The armed fleets of an enemy approaching our harbors would be no
more alarming than the relentless advance of a day when we shall
have neither sufficient food nor the means to purchase it for our
population. The farmers of the nation must save it in the future,
just as they built its greatness in the past.
--_James J. Hill_
[Illustration: JAMES J. HILL]
James Jerome Hill has one credential, at least, to greatness--he was
born in a log house. But let the painful fact be stated at once, without
apology, that he could never be President of the United States, because
this historic log house was situated in Canada. The exact spot is about
three miles from the village of Rockwood, Wellington County, Ontario.
Rockwood is seven miles east of Guelph, forty from Toronto, and a
hundred from Buffalo.
Mr. Hill well remembers his first visit to Toronto. He went with his
father, with a load of farm produce. It took two days to go and two to
return, and for their load they got the princely sum of seven dollars,
with which they counted themselves rich.
James Hill, the father of James Jerome Hill, was a North of Ireland man;
his wife was Anne Dunbar, good and Scotch. I saw a portrait of Anne
Dunbar Hill in Mr. Hill's residence at Saint Paul, and was also shown
the daguerreotype from which it was painted. It shows a woman of decided
personality, strong in feature, frank, fearless, honest, sane and
poised. The dress reveals the columnar neck that goes only with superb
bodily vigor--the nose is large, the chin firm, the mouth strong. She
looks like a Spartan, save for the pensive eyes that gaze upon a world
from which she has passed, hungry and wistful. The woman certainly had
ambition and aspiration which were unsatisfied.
James J. Hill is the son of his mother. His form, features, mental
characteristics and ambition are the endowment of mother to son.
It was a tough old farm, then as now. As I tramped across its undulating
acres, a week ago, and saw the stone fences and the piles of glacial
drift that Jim Hill's hands helped pick up, I thought of the poverty of
the situation when no railroad passed that way, and wheat was twenty
cents a bushel, and pork one cent a pound--all for lack of a market!
Jim Hill as a boy fought the battle of life with ax, hoe, maul, adz,
shovel, pick, mattock, drawshave, rake and pitchfork. Wool was carded
and spun and woven by hand. The grist was carried to the mill on
horseback, or if the roads were bad, on the farmer's back. All this
pioneer experience came to James J. Hill as a necessary part of his
education.
Life in Canada West in the Forties was essentially the same as life in
Western New York at the same period. The country was a forest, traversed
with swamps and sink-holes, on which roads were built by laying down
long logs and across these, small logs. This formed the classic corduroy
road. When ten years of age James Hill contracted to build a mile of
corduroy road, between his father's farm and the village. For this labor
his father promised him a two-year-old colt. The boy built the road all
right. It took him six months, but the grades were easy and the curves
so-so. The Tom Sawyer plan came in handy, otherwise it is probable there
would have been a default on the time-limit. And Jim got the colt. He
rode the animal for half a year, back and forth all Winter from the farm
to the village, where he attended the famous Rockwood Academy. Then some
one to whom the elder Hill was indebted, signified a desire for the
colt, and the father turned the horse over to the creditor. When little
Jim went out and found that the stall was empty he had a good cry, all
by himself.
Three years after this, when his father died, he cried again, and that
was the last time he ever wept over any of his own troubles.
* * * * *
From his seventh to his fourteenth year young Jim Hill attended the
Rockford Academy. This "Academy" had about thirty boarding boys and a
dozen day-scholars. Jim Hill was a "day-scholar," and the pride of the
master. The boy was studious, appreciative, grateful. He wasn't so
awfully clever, but he was true.
The master of the Academy was Professor William Wetherald, stern to
view, but very gentle of heart. His wife was of the family of Balls. The
Ball family moved from Virginia two generations before, to Western New
York, and then when the Revolutionary War was on, slid over to Ontario
for political reasons best known to themselves.
There was quite an emigration to Canada about then, including those
worthy Mohawk Indians whose descendants, including Longboat the runner
and the Princess Viroqua, are now to be found in the neighborhood of
Brantford.
And certainly the Indians were wise, for Canada has treated the red
brother with a degree of fairness quite unknown on this side of the
line. As for the Tories--but what's the need of arguing!
The Balls trace to the same family that produced Mary Ball, and Mary
Ball was the mother of George Washington--so tangled is this web of
pedigree! And George Washington, be it known, got his genius from his
mother, not from the tribe of Washington.
William Wetherald died at an advanced age--near ninety, I believe--only
a short time ago. It is customary for a teacher to prophesy--after the
pupil has arrived--and declare, "What did I tell you!" Wetherald looked
after young Hill at school with almost a father's affection, and
prophesied for him great things--only the "great things" were to be in
the realms of science, oratory and literature.
Along about Eighteen Hundred Eighty-eight, when James J. Hill was
getting his feet well planted on the earth, he sent for his old teacher
to come to Saint Paul. Wetherald spent several weeks there, riding over
the Hill roads in a private car, and discussing old times with the owner
of the car and the railroad.
