply. The only rival this school has in America is the Stout High School in Menominee, Wisconsin, which is also the gift of an individual. No municipality in the world has ever erected and completed so good a school--the taxpayers would not allow it. Into our schoolteaching go the cheese-paring policies of the average villager. In truth, George Bernard Shaw avers that we are a nation of villagers.

The big deeds of the world are always done by individuals. One-man power is the only thing that counts. The altruistic millionaire is a necessity of progress--he does magnificent things, which the many will not and can not do. So we find the model town of Fairhaven molded and fashioned by her First Citizen. Everywhere are the marks of his personality, and the tangible signs of his good taste.

The only political office to which Henry H. Rogers ever aspired was that of Street Commissioner of Fairhaven. He filled the office to the satisfaction of his constituents, and drew his stipend of three dollars a day for several years. Good roads was his hobby. Next to this came tree-planting and flowers. His dream was to have the earth transformed into a vast flower-garden and park and given to the people.

His last item of public work was an object-lesson as to what the engineering skill of man can do. He took a great bog or swamp that lay to the north of the village and was used as a village dumping-ground. He drained this tract, filled in with gravel, and then earth, and transformed it into a public park of marvelous beauty.

The last great business effort of H. H. Rogers was the building of the Virginian Railroad. This road connects the great coal-fields of West Virginia with tidewater. The route is four hundred forty-three miles long. "By this line a thousand million dollars' worth of coal is made available to the world," said a great engineer to me. And then he added, "It will take twenty years, however, to prove fully the truth of H. H. Rogers' prophetic vision." This was the herculean task of a man in his thirties--not for one approaching his seventieth milestone.

But Rogers built this road alone. He constructed and equipped it in a style so complete that it has set a pace in railroading. You who know the history of railroads realize that the first thing is to get the line through. Two streaks of rust, a teakettle, and a right of way make a railroad. This allows you to list your bonds. But H. H. Rogers had neither bonds nor stock for sale. What other man ever put forty millions of money and his lifeblood into a railroad? Was the work worth the price? It were vain to ask. The work is done, the man is dead; and that his death was hastened by the work no one can doubt.

Rogers had the invincible heart of youth. He died as he had lived, always and forever in the thick of the fight. He had that American trinity of virtues, pluck, push and perseverance. Courage, endurance, energy, initiative, ambition, industry, good-cheer, sympathy and wonderful executive ability were his attributes.

JAMES J. HILL

The armed fleets of an enemy approaching our harbors would be no
more alarming than the relentless advance of a day when we shall
have neither sufficient food nor the means to purchase it for our
population. The farmers of the nation must save it in the future,
just as they built its greatness in the past.

--_James J. Hill_

James Jerome Hill has one credential, at least, to greatness--he was born in a log house. But let the painful fact be stated at once, without apology, that he could never be President of the United States, because this historic log house was situated in Canada. The exact spot is about three miles from the village of Rockwood, Wellington County, Ontario.

Rockwood is seven miles east of Guelph, forty from Toronto, and a hundred from Buffalo.

Mr. Hill well remembers his first visit to Toronto. He went with his father, with a load of farm produce. It took two days to go and two to return, and for their load they got the princely sum of seven dollars, with which they counted themselves rich.

James Hill, the father of James Jerome Hill, was a North of Ireland man; his wife was Anne Dunbar, good and Scotch. I saw a portrait of Anne Dunbar Hill in Mr. Hill's residence at Saint Paul, and was also shown the daguerreotype from which it was painted. It shows a woman of decided personality, strong in feature, frank, fearless, honest, sane and poised. The dress reveals the columnar neck that goes only with superb bodily vigor--the nose is large, the chin firm, the mouth strong. She looks like a Spartan, save for the pensive eyes that gaze upon a world from which she has passed, hungry and wistful. The woman certainly had ambition and aspiration which were unsatisfied.

James J. Hill is the son of his mother. His form, features, mental characteristics and ambition are the endowment of mother to son.

