The great Civil War had torn the country. Hill, eager to serve his
adopted land, had tried to enlist; but an accident in childhood which
had resulted in the loss of an eye made it impossible to pass the
physical examination. Although just beyond his majority, the boy had
become a man in more than years. His steady attention to his work and
the long hours of study had put him into a position from which he
could now step fearlessly forward. He was a man of affairs.
The practical business knowledge and the business relationships which
he had formed made him desire to be more completely his own master.
It was not that he was tired of clerking; it was rather that he
realized that the time had come to strike out for himself. To this
resolve his young wife, Mary Theresa Mehegan, whom he had married in
1864, lent all her power of love and encouragement. A true partner in
all her husband’s plans, Mrs. Hill shared every struggle along the
path of success.
The young business man became interested in many things. Far to the
north was the great Red River country, and he began to identify
himself with the traffic which was carried on between this territory
and St. Paul. He developed his warehouse business; he became a dealer
in salt, coal, cement, and lime; he transferred freight, and, above
all, he studied the developments of railroading, with a realization
that in the freight-car and the locomotive was the secret of the
transportation of the future. Fuel particularly interested him,
for he believed that, as the railroad train would supersede the
steamboat, so would coal supplant wood as a motive power.
A year after resigning his clerkship, he entered into the first of
the many partnerships which he formed during his life. His savings
were now an asset of real value, and the $2500 which he had put by
made the partnership possible. The partners planned to do a general
transportation, commission, and storage business, and in 1866 he
began his enlarged activities.
The following year Hill secured a contract with the St. Paul and
Pacific Railroad Company to supply it with fuel. It was his first
real introduction to the railroad business, and on it were based
the labors and successes of the coming years. The railroad in the
Northwest was still in its infancy; transportation depended largely
on the rivers and lakes.
During the next few years, Hill studied the transportation problems
of the Northwest with constantly increasing faith in his belief
that, by means of adequate transportation, it was possible speedily
to develop this vast region for the use of man. More and more the
idea appealed to him. His romantic vision led him on in his thoughts
far beyond the boundaries which surrounded the mental vision of
his fellow citizens, and his years of study and varied business
experience enabled him, step by step, to turn his dreams into
realities.
Steadily the railroads had extended westward from the Great Lakes.
The end of the Mississippi River transportation was within sight.
But from St. Paul to the rich lands of the Red River only the
clumsy carts and the lake flatboats carried the merchandise which
the settlers required. Present needs of adequate transportation
were great; future requirements were enormous beyond comprehension.
Hill went into the problem, and soon had a regular line of boats,
carts, and steamers operating between St. Paul and Winnipeg. The
empire-maker had begun to build.
Many are the stories that are told of Mr. Hill in those early days.
In the heat of summer and in the blizzards of the northern winters
he personally inspected and carried forward the work which he had
designed. He endured every kind of hardship. On his steamboats in the
open months, and with sled and dog train in winter, he passed back
and forth over the route, examining every local condition, studying
the soil, the climate, and the mineral deposits along the way.
On one late winter trip, when the bitter winds were sweeping across
the snowy prairies, blotting out every landmark and turning the
country into a vast white sea, he started north with dogs and sleds,
and an Indian guide for a companion. After a few days the nerve
of the Indian began to weaken and he urged that they turn back.
Realizing that unless decided action was promptly taken the Indian
might be dangerous, Hill ordered him to return, and set out again
alone, camping by night among the snow-drifts, making tea with melted
snow, and sleeping wrapped in his blankets, with his dogs close about
him.
The first railroad actually to be constructed into this new territory
was the St. Paul and Pacific. It received its charter in 1858, under
the name of the Minnesota & Pacific Railroad Company, and was planned
to extend from Stillwater, through St. Paul and Minneapolis, west to
Breckenridge. Immediately a craze for railroads swept the Northwest,
and numbers of companies were formed; but such frenzied speculation
could end only in disaster, and one by one the companies fell into
bankruptcy.
With anxious eyes Hill watched the rising and waning fortunes
of these various railroad enterprises. His investigation led
him to believe that the St. Paul & Pacific offered the greatest
possibilities. For seventeen long years he worked hard, dreamed
his dreams, and added to his capital. Then came the opportunity.
The St. Paul & Pacific had become a wrecked property. In it he saw
the possibilities for which he had worked and saved. With a clear
realization of the tremendous step that he was taking, he cast his
entire fortune into the balance, and with the assistance of several
associates took over the property, and with it its enormous debt of
over $33,000,000. James J. Hill at last held control of a railroad.
He had bought a property that was bankrupt and was described as “two
streaks of rust reaching out into the desert”; but in this bold
beginning was the germ of the great railroad system which, under the
name of the Great Northern, was to bring him fame and fortune in the
years to come.
