en 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 business