Mr. Hill insisted that Wetherald should remain and teach the Hill
children, but Fate said otherwise. There is no doubt that Hill's love of
books, art, natural history, and his habit of independent thought were
largely fixed in his nature through the influence of this fine Friend,
teacher of children. The Quaker listens for the "Voice," and then acts
without hunting up precedents. In other words, he does the things he
wants to do. Mr. Hill's long hair and full beard form a sort of
unconscious tribute to Wetherald. In fact, let James J. Hill wear a
dusty miller's suit and a wide-brimmed hat and you get the true type of
"Hicksite."
James J. Hill is a score of men in one, as every great man is. But when
the kindly, philosophic, paternal and altruistic "Yim Hill" is in the
saddle, you will see the significance of this story: Just after Mr. Hill
had gotten possession of the Burlington, he made a trip over the road. A
rear-end flagman at Galesburg was boasting to some of his mates about
how he had gone over the division with the new "boss of the ranch."
Here a listener puts in a question, thus: "What kind of a lookin' fellow
is th' ol' man?" And he of the red lantern and torpedoes scratches his
head, and explains, "Well, you see, it's like this: He looks like Jesus
Christ, only he's heavier set!"
* * * * *
The father of James J. Hill was a worthy man, with a good hold on the
simple virtues, a weak chin and a cosmos of slaty gray.
His only claim to immortality lies in the fact that he was the father of
his son. Pneumonia took him, as it often does the physically strong, and
he passed out before he had reached his prime. "Death is the most
joyfullest thing in life," said Thomas Carlyle to Milburn, the blind
preacher, "when it transfers responsibility to those big enough to
shoulder it, for that's the only way you can make a man."
I once saw a boy of fourteen on the prairies of Kansas transformed into
a man, between the rising of the sun and its setting. His father was
crushed beneath a wagon that sluiced and toppled in crossing a gully.
The hub caught the poor man square on the chest, and after we got him
out he never spoke. Six children and the mother were left, the oldest
boy being fourteen. A grave was dug there on the prairie the next day,
and this boy of fourteen patted down the earth over his father's grave,
with the back of a spade. He then hitched up the horses, rounded up the
cattle, and headed the cavalcade for the West. He was a man, and in
after-life he proved himself one.
On the death of his father, Jim Hill's schooldays were done. His
aptitude in mathematics, his ability to keep accounts, and his general
disposition to make himself useful secured him a place in the village
store, which was also the Post-Office. His pay was one dollar a week.
This training in the country store proved of great value, just as it did
in the case of H. H. Rogers, George Peabody and so many other men of
mark.
It is one thing to get a job, and another to hold it. Jim Hill held his
job, and his salary was raised before the end of the first year to three
dollars a week.
On the strength of this prosperity, the struggle on the old farm with
its stumps, boulders and mortgage was given up and the widow moved her
little brood to town. The log house on the rambling main street of the
village is now pointed out to visitors. Here the mother sewed for
neighbors, took in washing, made garden, and with the help of her boy
Jim, grew happy and fairly prosperous: more prosperous than the family
had ever been. Thus matters went on until Jim was in his eighteenth
year, when the wanderlust got hold of the young man. His mother saw it
coming and being wise did not apply the brake.
Man is a migrating animal. To sit still and stay in one place is to
vegetate.
Jim with twenty dollars in his pocket started for Toronto on foot with a
bundle on a stick, followed by the prayers of his mother, the gaping
wonder of the children, and the blessing of Professor Wetherald. Toronto
was interesting, but too near home to think of as a permanent
stopping-place. A leaky little steamer ran over to Fort Niagara every
other day. Jim took passage, reached the foreign shore, walked up to
Niagara Falls, and the next day tramped on to Buffalo. This was in the
wonderful year of Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, the year the Republican
Party was born at Bloomington, Illinois. It was a time of unrest, of a
healthy discontent and goodly prosperity, for things were in motion. The
docks at Buffalo were all a-bustle with emigrants going West--forever
West.
Jim Hill, aged eighteen, strong, healthy, farmer boy, lumberman, clerk,
shipped as roustabout on a schooner bound for Chicago. His pay for the
round trip was to be ten dollars and board, the money payable when the
boat got back to Buffalo. If he left the ship at Chicago, he was to get
no cash.
The boat reached Chicago in ten days. It was a great trip--full of mild
adventure and lots of things that would have surprised the folks at
Rockford. Jim got a job on the docks as checker-off, or understudy to a
freight-clerk. The pay was a dollar a day. He now sent his original
twenty dollars back to his mother to prove to her that he was prosperous
and money was but a bagatelle and a burden. A month, and he had joined
the ever-moving westward tide. He was headed for California, the land of
shining nuggets and rainbow hopes. He reached Rock Island, and saw a
sign out at a sawmill, "Men Wanted." He knew the business and was given
work on sight. In a week his mathematics came in handy and he was
handed a lumber-rule and a blank-book.