In the six years that followed, Mr. Hill extended his railroad to the
Red River and connected with the government line from Winnipeg. By
this extension the rich lands of Minnesota were opened to immigrants,
and the great wheat-lands of the Northwest were connected with the
markets of the United States.
The risk that he had taken was justified; but to his wife and
to the friends who knew him it seemed less great, for they knew
the character of the man, and to know him was to feel complete
confidence in any action which he determined to take. “All his life
it was his custom to know all the facts about anything in which
he was interested, a good deal earlier and a little better than
anybody else. For twenty years he had lived in the country where the
situation had been preparing. For four or five years he had been
consumed with anxiety to get possession of this property. He alone
fully understood its present value; he alone conceived its future
with any degree of justness.”
But now his dreams of a greater empire began to be realized. The
St. Paul & Pacific, under his able management, was earning money
and building up a surplus. In 1883 Mr. Hill extended it to Helena,
Montana. And now his belief in the development of the Northwest
was more strongly confirmed with each new step. His vision already
pictured a railroad stretching across the prairies and over the
tremendous barrier of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific and the
great harbors of Puget Sound. This was no impractical dream, but an
idea founded on fact and experience; it was a great constructive
enterprise.
Ten years later, in 1893, Mr. Hill began actively to carry out his
plan of extending his railroad from Helena to the coast. It is hard
to realize the tremendous difficulties which faced him. On the one
hand, the Rocky Mountains seemed to block his path; on the other, a
financial panic made the obtaining of the money necessary for the
project seem almost an impossibility. But he was undismayed; every
obstacle was overcome, the road was built, and the empire again
extended its boundary, this time to the blue waters of the Pacific.
Following the completion of the Great Northern, as the consolidation
of his various railroads was now called, to Puget Sound, Mr. Hill
began his struggle to obtain the control of other railroads in order
to combine them all into one vast coherent system. The Northern
Pacific Railroad was the first to be added, and then the Burlington
System was secured and incorporated into the vast development of
his plan. Fifty years before, the penniless country boy had left
the small village of his birth to seek his fortune; and now, after
this life of usefulness, he found himself able to pay in cash over
$200,000,000 for the Northern Pacific Railway System.
Mr. Hill believed that the tilling of the soil was the true basis of
success; that on the soil rested the stability of government, and
that from it came the wealth of the world. To him, his vast systems
of railroads were the means of opening to settlement regions of
arable land, and later, when these lands had been cultivated, of
connecting them with the rest of the world and affording markets for
their produce. To increase population and industry along a railroad
was the surest way of making the railroad profitable. He believed
that a railroad would be rich or poor along with the farmers who
cultivated the fields beside its tracks.
In order to help the thousands of farmers along the lines of his
railroads to make their farms more profitable, Mr. Hill bought,
wherever in the world they could be best obtained, herds of the
finest cattle. These he bred on his own farms, and many he gave away
to the farmers for their own breeding. In all, he gave away more than
eight thousand head of cattle and hogs, and for many years offered
prizes for the best cattle raised by the farmers. “We must have
better farming,” he said. “We must have more intelligent methods.
Experience has shown that there is no way in which they can do this
so well as by raising cattle, pigs, and horses, and by dairying.”
As a boy he had dreamed of the Orient. Now his dreams were to be
realized. From the Western states his trains came eastward heavily
loaded with lumber from the great forests of Oregon and Washington.
To operate most profitably, it was apparent that these trains should
not go west empty, but filled with merchandise. But there were not
enough people in these Western states to consume the merchandise
the trains could carry. Beyond the Pacific, however, were millions
of people. China and Japan needed many things. Why should not his
railroads carry westward merchandise for these great markets of the
Orient?
With characteristic thoroughness, Mr. Hill sent agents to China to
study the food-problem, and the best way to make a market there
for American flour. They reported the existence of a great market
for flour, cotton, and steel. To gain this business was to wage
industrial warfare with Belgium and Great Britain, who had a cheap
all-water route to the Orient by way of the Suez Canal.
But as his railroads extended only to the Pacific shore, a great
ocean still lay between him and these alluring markets. To solve
this problem, Mr. Hill formed, in 1900, the Great Northern Steamship
Company, and built the Minnesota and the Dakota, the greatest vessels
ever built flying the American flag, to run between Seattle and
Yokohama and Hong Kong. But in this great venture, with its promise
of success, Mr. Hill encountered disappointment, for the policy of
the United States was unfavorable, rates and regulations made the
cost of the operation of the ships excessive, and he was at last
forced by circumstances to withdraw from the Oriental field.
Meanwhile, the vast empire of the Northwest was rapidly filling up
with settlers. In a single year eighteen thousand farmers located
along the Great Northern, and each year, farther and farther back
from the tracks, new lands were developed and new homes were located
where only a few years before the buffalo and the Indians had
wandered. Next after the railroad, it was the farm which held the
closest interest of the empire-builder.