It was a tough old farm, then as now. As I tramped across its undulating acres, a week ago, and saw the stone fences and the piles of glacial drift that Jim Hill's hands helped pick up, I thought of the poverty of the situation when no railroad passed that way, and wheat was twenty cents a bushel, and pork one cent a pound--all for lack of a market!

Jim Hill as a boy fought the battle of life with ax, hoe, maul, adz, shovel, pick, mattock, drawshave, rake and pitchfork. Wool was carded and spun and woven by hand. The grist was carried to the mill on horseback, or if the roads were bad, on the farmer's back. All this pioneer experience came to James J. Hill as a necessary part of his education.

Life in Canada West in the Forties was essentially the same as life in Western New York at the same period. The country was a forest, traversed with swamps and sink-holes, on which roads were built by laying down long logs and across these, small logs. This formed the classic corduroy road. When ten years of age James Hill contracted to build a mile of corduroy road, between his father's farm and the village. For this labor his father promised him a two-year-old colt. The boy built the road all right. It took him six months, but the grades were easy and the curves so-so. The Tom Sawyer plan came in handy, otherwise it is probable there would have been a default on the time-limit. And Jim got the colt. He rode the animal for half a year, back and forth all Winter from the farm to the village, where he attended the famous Rockwood Academy. Then some one to whom the elder Hill was indebted, signified a desire for the colt, and the father turned the horse over to the creditor. When little Jim went out and found that the stall was empty he had a good cry, all by himself.

Three years after this, when his father died, he cried again, and that was the last time he ever wept over any of his own troubles.

* * * * *

From his seventh to his fourteenth year young Jim Hill attended the Rockford Academy. This "Academy" had about thirty boarding boys and a dozen day-scholars. Jim Hill was a "day-scholar," and the pride of the master. The boy was studious, appreciative, grateful. He wasn't so awfully clever, but he was true.

The master of the Academy was Professor William Wetherald, stern to view, but very gentle of heart. His wife was of the family of Balls. The Ball family moved from Virginia two generations before, to Western New York, and then when the Revolutionary War was on, slid over to Ontario for political reasons best known to themselves.

There was quite an emigration to Canada about then, including those worthy Mohawk Indians whose descendants, including Longboat the runner and the Princess Viroqua, are now to be found in the neighborhood of Brantford.

And certainly the Indians were wise, for Canada has treated the red brother with a degree of fairness quite unknown on this side of the line. As for the Tories--but what's the need of arguing!

The Balls trace to the same family that produced Mary Ball, and Mary Ball was the mother of George Washington--so tangled is this web of pedigree! And George Washington, be it known, got his genius from his mother, not from the tribe of Washington.

William Wetherald died at an advanced age--near ninety, I believe--only a short time ago. It is customary for a teacher to prophesy--after the pupil has arrived--and declare, "What did I tell you!" Wetherald looked after young Hill at school with almost a father's affection, and prophesied for him great things--only the "great things" were to be in the realms of science, oratory and literature.

Along about Eighteen Hundred Eighty-eight, when James J. Hill was getting his feet well planted on the earth, he sent for his old teacher to come to Saint Paul. Wetherald spent several weeks there, riding over the Hill roads in a private car, and discussing old times with the owner of the car and the railroad.

Mr. Hill insisted that Wetherald should remain and teach the Hill children, but Fate said otherwise. There is no doubt that Hill's love of books, art, natural history, and his habit of independent thought were largely fixed in his nature through the influence of this fine Friend, teacher of children. The Quaker listens for the "Voice," and then acts without hunting up precedents. In other words, he does the things he wants to do. Mr. Hill's long hair and full beard form a sort of unconscious tribute to Wetherald. In fact, let James J. Hill wear a dusty miller's suit and a wide-brimmed hat and you get the true type of "Hicksite."

