Sublime

and strategy.

everyone around the Saint Paul levees came to know “Jim” Hill, his name usually rendered as one word, “Jimhill,” a man who always seemed up on anything and everything that went on.

His near-manic preoccupation with his business gripped him like a demon.

Possibly knowing that the end was near, he spent more time now on philanthropy.

Morgan made his specialty the refinancing, reorganization, and rationalization of America’s badly overextended and overcapitalized railroads; his “clients” included some of the largest, such as the Erie, the New York Central, and the Pennsylvania.

To the very end, Jim Hill unfailingly applied his lifelong philosophy, by these and many other such applications, of plowing earnings back into improved infrastructure.

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

Blood poisoning caused his death.