Second only to Mr. Hill’s belief in the farm as the foundation of
national prosperity was his interest in the discovery and development
of new sources of mineral wealth. As a young man he had recognized
the tremendous part which coal was to play in the history of
transportation and the consequent development of the country. For
years he had studied the coal deposits of the Northwest, and there
was probably no one better informed than he regarding their quality,
extent, and location.
In like manner he had investigated the general facts regarding the
world’s supply of iron ore. At this time, however, there were no
known deposits of iron ore in the Northwest. Then came rumors of the
discovery of iron deposits in northern Minnesota. But now Mr. Hill’s
two oldest sons were taking an active interest in the vast operations
of their father. Like him, they had traveled extensively, not only
over the territory reached by his railroads, but also over the still
undeveloped lands, particularly in northern Minnesota.
In this way the two younger men became convinced of the wealth
of iron ore which awaited only proper development and railroad
connections to yield an enormous profit. Mr. Hill saw also the
great opportunity that presented itself, and in 1899 personally
purchased, for $4,050,000, a great tract of land on the now famous
Mesabi Range. Immediately, railroad connections with the iron country
were constructed, and arrangements for the shipment of the ore
over the Great Northern were made. But although this was in every
respect a private venture, practically discovered and entirely paid
for by Mr. Hill out of his own pocket, his high sense of honor and
responsibility refused to accept the enormous profits which were
soon to be realized. Believing that the stockholders of the Great
Northern, who with their money had stood behind him and had in a
measure made this new development possible, were entitled to a share
in the profits, he organized this new mining project, and distributed
its stock, share for share, among them in proportion to their
investment in the railroad. His refusal to take the entire profit is
a fine example of the high principles which guided his every act and
were in large measure responsible for his success.
Throughout his life, Mr. Hill believed that the success of men and
nations rests entirely on the truest personal liberty. To him the
man was always bigger than the state. Personal initiative and effort
came first; what man individually could not accomplish, that the
state must do; but never should the state assume the development or
operation of a project until it was recognized that an individual or
a group of individuals could not better accomplish the desired result.
The forest, the farm, and the mines, were in his belief the three
sources of wealth. But wealth could come only from universal
industry, honesty, thrift, and fair dealing among men. In his own
dealings with his fellow men, he required those qualities; and,
although his keen sympathies invariably responded to true distress,
he had scant patience with those whose false vision saw in wealth
honestly acquired a fund to be drawn upon for the support of the lazy
and shiftless.
He once said: “There are four great words that should be written upon
the four corner-stones of every public building in the country, with
the sacredness of a religious rite. These watchwords of the Republic
are Equality, Simplicity, Economy, and Justice.” And another time he
said, when speaking of a profit-sharing arrangement he had made with
his employees: “I am as well satisfied with that institution as with
anything I have ever had to do with. I think that its greatest value
is teaching the men to save. The first two or three hundred dollars
is the hardest to save, but when once you have started, you all know
it comes easy.”
Long before his death Mr. Hill’s name had become known throughout
the civilized world. “His fame was international. His services were
cosmopolitan.” Among the many honors which were heaped upon him in
recognition of his services to mankind was the degree of Doctor of
Laws by Yale University. In conferring this degree, Professor Perrin,
of Yale, said:—
“Mr. Hill is the last of the generations of wilderness conquerors,
the men who interpreted the Constitution, fixed our foreign
relations, framed the Monroe Doctrine, and blazed all the great
trails which determined the nation’s future. He has always been an
original investigator, and we know him now as a man of infinite
information. Every item of his colossal success rests upon a series
of facts ascertained by him before they had been noted by others, and
upon the future relations which he saw in those facts to human need
and national growth. He believes that no society can prosper in which
intellectual training is not based upon moral and religious culture.
He is a national economist on broad ethical and religious lines;
but the greatest things in all his greatness are his belief in the
spiritual significance of man and his longing for the perpetuation of
American institutions at their highest and best.”
His interest in books as a source of education found expression in
the great public library which he presented to the city of St. Paul.
To him, the trained mind was a necessity for success. Whether trained
in the university or in the active life of the world did not matter,
so long as it was trained; that was all that concerned him.
Mr. Hill’s reputation in years to come will rest chiefly on his
career as an “Empire-Builder.” But he was primarily a railroad
manager and a railroad engineer. His knowledge of the great
business of transportation made it possible for him to extend his
interests far and wide; no opportunity came near him that he did not
investigate, and no opportunity which he accepted was ever put aside
until he had developed it to its most perfect completion.
Physically, he was a man who seemed to express in his appearance
the force and character which distinguished him mentally among men.