Mr. Hill yet recalls his first sight of a Mississippi River steamboat
coming into Davenport. The tall smokestacks belching fire, the graceful,
swanlike motion, the marvelous beauty of the superstructure, the
wonderful letter "D" in gold, or something that looked like gold, swung
between the stacks! It was just dusk, and as the boat glided in toward
the shore, a big torch was set ablaze, the gang-plank was run out to the
weird song of the colored deckhands, and miracle and fairyland arrived.
For a month whenever a steamboat blew its siren whistle, Jim was on the
wharf, open-mouthed, gaping, wondering, admiring. One day he could stand
it no longer. He threw up his job and took passage on the sailing
palace, "Molly Devine," for Dubuque. Here he changed boats, and boarded
a smaller vessel, a stern-wheeler, deck passage for Saint Paul, a point
which seemed to the young man somewhere near the North Pole.
He was going to get his fill of steamboat-riding for once at least. It
was his intention to remain at Saint Paul a couple of days, see Saint
Anthony's Falls and Minnehaha, and then take the same boat back down the
river. But something happened that induced him to change his plans.
* * * * *
The two days on the steamboat had wearied Jim. The prenatal Scotch idea
of industry was upon him, and conscience had begun to squirm. He applied
for work as soon as he walked out on the levee. The place was the office
of the steamboat company. He stated in an offhand way that he had had
experience on the water-front in Chicago, Rock Island and Davenport.
He was hired on the spot as shipping-clerk with the gratuitous remark,
"If you haven't sense enough to figure, you are surely strong enough to
hustle."
The agents of the steamboat-line were J. W. Bass and Company. Hill got
along all right. He was day-clerk or night-clerk, just as the boats came
in. And it is wonderful how steamboats on the Mississippi usually arrive
at about two o'clock in the morning.
Jim slept on a cot in the office, so as to be on hand when a boat
arrived and to help unload. It was the duty of the shipping-clerk to
check off the freight as it was brought ashore. Also, it was the law of
steamboating that clerks took their meals on board the boat, if they
were helping to unload her. Now, as Jim had food and a place to sleep
when a Dubuque and Saint Paul steamboat was tied at the levee, all the
meals he had to buy were those when no steamboat was in sight.
Being essentially Scotch, Jim managed to time his meals so as to last
over. And sometimes if a boat was stuck on a sand-bar he did the
MacFadden act for a whole day. It became a sort of joke in the office,
and we hear of Mr. Bass, the agent, shouting up to the pilot-house of a
steamboat, "Avast there, sir, for five minutes until Jim Hill stows his
hold."
A part of Jim's work was to get wood for fuel for the boats. This was
quite a business in itself. He once got a big lot of fuel and proudly
piled it on the levee, mountain-high, in anticipation of several
steamboats. A freshet came one night, the river rose and carried off
every stick, so that when the "Mary Ann" arrived there was no fuel.
"Wait until Jim Hill eats his breakfast and perhaps he'll get an armful
of wood for us," shouted down the captain in derision. After that, Jim
managed to load up a flatboat or two, and always had a little wood in
reserve.
The young man was now fairly launched in business. The mystery of
manifesting, billing, collecting; the matter of "shorts," "overs," and
figuring damages were to him familiar.
The Territory of Minnesota was organized in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine,
and did not become a State until Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight. In
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven there was not a single mile of railway in
the Territory. But in that year, Congress authorized the Territory to
give alternate sections of public lands to any company that would build
a railway through them. Through this stimulus, in the latter part of
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven, there was organized a company with the
ambitious title of "The Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company." Its
line extended from the steamboat-wharf in Saint Paul to the Falls of
Saint Anthony. There were ten miles of track, including sidings, one
engine, two box cars and a dozen flat cars for logs.
The railroad didn't seem to thrive. There was no paying passenger
traffic to speak of. Passengers got aboard all right, but on being
pressed for fares they felt insulted and jumped off, just as you would
now if you got a ride with a farmer and he asked you to pay. Possibly, a
rudimentary disinclination to pay fare still remains in most of us, like
the hereditary indisposition of the Irish to pay rent.
No one ever thought it possible that a railroad could compete with a
steamboat, and it was a long time after this that Commodore Vanderbilt
had the temerity to build a railroad along the banks of the Hudson and
be called a lunatic.
So there being no passenger traffic, the farmers carrying their grist to
mill, and the logs being floated down the river to the mills, the
railroad was in a bad way. Something had to be done, so the Minnesota
and Pacific was reorganized, and a new road, the Saint Paul and Pacific,
bought it out, with all its land grants. The intent of the new road was
to strike right up into the woods for ten or twenty miles above
Minneapolis and bring down logs that otherwise would have to be hauled
to the river. For a time this road paid, with the sale of the
odd-numbered sections of land that went with it.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-seven, James J. Hill became the Saint Paul
agent of this railroad. He had quit his job with J. W. Bass, to become
agent for the Northwestern Packet Line; and as the railroad ran right to
his door he found it easy to serve both the steamboat company and the
railroad.
