se of everybody, including Hill and his friends, the
grasshoppers suddenly disappeared in the early summer of 1877 and never
came back. That summer saw the biggest wheat crop that had ever been
harvested in Minnesota. "Hill's Folly," as it was afterwards called,
with its thirty locomotives and few hundred cars, was feverish with
success. Hill worked every possible source to get extra cars and went
all the way to New York to buy a lot of discarded passenger coaches
from the Harlem Railroad. By the end of the season it was evident to
everybody that the St. Paul and Pacific was going to have a career and
that "Jim" Hill's dream was coming true.

Immediately the fortunate owners began to plan for the future. They had
acquired the road at an initial cost of only $280,000 in cash. In the
following year they advanced money for the completion of the unfinished
section, as necessary to obtain the benefit of a generous grant of land
from the State. Then, in 1879, having acquired full possession of the
property, and having several millions of dollars in profits, they issued
bonds for further developments. This gave them sufficient basis to
enlarge their scheme greatly, and in the formation of the St. Paul,
Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad, they created $15,000,000 of stock,
which was divided equitably among Hill, Stephen, Angus, Smith, Kennedy,
and Kittson. This stock was all "water," but the railroad prospered so
extraordinarily in the succeeding few years that by 1882 the stock was
worth $140 a share. And in 1883 they issued to themselves $10,000,000
of six per cent bonds for $1,000,000--a further division of $9,000,000,
coming out of nothing but good will, earning power, and future
prospects.

The decade from 1880 to 1890 witnessed a steady growth of the system
formed in 1879 under the name of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba.
The 600 odd miles which it embraced when Hill and his coterie made their
big stock division had grown in 1890 to 2775 miles. It then consisted of
a main line reaching from St. Paul and Minneapolis across Minnesota and
the northern part of North Dakota, far into Montana, with a second main
line from Duluth across Minnesota to a junction with the St. Paul line
in North Dakota, besides numerous branches reaching points of importance
in both these States.

But the development of the Hill properties had by no means reached its
limit at this time. Hill's dream had been to construct a through line
acro