James J. Hill is a score of men in one, as every great man is. But when the kindly, philosophic, paternal and altruistic "Yim Hill" is in the saddle, you will see the significance of this story: Just after Mr. Hill had gotten possession of the Burlington, he made a trip over the road. A rear-end flagman at Galesburg was boasting to some of his mates about how he had gone over the division with the new "boss of the ranch."

Here a listener puts in a question, thus: "What kind of a lookin' fellow is th' ol' man?" And he of the red lantern and torpedoes scratches his head, and explains, "Well, you see, it's like this: He looks like Jesus Christ, only he's heavier set!"

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The father of James J. Hill was a worthy man, with a good hold on the simple virtues, a weak chin and a cosmos of slaty gray.

His only claim to immortality lies in the fact that he was the father of his son. Pneumonia took him, as it often does the physically strong, and he passed out before he had reached his prime. "Death is the most joyfullest thing in life," said Thomas Carlyle to Milburn, the blind preacher, "when it transfers responsibility to those big enough to shoulder it, for that's the only way you can make a man."

I once saw a boy of fourteen on the prairies of Kansas transformed into a man, between the rising of the sun and its setting. His father was crushed beneath a wagon that sluiced and toppled in crossing a gully. The hub caught the poor man square on the chest, and after we got him out he never spoke. Six children and the mother were left, the oldest boy being fourteen. A grave was dug there on the prairie the next day, and this boy of fourteen patted down the earth over his father's grave, with the back of a spade. He then hitched up the horses, rounded up the cattle, and headed the cavalcade for the West. He was a man, and in after-life he proved himself one.

On the death of his father, Jim Hill's schooldays were done. His aptitude in mathematics, his ability to keep accounts, and his general disposition to make himself useful secured him a place in the village store, which was also the Post-Office. His pay was one dollar a week. This training in the country store proved of great value, just as it did in the case of H. H. Rogers, George Peabody and so many other men of mark.

It is one thing to get a job, and another to hold it. Jim Hill held his job, and his salary was raised before the end of the first year to three dollars a week.

On the strength of this prosperity, the struggle on the old farm with its stumps, boulders and mortgage was given up and the widow moved her little brood to town. The log house on the rambling main street of the village is now pointed out to visitors. Here the mother sewed for neighbors, took in washing, made garden, and with the help of her boy Jim, grew happy and fairly prosperous: more prosperous than the family had ever been. Thus matters went on until Jim was in his eighteenth year, when the wanderlust got hold of the young man. His mother saw it coming and being wise did not apply the brake.

Man is a migrating animal. To sit still and stay in one place is to vegetate.

Jim with twenty dollars in his pocket started for Toronto on foot with a bundle on a stick, followed by the prayers of his mother, the gaping wonder of the children, and the blessing of Professor Wetherald. Toronto was interesting, but too near home to think of as a permanent stopping-place. A leaky little steamer ran over to Fort Niagara every other day. Jim took passage, reached the foreign shore, walked up to Niagara Falls, and the next day tramped on to Buffalo. This was in the wonderful year of Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, the year the Republican Party was born at Bloomington, Illinois. It was a time of unrest, of a healthy discontent and goodly prosperity, for things were in motion. The docks at Buffalo were all a-bustle with emigrants going West--forever West.

Jim Hill, aged eighteen, strong, healthy, farmer boy, lumberman, clerk, shipped as roustabout on a schooner bound for Chicago. His pay for the round trip was to be ten dollars and board, the money payable when the boat got back to Buffalo. If he left the ship at Chicago, he was to get no cash.

The boat reached Chicago in ten days. It was a great trip--full of mild adventure and lots of things that would have surprised the folks at Rockford. Jim got a job on the docks as checker-off, or understudy to a freight-clerk. The pay was a dollar a day. He now sent his original twenty dollars back to his mother to prove to her that he was prosperous and money was but a bagatelle and a burden. A month, and he had joined the ever-moving westward tide. He was headed for California, the land of shining nuggets and rainbow hopes. He reached Rock Island, and saw a sign out at a sawmill, "Men Wanted." He knew the business and was given work on sight. In a week his mathematics came in handy and he was handed a lumber-rule and a blank-book.

