We have already related how Cornelius Vanderbilt secured control of the New York Central and Hudson River roads, and added to these until he had secured an entrance into Chicago; and how his son, William Henry Vanderbilt, added to this system until it became, and still remains, one of the strongest in the country. We have told, too, of Jay Gould's ideas of railroad management, which seem to have been to get the most out of it for Jay Gould. But when Jay Gould died, he was caught, as it were, with thousands of miles of railroads on his hands. He left four sons, George Gould, Edwin Gould, Howard Gould and Frank Gould, of whom George is the only one that really counts. But he, with a real genius for railroad building, has developed the Gould lines into a great system stretching from Buffalo and Pittsburgh southwestward to Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, Denver, Ogden, St. Louis, New Orleans, Galveston and away out to El Paso. These lines have played a most important part in the development of the great Southwest, and it is said that George Gould is already blazing a way to the Atlantic seaboard, as an outlet for the mighty freight traffic which his lines control. No man connected with railroad building in this country has had a more interesting or adventurous career than James J. Hill. Born on a little Canadian farm in 1838, descended from the hardy Scotch-Irish of whom we have spoken so often, his father died when he was fifteen years, and he was left to his own resources. He found work as a wood-chopper, and one day, while he was chopping down a tree a traveler stopped at the house to take dinner, hitching his horse to the gate. The boy noticed that it was tired and fagged and carried it a bucket of water. This attention pleased the traveler, and as he drove away, tossed the boy a Minnesota newspaper, remarking, "Go out there, young man. That country needs youngsters of your spirit." The boy read the paper with its glowing accounts of the new country, and the next morning, walking to the tree he had been cutting he hit it one last lick for luck, and announced, "I've chopped my last tree." That tree, it is said, bears to-day a great placard with the words, "The last tree chopped by James J. Hill." It _was_ the last one, for a day or two later the boy started for St. Paul. He brought with him to the United States the lusty body, frugal instincts and good principles of his Scotch-Irish ancestry, and, in addition to those, a self-confidence and sureness of judgment destined to take him far.