To tell the story of the growth of Jim Hill from wharfmaster to master of the railroads, would be to tell the story of one of the two or three really great men who are living in America today. It is a story closely interwoven with the story of St. Paul, the struggling town to which he came while yet a mere boy. He has lived to see St. Paul become an important city, the rival village at the falls of St. Anthony even exceed her in size and in commercial importance, but his affection for the old river town to which he has given so much of his life and abundant personality has not dimmed. He has made it the gateway of his Northwest and when one says "Hill's Northwest" he says it advisedly; for while there might have been a Northwest without Jim Hill, there would have been no Jim Hill without the Northwest. He found it a raw and little known land over which stretched a single water-logged railroad fighting adversity, and in momentary danger of extinction through receivership; a trunk-line railroad at that time distinguished more for its arrogance than for any other one feature of its being. Somewhere in the late eighties J. J. Hill took a trip over that railroad. He saw Seattle for the first time and found it a mere lumber-shipping town of but a few thousand population and with but little apparent future. He saw great stretches of open country--whole counties the size of the majestic states of New York and of Pennsylvania and still all but unknown. He also saw unbridled streams, high-seated mountain ranges and because J. J. Hill was a dreamer he saw promise in these things. From that trip he returned to the budding city of St. Paul, enthused beyond ordinary measure, and determined that in the coming development of the half-dozen territories at the northwestern corner of the country he would share no ordinary part. He turned his back on the navigation of the Mississippi--already beginning to wane--and gave his attention to railroading. Purchasing an inconsequential lumber railroad in Minnesota, he laid the foundations for his Great Northern system. There was a something about Jim Hill in those earlier days by which he could give his enthusiasm and his lofty inspiration to those with whom he came in contact. That rare faculty was his salvation. Men listened to the confident talker from St. Paul and then placed their modest savings at his disposal. They have not regretted their steps. The Great Northern, through Hill's careful leadership has, despite much of the sparse territory through which it passes, become one of the great conservative railroad properties of the United States.