The story of the battle royal between the Hill and Harriman interests will be told in a subsequent chapter. It is not necessary to repeat the history of the famous corner of 1901 nor of the compromise effected by the formation of the Northern Securities Company. The final result of this contest was the complete harmonizing of the Western railroad situation, so far as the Hill and the Harriman interests were concerned. In the succeeding years the Great Northern system penetrated to the heart of Manitoba and constructed lines through British Columbia to Nelson and Vancouver. It built other branches to Spokane, Washington, and Helena and Butte, Montana. Moreover by the discovery of extensive ore deposits on the lines of the company in northern Minnesota and by subsequent purchases of other mines, the Great Northern acquired control of about sixty-five thousand acres and hundreds of millions of tons of iron ore. All the properties so controlled were leased on a very profitable basis to the United States Steel Corporation. The Great Northern Railroad itself did not retain control of the ore lands but, through a trusteeship, gave a beneficial interest in them to its stockholders in the shape of a special dividend. The profits under this lease promised to be very large in the course of time, but the Steel Corporation had the option to cancel after a five-year period, and in 1912, as the result of a United States Government suit for the dissolution of the Steel Corporation, the lease was canceled. Since that time the trustees of the ore lands have executed other leases, and the Great Northern ore certificates are bringing in a substantial return to their owners. The three Hill lines--the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy--have been unusually profitable. The Great Northern and the Northern Pacific have steadily paid liberal dividends to their stockholders on increasing amounts of capital stock; and the Burlington, whose whole stock is owned by these two roads, has also handed over liberal profits year by year, at the same time accumulating an earned surplus of more than one hundred million dollars and spending an almost equal amount of profits on the improvement and maintenance of the property. The Burlington today controls the Colorado Southern, which extends southward from the Burlington lines in Wyoming, passing through Denver, Pueblo, Fort Worth, and other points southward to the Gulf. CHAPTER X. THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF THE SOUTH