To Stephen and Smith, the Canadian Pacific enterprise promised nationalist fulfillment as well as profit. It also promised them, and Hill and Kennedy as well, a western transcontinental linkage to their American railroad and access to huge new markets.

Thus, Jim Hill’s attempt to merge and monopolize the three premier railroads of the Northwest crashed in failure. Perhaps, though, it is more accurate, considering his entire strategy—dating back to securing control of the NP and the Burlington in 1901—to term the attempt instead as a long-term success blunted by a final setback. For Hill was quite

With such solid fiscal support abetted by land grants, with such capable management, and with such a rich heartland to embrace, the Saint Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba spread its trunk and branch lines like a robust plant during the years 1879–86.

Jim Hill loved politics, both the bare-knuckled manipulation of favors and patronage and the philosophical discussion of the issues.

At the time, of course, no one could know the potential value of these securities. On the face of it, the associates had laid out a total of $10 to $11 million and become primary owners of a corporation capitalized at $31,486,000. As the road developed under expert management, though, it naturally increased sharply in value and earned handsome

Hill genuinely cared about quality rail service and about public opinion.

Few regional railroads could match it either for solidity of capitalization and infrastructure or for excellence of management.

he was one of the first to comprehend that the day of independent regional roads was coming to an end, that only transcontinental systems offering low through-rates would survive as independent systems. Regional roads, even prosperous ones like the Manitoba, would be swallowed up by the transregional railroads.

On the Red, his steamboating-forwarding business served as the advance staging arm of a railroad temporarily too weak to move forward to its natural termini. Unlike most Minnesotans, who viewed the Saint Paul and Pacific as a near-worthless derelict, Hill viewed it as a miracle waiting to happen, a potentially wondrous enterprise simply lacking