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of the road. It is because the work must be done the best way; and, when a division superintendent is not packing his freight to the best advantage, he is not retained because he is a nice old man, but his place is taken by a man who can load cars well. In some cases it may not seem sufficient consideration of the individual, but great forces often do not consider individuals.

There is nothing that Mr. Hill feels more. keenly than his responsibility to his stockholders. Before the panic of 1893, $30,000,ooo had been provided by Mr. Hill for the road; and when the financial crash came, as this money was not in use, Mr. Hill lent it to relieve the strain, saved many men from ruin, and helped to preserve confidence. There are two old ladies in New Hampshire who had put $10,000 into the Manitoba road; and to this day Mr. Hill says to the stockholders at the meetings: "We still keep faith with the old ladies." The confidence felt in him by European investors is profound. He and Lord Roberts are close friends, and all of Lord Roberts' possessions beside his campbed and his uniform and his recent grants by Parliament are invested in the Great Northern railroad.

The first year the road was in operation, 1890, trade was paralyzed, the competition was great, and the country along the route was yet unsettled; but the mind which had planned the great enterprise had provided for its success. The officers of the road offered to have their salaries cut down, Mr. Hill receiving none; and reductions were made, ranging from large sums down to ten cents a day from some of the employees. When 10,000 men receive ten cents less a day the saving amounts to a considerable sum.

When

To ship valuable lumber eastward was an excellent plan; but to send empty cars. after it was out of the question; so Mr. Hill conceived the idea of shipping grain for the Japanese steamers to carry to the Orient. An agent was sent to China and Japan to find out what the cost of wheat must be to compete with rice, and the result was that the Japanese Navigation Company, the third largest steamship company in the world, began to carry large shipments of grain to China and Japan. This was a foresighted piece of work surely. These boats were soon found to be inadequate for the shipment of the grain, lumber, cotton, steel rails, tobacco

and silver which soon became a part of our exports to the Orient. Two large new steamers are therefore now in process of construction at New London for the Oriental trade. They each carry 20,000 tons of freight, and draw thirty-six feet of water. They are 680 feet long, 75 feet wide, and their height to the top of the bridge is as great as a six story building.

The question of docks for these large steamers was the next that came up. Seattle, the western terminus of the road, is built on the side of a hill, which continues to slope very gradually under the water. Moreover, there is in the water a very destructive mollusk called the teredo or shipworm, which burrows into wood and soon destroys every kind of timber. The fertile brain of Mr. Hill met this difficulty also. He caused thousands of tons of brush which the teredo cannot penetrate, to be carried and dumped into the water in two sections, leaving a channel between. Then the channel was found not to be deep enough; so out of this a huge hydraulic pump removed the mud and gravel and forced them into the brush, making quite a compact mass. Then creosoted piles, prepared by a very expensive process, were found to be impervious to the dreaded teredo, and were driven outside the brush and gravel. In this way a depth of forty-six feet of water has been provided for the great steamers when they shall begin their work.

The original 437 miles of completed road of which Mr. Hill took charge as manager, now number as the Great Northern System, 6,000 miles. In 1883 he became president of the company. While other trans-continental roads have collapsed and gone into the hands of receivers, the Great Northern has never once defaulted the interest on its bonds or passed a dividend. The road extends from Puget Sound to St. Paul, or during the season of navigation to Duluth and Superior, where it connects for Buffalo with its own two most

luxurious steamers. A fleet of six freight vessels are added to these. The grain ships moving through the "Soo" give that canal rank over the Suez in point of tonnage.

In developing this great scheme of his life, the plan has increased enormously in the process. Besides laying the foundation of a great fortune, it has in its fulfilment opened a very rich and vast new country, reached out to new markets for many American products,

and brought benefit to great numbers of people. All along the line of his road he has encouraged the most diversified and productive farming, and he has introduced new methods and labor-saving devices. He has placed 5,000 head of blooded stock in the hands of farmers at his own expense, and his own farm of 35,000 acres at Crookston, Minn., furnishes an illustration of model farming under the very best conditions. The North Oaks farm of 5,500 acres, about ten miles from St. Paul, is the scene of Mr. Hill's favorite recreation. There is a simple farmhouse there where his daughters go with one servant or none, and play at keeping house. There are seven lakes on this farm, and a number of buildings, stables, greenhouses, a perfectly appointed dairy, a bowling alley, a boathouse, and houses for the workmen. On an island on one of the lakes there is a herd of elk, and in another pasture Mr. Hill is preserving a large herd of buffalo, now becoming so very rare. He is devoted to his horses, and there is no detail of the care of his fine blooded stock with which he is not perfectly familiar.