You will often hear people tell how James J. Hill began his railroad
career as a station-agent, but it must be remembered that he was a
station-agent, plus. The agents of steamboat-lines in those days were
usually merchants or men who were financially responsible. And James J.
Hill became the Saint Paul agent of the Saint Paul and Pacific because
he was a man of resource, with ability to get business for the railroad.
As the extraordinary part of Mr. Hill's career did not begin until he
was forty years of age, our romantic friends who write of him often
picture him as a failure up to that time. The fact is, he was making
head and gathering gear right along. These twenty-two years, up to the
time that Mr. Hill became a railroad-owner, were years of intense
activity.
* * * * *
While yet a clerk for J. W. Bass and Company, Mr. Hill made the
acquaintance of Norman Kittson, as picturesque a figure as ever wore a
coonskin cap, and evolved from this to all the refinements of
Piccadilly, only to discard these and return to the Simple Life.
Kittson had been connected with the Hudson Bay Company. When Hill met
him, he was running a fast express to Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, going
over the route with ox-carts. In Summer it took one month to go and the
same to return. In Winter dog-sleds were used and the trip was made more
quickly.
Kittson was the inventor and patentee of the Red River Ox-Cart. It was a
vehicle made of wood, save for the linch-pins. The wheels were enormous,
some being ten feet in diameter. It was Kittson's theory that if you
could make your wheel high enough it would eliminate friction and run of
its own momentum. The wheels were made by boring and pinning plank on
plank, criss-cross, and then chalking off with a string from the center.
Then you sawed out your wheel, and there you were.
The creaking of a train of these ox-carts could be heard five miles.
Kittson had the government contract for carrying the mails, and managed,
with the help of trading in furs and loading up with merchandise on his
own account, to make considerable money.
When Hill was in his twenties he went over the route with Kittson, and
made several trips, also, alone with dog-sleds, for his friend, when
there was a rush of freight. On one such occasion he had one companion,
a half-breed of uncertain character, but who was taken along as a guide,
he being familiar with the route. It was midwinter, the snow was heavy
and deep, there were no roads, and much of the way led over frozen lakes
and along streams. To face the blizzards of that country, alone, at that
time required the courage of the seasoned pioneer.
Hill didn't much like the looks of his companion. And after a week out,
when the fellow suggested their heading for Lake Superior and dividing
their cargo, Hill became alarmed. The man was persistent and inclined to
be quarrelsome. Each man had a knife and a rifle. Hill waited until they
reached a high ridge. The snow lay dazzling white as far as the eye
could reach. The nearest habitation was fifty miles away.
Under pretense of fixing the harness on his dogs, Jim got about forty
feet from his man, quickly cocked his rifle and got a bead on the
half-breed before the fellow knew what was up. At the word of command
the rogue dropped his rifle and held up his hands. The next order was to
right-about-face--march! The order was obeyed. A double-quick was
ordered, and the half-breed lit out, quickening his pace as he got out
of range. Hill then picked up the other rifle, put whip to his dogs, and
by night had gone so far that he could not be overtaken. When Jim came
back that way a few weeks later, he kept his eye peeled for danger, but
he never saw his friend again.
When I heard Mr. Hill relate this story he told it as simply as he might
relate how he went out to milk the cows. One of the men present asked,
"Didn't you feel sorry for the fellow, to turn him adrift on that frozen
plain, without food or fuel?" Mr. Hill hesitated, and then slowly
answered: "I thought of that, but preferred to send him adrift rather
than kill him, or let him kill me. Anyway he had only some fifty miles
to travel to strike an Indian village. When he was there we were a
hundred and fifty miles apart. You see I am a mathematician. It is a
great joy to figure out what a long distance you are from some folks."
* * * * *
In his business of supplying cord-wood to steamboats, Mr. Hill had a
partner, grizzled and gray, by the name of Griggs. Griggs was a typical
pioneer: he was always moving on. He bought a little stern-wheel
steamboat, and shipped its boiler and engine across to Breckenridge,
where he had the joy of running the first steamboat, "The Northwest," on
the Red River.
Mr. Hill built the second steamboat on the Red River, "The Swallow," on
the order of Kittson, who bought the boat as soon as she had shown her
ability to run. All the metal used in its making, which of course
included engine and boiler, was sent across from Saint Paul. And if the
outfit was gotten out of a wrecked Mississippi stern-wheeler, what boots
it!
Then it was that Kittson, having also bought the Griggs steamboat, was
given the title of Commodore, a distinction which he carried through
life.
By this time several things had happened. One was that Hill had brought
up to Saint Paul a steamboat-load of coal. This coal was mined near
Peoria, on the Illinois River, floated down to the Mississippi, then
carried up to Saint Paul. To bring coal to this Newcastle of wood was
regarded as deliberate folly.
