When construction of a railroad ended, the demand for immigrants merely changed its form and became cumulative. The dividends of any railroad running out into a new country depend on the development of the tributary territory, and this is especially true of the land-grant roads which owned half of the land within ten miles of their tracks. Thus it came about that the Scandinavians were doubly valuable, first as laborers for wages, and second as independent farmers in the townships made accessible by the new lines.[198] It was, indeed, faith in human nature, and especially Swedish and Norwegian human nature, which led to the construction and profitable operation of hundreds of miles of new roads in Minnesota and Dakota after 1880. One prominent railroad man estimated that each settler (presumably each head of a family) meant in the long run from $200 to $300 a year for the railroad.[199] [198] Personal interviews with a large number of Swedes and Norwegians in northwestern Minnesota, in May, 1890, brought out the fact that many of them worked in the construction of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads, and then invested their savings in railroad lands in the Red River valley, where they were prosperous farmers. [199] Mr. Powell. General Immigration Agent of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, in the _Milwaukee Sentinel_, Dec. 30, 1888, p. 10. The fulfilment of the expectations of the builders of railroads and commonwealths was often surprisingly prompt. The prophetic insight of at least one "captain of industry," President James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway Company which built its transcontinental system without land-grant, was as sure a reliance for capital as the subsidy of the federal Government. Speaking in 1902 at Crookston, in the center of the great Scandinavian region in northwestern Minnesota, he described in striking terms the growth of farm values, and of the railroad business in some of the towns in Minnesota and North Dakota: "I took the best towns [of the Red River valley] outside Crookston [for comparison with towns in North Dakota].... I will give you the annual business. Warren's last year's railroad business with our company was $86,000; Hallock, $94,000,--a respectable sum; Stephen, $87,000; Ada, $81,000.... Langdon [in North Dakota] ... away up towards the boundary, upon Pembina Mountain, $210,000; Osnabrock, I hardly know where it is myself, $101,000; Park River, $170,000; ... Bottineau, away at the west end of the Turtle Mountains, where a few years ago people said it was too far away; could not live there and could not raise anything if they did live there, $258,000.... Land up there [around Bottineau], worth $3, $5, and $8 an acre, and a few pieces $10 an acre, a few years ago, is worth today $25 and $30 per acre."[200] [200] _Northwest Magazine_, XX. 7, 11 (1902).