Slightly under average height, with a great head firmly set on
square, powerful shoulders, he commanded attention. He was physically
strong, and his powers of endurance, which served him so well in the
long hard days of his early life, remained unimpaired almost to his
death. His firm mouth was half hidden by a beard, whitened in his
latter years. His brow was high. His eyes were alert and looked out
from beneath shaggy eyebrows. He was a man of a notable appearance
which demanded respect and inspired confidence.
“Work, hard work, intelligent work, and then some more work,” was
one of his frequent explanations of his success, and his advice to
others. To young men he said: “The best advice to a young man, as it
appears to me, is old and simple. Get knowledge and understanding.
Determine to make the most possible of yourself by doing to the best
of your power useful work as it comes your way. There are no receipts
for success in life. A good aim, diligence in learning every detail
of your business, honest hard work, and a determination to succeed,
win out every time, unless crossed by some exceptional accident or
misfortune. Many opportunities come to every man. It depends upon
himself, and upon what he shall make of himself, what he makes of
opportunities and what they will make of him.”
From a poor farmer boy, in fifty years, James J. Hill, by the force
of his own determination, and the opportunities common to all men in
the great Republic of which he became a citizen, achieved a position
among the world-leaders of his day. Wealth in millions came to him,
not by inheritance or a stroke of speculative chance, but from the
works which he himself had conceived and created. The achievements of
his life will long be remembered, not only because of their public
service, but because of their inspiration to other men by affording
an example of the heights which may be reached by hard work,
imagination, and determination to succeed.
VIII
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
_Born in Dublin, Ireland, 1848_
_Died in Cornish, New Hampshire, 1907_
In a little house in Dublin, Ireland, on March 1, 1848, was born
Augustus Saint-Gaudens. There was nothing in the humble surroundings
which first greeted his eyes to mark the baby as in any way different
from the many other babies who may have been born on the same first
day of March in the ancient Irish city.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, however, inherited from his father and mother
something far greater than wealth or name, for in their sturdy,
honest blood he found that indefinable thing called “character,”
which, throughout his life, led him steadily forward along the
straight path to fame and honor. From his parents he also inherited
the qualities which are inherent in a romantic people; for his father
was born in France, in the little village of Aspet at the foot of the
Pyrenees, and his mother, whose maiden name was Mary McGuiness, gave
him the love of the beautiful which belongs to Ireland. But perhaps,
after all, his parents gave him a like inheritance, for Ireland is an
old nation into which in centuries past has been infused the blood
of the proudest families of France—Irish by birth and French by
inheritance, he might be called.
The elder Saint-Gaudens was a shoemaker, and he had met the mother
of the future Augustus in the shoe store for which he made shoes and
where she did the binding of slippers. When Augustus was but a few
months old his parents emigrated to the United States and in the
month of September in the year of his birth he landed in the city of
Boston, a place which in later years became deeply identified with
his activities.
From Boston the little family proceeded to New York, where Bernard
Saint-Gaudens, the father, set up his small business and secured
humble lodging nearby for his family. And here the young Augustus
made the beginning of his conscious life, in which, of early
memories, most vivid were the “delightful reminiscences of the smell
of cake in the bakery at the corner of the street, and of the stewed
peaches of the German family in the same house.”
Above the door of the shop hung the sign “French Ladies’ Boots and
Shoes”; and within, the shoemaker, with his “wonderfully complex
mixture of French accent and Irish brogue,” varied his occupation of
making shoes with endless duties which he undertook as the organizer
and leading figure in several societies which flourished in the
French colony of the city. Customers came readily to the little shop,
for its proprietor was an able workman, despite certain agreeable
eccentricities, and the business, growing steadily, provided an
adequate, if simple, upbringing for Augustus and his two brothers.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1915, by de W. C. Ward_
_Augustus Saint-Gaudens_ (Signature)]
Many are the memories of those early days, memories of a
wholesome and normal boyhood. There are memories of fires, of
street-fights with boys of other neighborhoods, of school-days, of a
never-to-be-forgotten excursion to the country, of the delight of his
first reading of “Robinson Crusoe,” and of the famous actress Rachel
playing “Virginia” in Niblo’s Garden. And there are memories of
boyhood loves, memories all that “pass across the field of my vision
like ships that appear through the mist for a moment and disappear.”
With the early end of his school days Augustus turned to the actual
earning of his daily bread. He was thirteen years old. To his
father’s question as to what kind of work appealed most strongly
to him he had answered, “I should like it if I could do something
which would help me to be an artist.” It was a decision that must
have seemed strange to the father, who perhaps had seen in the boy a
possible assistant in his growing business; but wisely he respected
the desire that Augustus expressed, and a few weeks later the boy was
apprenticed to a Frenchman named Avet, the first stone-cameo cutter
in America.