By this time the Saint Paul and Pacific had gotten a track laid clear
through to Breckenridge, so as to connect with Commodore Kittson's
steamboats. When Hill first reached Saint Paul, there was no
agriculture north of that point. The wheat-belt still lingered around
Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. The fact that seeds can be
acclimated, like men and animals, was still in the ether.
The Red River Valley is a wonderfully rich district. Louis Agassiz first
mapped it and wrote a most interesting essay on it. Here was a wonderful
prehistoric lake, draining to the south through the Minnesota and
Mississippi Rivers, and thence to the Gulf of Mexico. By a volcanic rise
of the land on the southern end, centuries ago, the current was turned
and ran north, making what we call the Red River, emptying into Lake
Winnipeg, which in turn has an outlet into Hudson Bay.
Agassiz came up the Mississippi River on a trip in Eighteen Hundred
Sixty-five. The boat he traveled on was one for which James J. Hill was
agent. Naturally, it devolved on Hill to show the visitors the sights
thereabouts. And among these sights happened to be our friend Kittson,
who, full of enthusiasm, offered to pilot the party across to the Red
River. They accepted and ascended to Fort Garry. Agassiz, full of
scientific enthusiasm, wrote out his theory about the prehistoric lake.
And science, now, the world over, calls the Red River Valley, "Lake
Agassiz." With Louis Agassiz was his son Alexander, a fine young man
with pedagogic bent, headed for his father's place as Curator of the
Museum at Harvard.
From Winnipeg the party was supplied an Indian guide, who took them
across to Lake Superior. Then it was that Alexander Agassiz saw the
wonders of Lake Superior copper and Lake Superior iron. And Harvard lost
a professor, but the world gained a multimillionaire. Louis Agassiz had
no time to make money, but his son Alexander was not thus handicapped.
The report of Agassiz on the mineral wealth of Lake Superior
corroborated Mr. Hill's own opinions of this country, which he had
traversed with dog-sleds. Money was scarce, but he, even then, made a
small investment in Lake Superior mineral lands, and has been increasing
it practically ever since. A recent present to the stockholders of the
Great Northern of an iron tract worth many millions of dollars had its
germ in that memorable day when James J. Hill met the Agassiz party on
the levee in Saint Paul and unconsciously changed their route as
planned.
Mr. Hill's experience would seem to prove that life after all is a
sequence, and the man who does great work has long been in training for
it.
* * * * *
There are two ways for a traveling-man to make money: one is to sell the
goods, and the other is to work the expense-account.
There are two ways to make money by managing a railroad: one is through
service to the people along the line of the road; the other is through
working the bondholders.
It was the eventful year of Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, before James
J. Hill really got up steam. He was then thirty-eight years old. He was
agent for the Saint Paul and Pacific, and in this capacity he had seen
that the road was being run with the idea of making money by milking the
bondholders.
The line had been pushed just as long as the bondholders of Holland
would put up the money. To keep things going, interest had been paid to
the worthy Dutch out of the money they had supplied. Gradually, the
phlegmatic ones grew wise, and the purse-strings of the Netherlanders
were drawn tight. For hundreds of years Holland had sought a quick
Northwest passage to India. Little did she know she was now warm on the
trail. Little, also, did Jim Hill know.
The equipment--engines and cars--was borrowed, so when the receiver was
appointed he found only the classic streak of rust and right of way. No
doubt both of these would have been hypothecated if it were possible.
Mr. Hill knew the Northwest as no other man did, except, possibly,
Norman Kittson. He had traversed the country from Saint Paul to Winnipeg
on foot, by ox-carts, on horseback, by dog-sledges. He had seen it in
all seasons and under all conditions. He knew the Red River Valley would
raise wheat, and he knew that the prosperity of old Louis Agassiz meant
the prosperity of the railroad that ran between that rich valley and
Saint Anthony's Falls, where the great flouring-mills were situated, the
center of the flour zone having been shifted from Rochester, New York,
to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
To gain possession of the railroad and run it so as to build up the
country, and thus prosper as the farmers prospered, was his ambition. He
was a farmer by prenatal tendency and by education, a commission man by
chance, and a master of transportation by instinct. Every farmer should
be interested in good roads, for his problem is quite as much to get his
products to market as to raise them. Jim Hill focused on getting
farm-products to market. While he was a Canadian by birth, he had now
become a citizen of the United States. His old friend, Commodore
Kittson, was a Canadian by birth, and never got beyond taking out his
first papers. The Winnipeg agent of the Hudson Bay Company was Donald
Alexander Smith, a hardy Scotch bur of a man, with many strong and
sturdy oatmeal virtues. He had gone with the Hudson Bay Company as a
laborer, became a guide, a trader, and then an agent. Hill and Kittson
laid before Smith a plan, very plain, very simple. Buy up the bonds of
the Saint Paul and Pacific from the Dutch bondholders, foreclose, and
own the railroad!
