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Show GREAT FINANCIER LOSES LAST BATTLE J. J. HILL, EMPIRE BUILDER. SUC CUMBS TO ATTACK OF BLOOD , v POISONING. Was Acknowledged as West's Foremost Fore-most Railroad Builder and Business Busi-ness Man, Interested In Agriculture, Agricul-ture, Art and Education. St.. Paul. Minn. James J. Hill, railroad rail-road buildtr and greatest financier ot the west, died here May 20, from blood poisoning, Mr. Hill was in his TSth year. In the passing of James J. Hill the greatest constructive genius of the . northwest is gone, lie was acknowledged acknowl-edged as its foremost railroad builder and business man. He was ever greatly Interested in agriculture, art and education. The loss which his city, state and nation has sustained thrcugh his death cannot can-not be measured. Mr. Hill's wealth Is estimated between be-tween $200,000,000 and $250,000,000. As a mere roustabout lad of 18, Hill toured from Maine to Minnesota. When, in 1S50, he disembarked from -v a Mississippi river packet at St. Paul that place was a frontier town of 5,000 inhabitants. At the sign of W. J. Bass & Co., agents for the Dubuque & St. Paul Packet company, he found a job as stevedore Mid clerk. In the fifteen years that followed he gathered no end of experience and a little capital, with which he launched launch-ed his own firm of Hill, Grlss & Co., which promptly displayed Its initiative initia-tive by bringing the first load of coal into St. Paul. Two years later, with a flat-bottomed steamer, he established estab-lished the first regular communication with St. Paul and the Manitoba ports of the fertile Red River valley. At about that time St. Paul was. having its first experiment in railroad' building. Eighty miles had been laid to St. Cloud, 316 miles to Brecken-ridge, Brecken-ridge, both of which terminals were at the southern end of the Red River valley, and there were about 100 miles- ! of track "which began nowhere and. ended in that same Indefinite spot."' This venture ran up a debt or $33,000,-000 $33,000,-000 and collapsed, with its only assets being "a few streaks of rust and a, right of way." Aiter five years of financial dickering, dicker-ing, including the sale of all his other interests, which netted a fortune of $100,000, Hill and a syndicate of three others Sir Donald A. Smith, George Stephen and Norman W. Kittson -obtained this property. The St. Paul, Minnesota & Manitoba railway was formed to operate the road, with Hill as general manager. When in 1883 Mr. Hill was elected president he. uu- '" . dertook the extension of the road from its Dakota and Minnesota homestead to the Pacific ocean. He was confronted con-fronted by three great competitors to the south, each ol which had received big bonuses as government aid, whereas where-as the "Manitoba," or the Great Northern, as it came to be known, did not have a dollar of government subsidy sub-sidy or an acre of grant to forward its progress from the Minnesota boundary to the sea. "n this light. Hill's plan was widely deemed pure folly, but he pressed it to conclusion by building and populating as he built. While Mr. Hill built up for himself and his associates an immense fortune for-tune he also helped to create for the settlers along his lines a wealth of over five billion dollars in real property, prop-erty, which is represented by the value of the 400,000 farms and their 65,000,000 acres of improved land. Upon his retirement at 69, the "streak of rust" he had bought thirty years before had expanded to more than 6,000 miles and it was earning gross profits of more than $66,000,000-a $66,000,000-a year, and carrying 15,000,000 tons of freight annually. He still retained a hand in the Great Northern's policy as chairman of the board of directors, while his son Louis, who hfia worke.l up from the humblest position of his father's railroad, became president. " ' - |