Part 43

' 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 pa