Now, Donald A. Smith's connection with the Hudson Bay Company gave him a
standing in Montreal banking circles, and to be trusted by Montreal is
to have the ear of London. Donald A. Smith went down to Montreal and
laid the plan before George Stephen, Manager of the Bank of Montreal. If
the Bank of Montreal endorsed a financial scheme it was a go. Only one
thing seemed to lie in the way--the willingness of the bondholders to
sell out at a figure which our four Canadians could pay. Mr. Hill was
for going to Holland, and interviewing the bondholders, personally.
Stephen, more astute in big finance, said, bring them over here. Hill
could not fetch them, Kittson couldn't and Donald A. Smith couldn't,
because there was no dog-sled line to Amsterdam.
The Bank of Montreal did the trick, and a committee of Dutchmen arrived
to look over their Minnesota holdings with a view of selling out. Mr.
Hill took them over the line--a dreary waste of slashings, then a wide
expanse of prairie broken now and again by scrub-oak and hazel-groves;
deep gullies here and there--swamps, sloughs and ponds, with assets of
brant, wild geese, ducks and sand-hill cranes.
The road was in bad shape--the equipment worse. An inventory of the
actual property was taken with the help of the Dutch Committee. The
visiting Hollanders made a report to the bondholders, advising sale of
the bonds at an average of about forty per cent of their face-value,
which is what the inventory showed.
Our Canadian friends secured an option which gave them time to turn.
Farley, the Receiver, was willing. The road was reorganized as the Saint
Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad. George Stephen was President,
Norman Kittson, First Vice-President, Donald A. Smith, Second
Vice-President, and James J. Hill, General Manager. And on Mr. Hill fell
the burden of turning a losing property into a prosperous and paying
one. From the very day that he became manager he breathed into the
business the breath of life.
He sent over to England and bought hundreds of young Hereford bulls, and
distributed them along the line of the road among the farmers. "Jim
Hill's bulls" are pointed out now over three thousand miles of range,
and jokes on how Hill bulled the market are always in order. Clydesdale
horses were sent out on low prices and long-time payments.
Farm seeds, implements and lumber were put within the reach of any man
who really wanted to get on. And lo! the land prospered. The waste
places were made green, and the desert blossomed like the rose.
* * * * *
The financial blizzard of the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-three was,
without doubt, an important factor in letting down the bars, so that
James J. Hill could come to the front. The River Valley at that time was
not shipping a bushel of wheat. The settlers were just taking care of
their own wants, and were feeding the Lady of the Snows up North around
Winnipeg. We now know that the snows of the Lady of the Snows are mostly
mythical. She is supplying her own food, and we are looking toward her
with envious eyes.
In the year Nineteen Hundred Nine, the two Dakotas and Minnesota
produced more than two hundred million bushels of wheat--worth, say, a
dollar a bushel. And when wheat is a dollar a bushel the farmers are
buying pianolas.
The "Jim Hill Country" east of the Rockies is producing, easily, more
than five hundred million dollars a year in food-products that are sent
to the East for market.
The first time I saw Mr. Hill was in Eighteen Hundred Eighty. He was
surely a dynamo of nervous energy. His full beard was tinged with gray,
his hair was worn long, and he looked like a successful ranchman, with
an Omar Khayyam bias. That he hasn't painted pictures, like Sir William
Van Horne, and thus put that worthy to shame, is to me a marvel.
Hill has been an educator of men. He even supplied Donald A. Smith a
few business thrills. "Tomorrow night I intend to entertain the
Governor," once said Smith to Hill. "Tomorrow night you will be on the
way to Europe to borrow money for me," said Hill. And it was so.
First and foremost, James J. Hill is a farmer. He thinks of himself as
following a plow, milking cows, salting steers, shoveling out ear-corn
for the pigs. He can lift his voice and call the cattle from a mile
away--and does at times. He bought a section of Red River railroad land
from himself and put it in his wife's name. The land was swampy, covered
with swale, and the settlers had all passed it up as worthless. Mr. Hill
cut the swale, tiled the land, and grew a crop that put the farmers to
shame. He then started a tile-factory in the vicinity, and sold it to
the managers--two young fellows from the East--as soon as they proved
that they had the mental phosphorus and the commercial jamake.
The agricultural schools have always interested Mr. Hill. That which
brings a practical return and makes men self-supporting and self-reliant
is his eternal hobby. Four years in college is to him too much. "You can
get what you want in a year, or not at all," he says. He has sent
hundreds of farmers' boys to the agricultural colleges for short terms.
Imagine what this means to boys who have been born on a farm and have
never been off it--to get the stimulus of travel, lectures, books, and
new sights and scenes! In this work, often the boys did not know who
their benefactor was. The money was supplied by some man in the near-by
town--that was all. These boys, inoculated at Mr. Hill's expense with
the education microbe, have often been a civilizing leaven in new
communities in the Dakotas, Montana and Washington. In Eighteen Hundred
Eighty-eight the Saint Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba became a part of
the Great Northern.