Mr. Hill yet recalls his first sight of a Mississippi River steamboat coming into Davenport. The tall smokestacks belching fire, the graceful, swanlike motion, the marvelous beauty of the superstructure, the wonderful letter "D" in gold, or something that looked like gold, swung between the stacks! It was just dusk, and as the boat glided in toward the shore, a big torch was set ablaze, the gang-plank was run out to the weird song of the colored deckhands, and miracle and fairyland arrived. For a month whenever a steamboat blew its siren whistle, Jim was on the wharf, open-mouthed, gaping, wondering, admiring. One day he could stand it no longer. He threw up his job and took passage on the sailing palace, "Molly Devine," for Dubuque. Here he changed boats, and boarded a smaller vessel, a stern-wheeler, deck passage for Saint Paul, a point which seemed to the young man somewhere near the North Pole.

He was going to get his fill of steamboat-riding for once at least. It was his intention to remain at Saint Paul a couple of days, see Saint Anthony's Falls and Minnehaha, and then take the same boat back down the river. But something happened that induced him to change his plans.

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The two days on the steamboat had wearied Jim. The prenatal Scotch idea of industry was upon him, and conscience had begun to squirm. He applied for work as soon as he walked out on the levee. The place was the office of the steamboat company. He stated in an offhand way that he had had experience on the water-front in Chicago, Rock Island and Davenport.

He was hired on the spot as shipping-clerk with the gratuitous remark, "If you haven't sense enough to figure, you are surely strong enough to hustle."

The agents of the steamboat-line were J. W. Bass and Company. Hill got along all right. He was day-clerk or night-clerk, just as the boats came in. And it is wonderful how steamboats on the Mississippi usually arrive at about two o'clock in the morning.

Jim slept on a cot in the office, so as to be on hand when a boat arrived and to help unload. It was the duty of the shipping-clerk to check off the freight as it was brought ashore. Also, it was the law of steamboating that clerks took their meals on board the boat, if they were helping to unload her. Now, as Jim had food and a place to sleep when a Dubuque and Saint Paul steamboat was tied at the levee, all the meals he had to buy were those when no steamboat was in sight.

Being essentially Scotch, Jim managed to time his meals so as to last over. And sometimes if a boat was stuck on a sand-bar he did the MacFadden act for a whole day. It became a sort of joke in the office, and we hear of Mr. Bass, the agent, shouting up to the pilot-house of a steamboat, "Avast there, sir, for five minutes until Jim Hill stows his hold."

A part of Jim's work was to get wood for fuel for the boats. This was quite a business in itself. He once got a big lot of fuel and proudly piled it on the levee, mountain-high, in anticipation of several steamboats. A freshet came one night, the river rose and carried off every stick, so that when the "Mary Ann" arrived there was no fuel. "Wait until Jim Hill eats his breakfast and perhaps he'll get an armful of wood for us," shouted down the captain in derision. After that, Jim managed to load up a flatboat or two, and always had a little wood in reserve.

The young man was now fairly launched in business. The mystery of manifesting, billing, collecting; the matter of "shorts," "overs," and figuring damages were to him familiar.

The Territory of Minnesota was organized in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, and did not become a State until Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight. In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven there was not a single mile of railway in the Territory. But in that year, Congress authorized the Territory to give alternate sections of public lands to any company that would build a railway through them. Through this stimulus, in the latter part of Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven, there was organized a company with the ambitious title of "The Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company." Its line extended from the steamboat-wharf in Saint Paul to the Falls of Saint Anthony. There were ten miles of track, including sidings, one engine, two box cars and a dozen flat cars for logs.

The railroad didn't seem to thrive. There was no paying passenger traffic to speak of. Passengers got aboard all right, but on being pressed for fares they felt insulted and jumped off, just as you would now if you got a ride with a farmer and he asked you to pay. Possibly, a rudimentary disinclination to pay fare still remains in most of us, like the hereditary indisposition of the Irish to pay rent.

