A WONDERFUL CAREER.

Evening Star, Issue 11891, 20 May 1903, Page 3

A WONDERFUL CAREER.

Mr J. J. Hill, one of the great railway magnates of the .American continent, who was recently in London, has nothing in his appearance, in hjs manners, or his talk to snggest the "hustling" American. He looks, said an interviewer, the embodiment of an easy-going dignified English country gentleman, with the cautiousness usually associated with the Scot, every thought he expresses being evidently well turned over in his active mind before he gives utterance to it. Mr Hill was born in Wellington County, Ontario, in 1838. On his father's side he came of a sturdy Irishl stock, while his mqther was of Scottish ancestry. Although he has made his way in the world entirely by his own unaided efforts, and owes his great success to his energy, „Jiis courage, and to that judgment ana foresight which have enabled him to see and to take advantage of possibilities to which his less gifted fellows were blind, ho was fortunate in the fact that his parents were able to give him a better education than has fallen to the lot of most of America's self-made men. As a boy Mr Hill was studiously inclined, and showed a great aptitude for learning, and his parents decided that his sphere should be the minstry or medicine. • These plans, however, were shattered when he was fifteen years of age by. the death of his father, which event left his mother almost without me<ins. Mr Hill was then thrown upon his own resources. Mr Hill had always been fond of romantic fiction, and it was the books of Fenimore Cooper which first turned his mind to the great Western solitudes, and he had thought of a coming time when these region? would be ppened up by the advance of industrial development. Now that he had been compelled to relinquish the idea of professional life, he determined to go westward, for he felt lhat there lay the best field for chances of success. But before he could put his plan into operation it was necessary to have money for the journey, and for some time he worked at a store in his native town. His earnings were ntft great, and a part of them went toward the maintenance of his widowed mother, so that it was three years before he was able to migrate to St. Paul, Minnesota. St. Paul was then little more than a village, almost outside the bounds of civilisation, and life there was rough and hard; but Mr Hill saw the possibilitips cf the place. He knew that when the thou-

sands of mile* of prairie land which | Stretched out from St. Paul came to be opened up there would be. golden opportunities for,those able to take advantage of them, and he determined to await his chance. But in the meantime - he was a stranger in a strange-land, and he commenced his career at St. Paul as a laborer on the wharf, where he earned two dollars . a day by carrying freight to the decks of steamboats. After a time he secured a position as shipping clerk in the office cf the Dubuque and St. Paul Packet Com- , pany, but this, like the dock-laboring, was but a step to higher things, and after saving a little mdhey he let up in business on his own account, becoming agent for the North-western Packing Company, and also engaging in the sale of wood and cpaL He was the first to bring coal %o St. Paul, and the first to open up communication between I that town and Winnipeg.' j In 1872 Mr Hill went into partnership with Norman Kittson, of the Hudson Bay Company, and together they operated steamboats between Moonhead and Winnipeg. Soon afterwards Mr Hill was prevailed upon to attempt the reorganisation of the St. Paul and Pacific Railway, which was then in a state of bankruptcy. The [ line, which was altogether about 400 miles ! in length, was nearly £7,000,000 in debt, ; and was looked upon as hopeless. Sir Hill, however, had the penetration to see '-. that this struggling bit of railway might . be the means of piercing an almost unI known region and of opening up to settlers a land of wonderful I company was reconstituted under the name of St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railroad, Mr Hill being the general manager. On its formation the company was ridiculed as a hair-brained scheme which j could only cause ruin to its promoters. Where, it was asked, was the population ] to support such a line? Hundreds of miles I of prairie intervened between one little town and another. But the clear head which had _ taken Mr Hill step by step from dock-laboring to a position of importance in the world of commerce was not at fault ■ He possessed an insight which those who j criticised him lacked. His object was to 1 construct an iron road that would be the means of attracting population to An enormous tract of productive country, and he stuck resolutely to bis task. In the first place, he had the existing portions of the railway greatly improved. Then began the work of extension, which was carried (in until the iron roadway was laid from the

V Montana* out to the North Pacific. St. rani, Minneapolis and Dulutfc were fixed ' «pon as the primary basis of deration, and &om these tiu»e points all supplies were v served out Millions of dollarsi had to 1» forthwiaing to enable the, work to be prosecuted but neither money, nor foresight, nor vigilance was eveFW&iug, and it is a • remarkable fact that this stupendous work cf railway construction was begun* and completed without State or Government land grant or subsidy, at a capitalisation in stocks and bonds oFfcbout £6,000 a mile, ' and at the rate of •about one mile a day. for every day of control. While other Transcontinental roads, m*wtthstanding their subsidies and grants, have gone into, the hands of receivers, the Groat Northern has never once failed to pay interest on its bonds, and has never passed, a dividend. Throughout the construction of this giant railway Mr Hill saw-to every detail, and'so thoroughl/ did he cover the ground that it seemed to the workers that there must be several Mr Hills directing them. The completion of the railway brought a new era for the Far West. The great prairie lands became peopled, settlers came flocking to the new country,' and millions of acres of uncultivated land were made to yield rich flocks. To-day the State of Minnesota alone produces some 80,000,000 bushels of wheat. The Dakotas produce 97;000;000 bushels, the Oregon 24,000,000 bushels, and the ready distribution of the grain which benefits people the world over is due to the facilities offered by the groat railway which had its birth in the far-row-ing brain of Mr James Hill.