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.
