Henry Huttleston Rogers - Business Summary: "Hell Hound"

Business Summary: "Hell Hound"

Rogers was an energetic man, and exhibited ruthlessness, and iron determination. In the financial and business world he could be grasping and greedy, and operated under a flexible moral code that often stretched the rules of both honesty and fair play. On Wall Street in New York City, he became known as "Hell Hound Rogers" and "The Brains of the Standard Oil Trust." He was considered one of the last and great "robber barons" of his day, as times were changing. Nevertheless, Rogers amassed a great fortune, estimated at over $100 million. He invested heavily in various industries, including copper, steel, mining, and railways.

Much of what we know about Rogers and his style in business dealings were recorded by others. His behavior in public Court Proceedings provide some of the better examples and some insight. Rogers' business style extended to his testimony in many court settings. Before the Hepburn Commission of 1878, investigating the railroads of New York, he fine-tuned his circumlocutory, ambiguous, and haughty responses. His most intractable performance was later in a 1906 lawsuit by the state of Missouri, which claimed that two companies in that state registered as independents were actually subsidiaries of Standard Oil, a secret ownership Rogers finally acknowledged.

In Marquis Who's Who for 1908, Rogers listed more than twenty corporations of which he was either president and director or vice president and director.

Henry H. Rogers is in the top 25 wealthiest men in America of all time. According to The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates - A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present published by two business professors in 1996, Rogers is #22, ranking ahead of J.P. Morgan, #23, Bill Gates #31, William Rockefeller #35, Warren Buffett #39, J. Paul Getty #67, and Frank W. Woolworth #82.