Among other philanthropic results of his work Mr. Hill has formed a plan for assisting his employees to save money. Anyone, male or female, drawing a salary under $3,000 may in return for deposits of ten dollars or more obtain investment certificates upon which the interest is paid quarterly. By letting the interest remain the amount increases rapidly. If a man or a woman ceases to be an employee of the road, the full sum, principal and interest, is paid. One old section foreman has put in $1,200 during the short period in which this system has existed, and one girl who has just been married, drew out $2,000 as her portion saved from her employment as typewriter.

Mr. Hill has erected and endowed a group of six buildings called the St. Paul Seminary for educating Catholic young men for the priesthood, and he has contributed largely to Macalester and Hamline Colleges, of Presbyterian and Methodist origin. All along the line of his road churches and schools of all religious sects have found him a generous contributor.

He has built a magnificent residence in St. Paul, a monument of careful construction, in which he has a picture gallery full of good paintings of modern French masters. Nor is

painting the only branch of art which has engaged Mr. Hill's attention. He knows much about carvings, rugs, jewels and china. In politics Mr. Hill is a Democrat.

Although he has no desire to control a newspaper, he came into the ownership of the St. Paul Globe; but last year he declined to have his newspaper adopt the Bryan policy. He is liberal and broad-minded in his estimate of woman's work. "If a woman finds herself fitted to do a certain kind of work as well as a man, I don't see," he says, "why a Iman should call it his work." He himself feels that he owes much of his success to his beautiful domestic relations, because, as he quaintly expresses it, "there was never a fire in the rear.' At the dedication of St. Paul's Seminary, Mr. Hill said in his presentation speech:

"Some of you may wonder why I, who am not a member of your church, should have undertaken the building and endowment of a Roman Catholic Theological Seminary, and you will pardon me if I tell you plainly why. For nearly thirty years I have lived in a Roman Catholic household, and daily I had before me and around me the earnest devotion, watchful care and Christian example of a Roman Catholic wife, of whom it may be said, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,' and on whose behalf to-night I desire to present and turn over to the illustrious Archbishop of this diocese, the Seminary and its endowment as provided in the deed and articles of trust covering the same."

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Mr. Hill is often spoken of as a puzzle. Like other elemental forces he is not easily understood. He is a figure of world-wide reputation and a man of remarkable intellectual endowment, of a great constructive genius, of a maryelous capacity for detail, inventive and of untiring industry; and behind all his qualities is the force of an indomitable will. For years he has been the embodiment of one great idea.

He may discharge an employee who has served him fifteen years, with no word of explanation and apparently with no effort to adjust the fault, whatever it may be--because that man causes friction in his vast machine. Yet he will care for and speak in the tenderest way of an unhappy little dog that has fled to him for protection. He will give a large sum of money to save a friend in danger of financial disaster; he puts his mighty hand on the political machine and without an instant's de

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by a spiritual personality like that of the beautiful old priest whose portrait stands in his library; and he can feel contempt for the less powerful than those who are on his own plane. A warm sympathy for old friends comes to the surface in his nature; he takes up the roll of his old militia comrades and recounts each name without faltering.

"Some months ago," the assistant manager of another railroad company recently said, "I went over to the Great Northern offices. Mr. Hill's outside office was half full of waiting visitors. I was admitted at once.

"Mr. Hill was in a genial mood. He made me sit down, and we talked of many thingsof early experiences, of traffic in general, of Chinese trade, of the ship subsidy bill. That is, Mr. Hill talked of these things with his hand on my arm. I listened and watched the clock. At last he abruptly stopped; I went out an hour and a half too late for my next engagement. The outside office was now full

of waiting visitors. Three general managers glared at me for my presumptuous delay, but they should have remembered that Mr. Hill is not always taciturn."

Some months ago Mr. Hill visited the office of a railroad in the stock of which he had just obtained an influential interest. Glancing through the doorway of one large office-room, he asked curtly, "How many men here?" "About eighty-five," was the answer. "Can't you get along with less?" "No, we never could." "Well, I'll get a man who can."

On the other hand, Mr. Hill has displayed the greatest consideration towards certain of the old employees who were personal friends of his at an early day. A superintendent, one of the pioneer railroaders of Minnesota, was retained on full pay long after his physical condition incapacitated him for effective service. An assistant was provided to relieve him of actual responsibility, and when he died,

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