No one ever thought it possible that a railroad could compete with a steamboat, and it was a long time after this that Commodore Vanderbilt had the temerity to build a railroad along the banks of the Hudson and be called a lunatic.

So there being no passenger traffic, the farmers carrying their grist to mill, and the logs being floated down the river to the mills, the railroad was in a bad way. Something had to be done, so the Minnesota and Pacific was reorganized, and a new road, the Saint Paul and Pacific, bought it out, with all its land grants. The intent of the new road was to strike right up into the woods for ten or twenty miles above Minneapolis and bring down logs that otherwise would have to be hauled to the river. For a time this road paid, with the sale of the odd-numbered sections of land that went with it.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-seven, James J. Hill became the Saint Paul agent of this railroad. He had quit his job with J. W. Bass, to become agent for the Northwestern Packet Line; and as the railroad ran right to his door he found it easy to serve both the steamboat company and the railroad.

You will often hear people tell how James J. Hill began his railroad career as a station-agent, but it must be remembered that he was a station-agent, plus. The agents of steamboat-lines in those days were usually merchants or men who were financially responsible. And James J. Hill became the Saint Paul agent of the Saint Paul and Pacific because he was a man of resource, with ability to get business for the railroad.

As the extraordinary part of Mr. Hill's career did not begin until he was forty years of age, our romantic friends who write of him often picture him as a failure up to that time. The fact is, he was making head and gathering gear right along. These twenty-two years, up to the time that Mr. Hill became a railroad-owner, were years of intense activity.

* * * * *

While yet a clerk for J. W. Bass and Company, Mr. Hill made the acquaintance of Norman Kittson, as picturesque a figure as ever wore a coonskin cap, and evolved from this to all the refinements of Piccadilly, only to discard these and return to the Simple Life.

Kittson had been connected with the Hudson Bay Company. When Hill met him, he was running a fast express to Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, going over the route with ox-carts. In Summer it took one month to go and the same to return. In Winter dog-sleds were used and the trip was made more quickly.

Kittson was the inventor and patentee of the Red River Ox-Cart. It was a vehicle made of wood, save for the linch-pins. The wheels were enormous, some being ten feet in diameter. It was Kittson's theory that if you could make your wheel high enough it would eliminate friction and run of its own momentum. The wheels were made by boring and pinning plank on plank, criss-cross, and then chalking off with a string from the center. Then you sawed out your wheel, and there you were.

The creaking of a train of these ox-carts could be heard five miles. Kittson had the government contract for carrying the mails, and managed, with the help of trading in furs and loading up with merchandise on his own account, to make considerable money.

When Hill was in his twenties he went over the route with Kittson, and made several trips, also, alone with dog-sleds, for his friend, when there was a rush of freight. On one such occasion he had one companion, a half-breed of uncertain character, but who was taken along as a guide, he being familiar with the route. It was midwinter, the snow was heavy and deep, there were no roads, and much of the way led over frozen lakes and along streams. To face the blizzards of that country, alone, at that time required the courage of the seasoned pioneer.

Hill didn't much like the looks of his companion. And after a week out, when the fellow suggested their heading for Lake Superior and dividing their cargo, Hill became alarmed. The man was persistent and inclined to be quarrelsome. Each man had a knife and a rifle. Hill waited until they reached a high ridge. The snow lay dazzling white as far as the eye could reach. The nearest habitation was fifty miles away.

Under pretense of fixing the harness on his dogs, Jim got about forty feet from his man, quickly cocked his rifle and got a bead on the half-breed before the fellow knew what was up. At the word of command the rogue dropped his rifle and held up his hands. The next order was to right-about-face--march! The order was obeyed. A double-quick was ordered, and the half-breed lit out, quickening his pace as he got out of range. Hill then picked up the other rifle, put whip to his dogs, and by night had gone so far that he could not be overtaken. When Jim came back that way a few weeks later, he kept his eye peeled for danger, but he never saw his friend again.