Charles Pratt and Company

"[citation needed] In the mid-1860s, Pratt met two aspiring young men, Charles Ellis and Henry H. Rogers in western Pennsylvania.

[citation needed] Ellis and Rogers had no wells and were dependent upon purchasing crude oil to refine and sell to Pratt.

[citation needed] Charles Ellis gave up, but in 1866, Henry Rogers went to Pratt in New York, and told him he would take personal responsibility for the entire debt.

In the next few years Rogers became, in the words of Elbert Hubbard, Pratt's "hands and feet and eyes and ears" (Little Journeys to the Homes, 1909).

[citation needed] Pratt made Rogers foreman of his Brooklyn refinery, with a promise of a partnership if sales ran over fifty thousand dollars a year.

Rockefeller and the South Improvement Company scheme outraged independent oil producers in western Pennsylvania and refineries there and afar alike.

Working with the Pennsylvania independents, they managed to forge an agreement with the PRR and other railroads whose leaders eventually agreed to open rates to all promised to end their shady dealings with South Improvement.

Rogers, who kept his residence in New York after moving there at Pratt's request, invested outside of Standard Oil and became one of the wealthiest men in the world.

He had interests in oil, gas, steel, copper, coal, and railroads, and eventually founded and built the Virginian Railway at the end of his own career.