Hill had reached out beyond the wheat country into the arid zone, which
was found to be not nearly so arid as we thought. The Black Angus and
the White-Faced Herefords followed, and where once were only scattering
droves of skinny pintos, now were to be seen shaggy-legged Shire horses,
and dappled Percherons.
The bicycle had come and also the trolley-car, and Calamity Jake
prophesied that horses would soon be valuable only for feeding
Frenchmen. But Jacob was wrong. Good horses steadily increased in value.
And today, in spite of automobiles and aeroplanes, the prices of horses
have aviated. Jim Hill's railroads last year hauled over three hundred
thousand horses out of Montana to the Eastern States.
* * * * *
The clothes that a man wears, the house that he builds for his family,
and the furnishings that he places therein, are all an index of his
character. Mr. Hill's mansion on Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, was built to
last a thousand years. The bronze girder that supports the staircase is
strong enough to hold up a locomotive.
The house is nearly two hundred feet long, but looks proportionate, from
the Art-Gallery with its fine pictures and pipe-organ at one end, to its
rich leather-finished dining-room at the other. It is of brownstone--the
real Fifth Avenue stuff. Fond du Lac stone is cheaper and perhaps just
as good, but it has the objectionable light-colored spots.
Nothing but the best will do for Hill. The tallest flagpole that can
pass the curves of the mountains between Puget Sound and Saint Paul
graces the yard. The kitchen is lined with glazed brick, so that a hose
could be turned on the walls; the laundry-room has immense drawers for
indoor drying of clothes; no need to open a single window for
ventilation, as air from above is forced inside over ice-chambers in
Summer and over hot-water pipes in Winter.
Mr. Hill is a rare judge of art, and has the best collection of
"Barbizons" in America. Any one can get from his private secretary,
J. J. Toomey, a card of admission. As early as Eighteen Hundred Eighty-one,
Mr. Hill had in his modest home on Ninth Street, Saint Paul, several
"Corots." Mr. Hill is fond of good horses, and has a hundred or so of
them on his farm of three thousand acres, ten miles north of Saint Paul.
Some years ago, while President of the Great Northern Railway, he drove
night and morning in Summertime to and from his farm to his office. He
very often walks to his house on Summit Avenue or takes a street-car. He
is thoroughly democratic, and may be seen almost any day walking from
the Great Northern Railway office engaged in conversation with one or
more; and no matter how deeply engrossed or how important the subject in
hand, he never fails to greet with a nod or a smile an acquaintance. He
knows everybody, and sees everything.
Mr. Hill knows more about farming than any other man I ever met. He
raises hogs and cattle, has taken prizes for fat cattle at the Chicago
show, and knows more than anybody else today as to the food-supply of
the world--yes, and of the coal and timber supply, too. He has formed
public opinion on these matters, and others, by his able contributions
to various magazines.
Seattle has erected a monument to James J. Hill, and Saint Paul and
Minneapolis will, I know, erelong be only too glad to do something in
the same line, only greater.
Just how any man will act under excitement is an unknown quantity. When
the Omaha Railway General Offices in Saint Paul took fire, at the first
alarm E. W. Winter, then General Manager, ran for the stairway, emerging
on the street. Then he bawled up to his clerk on the second floor
excitedly, "Charlie, bring down my hat!" But his clerk, young Fuller,
with more presence of mind, was then at the telephone sending in word to
the fire-department. Everybody got out safely, even to the top floor,
but the building was destroyed.
One night about ten o'clock, the St. P., M. & M. Ry. offices at Saint
Paul caught fire. The smoke penetrated the room where Mr. Hill with his
Secretary, Will Stephens, was doing some work after all others had
departed. They had paid no attention to the alarm of fire, but the smell
of smoke started them into action. Young Stephens hurriedly carried
valued books and papers to the vault, while Mr. Hill with the strength
of a giant grasped a heavy roll-top desk used by A. H. Bode,
Comptroller, pushed it to the wall, and threw it bodily out of the
second-story window. The desk was shattered to fragments and the
hoodlums grabbed on to the contents. No harm was done to the railway
office, save discoloring the edges of some documents. The next morning
when Bode, all unconscious of fire or accident, came to work, Edward
Sawyer, the Treasurer, said jokingly, "Bode, you may consider yourself
discharged, for your desk is in the street."
When Conductor McMillan sold his farm in the valley for ten thousand
dollars, he asked Mr. Hill what he should do with the money. "Buy
Northern Securities," was the answer. He did so and saw them jump
one-third. Frank Moffatt was Mr. Hill's Secretary for some years. Frank
now has charge of the Peavey Estate. C. D. Bentley, now a prominent
insurance man of Saint Paul, a friend of Frank's, used to visit him in
Mr. Hill's private office. Mr. Hill caught him there once and said,
"Young man if I catch you here again I'll throw you out of the window."
