General Manager. And on Mr. Hill fell
the burden of turning a losing property into a prosperous and paying
one. From the very day that he became manager he breathed into the
business the breath of life.

He sent over to England and bought hundreds of young Hereford bulls, and
distributed them along the line of the road among the farmers. "Jim
Hill's bulls" are pointed out now over three thousand miles of range,
and jokes on how Hill bulled the market are always in order. Clydesdale
horses were sent out on low prices and long-time payments.

Farm seeds, implements and lumber were put within the reach of any man
who really wanted to get on. And lo! the land prospered. The waste
places were made green, and the desert blossomed like the rose.

* * * * *

The financial blizzard of the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-three was,
without doubt, an important factor in letting down the bars, so that
James J. Hill could come to the front. The River Valley at that time was
not shipping a bushel of wheat. The settlers were just taking care of
their own wants, and were feeding the Lady of the Snows up North around
Winnipeg. We now know that the snows of the Lady of the Snows are mostly
mythical. She is supplying her own food, and we are looking toward her
with envious eyes.

In the year Nineteen Hundred Nine, the two Dakotas and Minnesota
produced more than two hundred million bushels of wheat--worth, say, a
dollar a bushel. And when wheat is a dollar a bushel the farmers are
buying pianolas.

The "Jim Hill Country" east of the Rockies is producing, easily, more
than five hundred million dollars a year in food-products that are sent
to the East for market.

The first time I saw Mr. Hill was in Eighteen Hundred Eighty. He was
surely a dynamo of nervous energy. His full beard was tinged with gray,
his hair was worn long, and he looked like a successful ranchman, with
an Omar Khayyam bias. That he hasn't painted pictures, like Sir William
Van Horne, and thus put that worthy to shame, is to me a marvel.

Hill has been an educator of men. He even supplied Donald A. Smith a
few business thrills. "Tomorrow night I intend to entertain the
Governor," once said Smith to Hill. "Tomorrow night you will be on the
way to Europe to borrow money for me," said Hill. And it was so.

First and foremost, James J. Hill is a farmer. He thinks of himself as
following a plow, milking cows, salting steers, shoveling out