We reconstructed the geography of our neighborhood, lingering over the charm of the narrow ravine which separated our hillsides, a path on each side.
“Up that path,” Mr. Rogers told me, “I used to carry our washing every Monday morning and go for it every Saturday night. Probably I’ve seen you hunting flowers on your side of the ravine. How beautiful it was! I was never happier.”
Could two strangers, each a little wary of the other, have had a more auspicious beginning for a serious talk? For what followed was serious with moments of strain.
“What are you basing your story on?” he asked finally.
“On documents. I am beginning with the South Improvement Company.”
He broke in to say: “Well, that of course was an outrageous business. That is where the Rockefellers made their big mistake.”
I knew of course that Mr. Rogers had fought that early raid tooth and nail; and I also knew that later he had joined “the conspirators,” as the Oil Region called them, in carrying out point by point the initial program. But I did not throw it up to him.
“Why did you not come to us at the start?” Mr. Rogers asked.
“It was unnecessary. You have written your history; besides, it would have been quite useless,” I told him.
“We’ve changed our policy,” he said. “We are giving out information.” As a matter of fact Mr. Rogers may be regarded, I think, as the first public relations counsel of the Standard Oil Company—the forerunner of Ivy Lee—and I was, so far as I know, the first subject on which the new policy was tried.
In the close to two hours I spent that afternoon with Henry Rogers we went over the history of the oil business. We talked of rebates and pipe lines, independent struggles and failures, the absorption of everything that touched their ambition. He put their side to me, the mightiness of their achievement, the perfection of their service. Also he talked of their trials, the persecution (as he called it) by their rivals, the attack of Lloyd: “I never understood how Harper could have published that book. Why, I knew Harry Harper socially.
“There has always been something,” he said a little ruefully. “Look at things now—Russia and Texas. There seems to be no end of the oil they have there. How can we control it? It looks as if something had the Standard Oil Company by the neck, something bigger than we are.”