Bentley thought he meant it, so he kept away in the future. He told the
story once in my presence, when Mr. Hill was also present. Mr. Hill
bought red lemonade for the bunch. A porter on his private car was
foolish enough to ask him at Chicago once at what hour the train
returned. That porter had all day to look for another job, and Mr.
Hill's secretary provided another porter at once. Mr. Hill can not
overlook incompetency or neglect. Colonel Clough engineered Northern
Securities; M. D. Grover, attorney for the Great Northern Railway, said
it would not work. Grover was the brightest attorney the road ever had.
When the scheme failed, Grover never once said, "I told you so," and Mr.
Hill sent him a check for a thousand dollars, over and above his salary.
Colonel Clough was employed at a salary of fifteen thousand dollars,
some years before his real work began. He came from the Northern
Pacific. Mr. Hill, when asked by a leading official of that road what he
thought of the Colonel, replied, "Huh! he's a good man to file
contracts."
Mr. Hill said of Allan Manvel, then General Manager of his road, "He may
make a man some day." Mr. Hill grew faster than any man about him. He
distanced them all. S. S. Breed was Treasurer of the old Saint Paul and
Pacific Railroad. His signature in a bold, fine hand adorned all the
bonds of that road, held mostly by the Dutch. He was made auditor when
the St. P., M. & M. Ry. was formed.
Breed had reached his point of greatest efficiency, but that did not
suffice Mr. Hill, who said to him more than once, for Breed was an
old-timer and well liked, "If you can't do the work I'll have to get
some one who can." Mr. Hill, however, neither fired the old man, nor
reduced his pay. Breed got work up to his death in the Great Northern
Railway office, but at the last he served as a guide for strangers.
Breed was supplanted by Bode as Comptroller, followed by C. H. Warren
and then by Farrington--all three Big Boys.
* * * * *
About Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, Mr. Hill gave an address at a
banquet in the Merchants' Hotel, Saint Paul. With a large map of the
United States and Canada on the wall, he took a huge pair of dividers or
compasses and putting one leg of the dividers on the map at Saint Paul,
he swung the other leg out southeast fifteen hundred miles as the crow
flies, into the ocean off the Carolina Coast. Then with Saint Paul still
as a center he swung the compasses around to the northwest fifteen
hundred miles. "All this country," he said, "is within the wheat-belt."
The leg of the compasses went beyond Edmonton in Alberta. Last year this
new Canadian country produced more than one hundred million bushels of
wheat, and this is only the beginning.
Mr. Hill has always maintained that to call cotton king is a misnomer.
Cotton never was king. Wheat is king, for food is more important than
raiment.
Wheat is the natural food of man. The civilization of ancient Greece was
built upon the Nile Valley wheat. It is the one complete, perfect,
vegetable food. It contains all the elements necessary to the making of
the human body. The supply of wheat is the arterial blood that makes
this world of ours do something. Without wheat we would languish--go
quickly to seed, as China has.
Saint Paul and Minneapolis lie at the head of navigation on the
Mississippi River--a little less than two thousand miles by water from
the Gulf and about the same distance from Puget Sound tidewater by rail.
These cities are in the middle of the wheat-belt. To this point came Mr.
Hill, a green country youth.
Transportation was his theme, and transportation of wheat has been the
foundation of his success. Wheat is of more importance to us than
anything else--than gold or cotton or coal or timber or iron.
Mr. Hill carries all these over his railroads. The Great Northern
Railway, the Northern Pacific, and the Chicago, Burlington and
Quincy--over twenty thousand miles of track--are in the hollow of his
hand.
He directs, controls, even to minute details, this great transportation
system. His seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated a year ago last
September. Still he fails not. He has given up the Presidency of the
Great Northern Railway, retaining, however, the title, "Chairman of the
Board." But we all know that his hand is felt just the same in every
part of the working of these miles of track.
Rareripes rot. But the man who comes into his own late in life has a
sense of values and trains on. Mr. Hill does not ask for taffy on a
stick. And while he prizes friendship, the hate or praise of those for
whose opinions he has little respect are to him as naught. No one need
burn the social incense before him in a warm desire to reach his
walletosky. He judges quickly, and his decisions are usually right and
just. It isn't time yet to write his biography. Too many men are alive
who have been moved, pushed and gently jostled out of the way by him, as
he forged to the front. Perspective is required in order to get rid of
prejudice. But the work of James J. Hill is dedicated to time; and Clio
will eventually write his name high on her roster as a great modern
prophet, a creator, a builder. Pericles built a city, but this man made
an empire. Smiling farms, thriving schools, busy factories and happy
homes sprang into being in the sunlight of prosperity which he made
possible, and as yet the wealth of the "Hill Country" is practically
untapped.
* * * * *
SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT BUSINESSMEN,"
BEING VOLUME ELEVEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED
AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND
PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA,
ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII.