ager 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
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