The Saint Paul globe., 1902-10-30

Unless They Know of Land Elsewhere
Which Is Just as Good-Speech Covers
Wide Range.
The full address of James ]. Hill, pres
ident of the Great Northern Railway
company, brief synopsis of which ap-
peared in h e G1 b e of Monday, is as
follows:
''Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I assure you that it gives me great deal
of pleasure to be here with you today.
I am very glad to hear the cause of your
coming together; that you want to learn
from each other, by counseling together,
what is best for your interests, @ and If
l can add anything to the general knowl-
edge, or to improve the situation, it is
something that I am always most glad
to do
ure of attending meeting at Crookston,
and, strange enough, g. that time,
believe it was before the days of the
farmers Institutes. 1t was to consider
the question of drainage, and I remem-
Der that few of your citizens, taking an
active interest in the matter Joined with
me and we made survey Of the valley,
giving the information that there was
regular line of drainage in the Red river
valley and it only needed combined eff
fort and a reasonable amount of money to
remove the surface water to very great
extent After the survey was made 1
remember your senator from this district,
an old friend of mine, and a man who
has, to my knowledge. done most faith
full work for the Red river valley-I never
knew man come down to represent
new constituency who worked harder,
more intelligently OF more faithfully than
Senator Sampson. He wanted to get
from the legislature the privilege to better
the drainage condition of the respective
counties, farming districts. or respective
localities. by forming drainage districts,
and | believe that with all his efforts and
all his industry, he failed At that time
you did not seem to want any drainage.
Later you thought better of it, and we
are always glad to do anything that Will
help the situation, because IN helping you you
7 we help ourselves. You now have through
long suffering and patience, opened up
most of the main streams. have taken
a very deep interest in the matter. We
furnished the service of our chief engi-
neerS to one of the commissions and we
paid $25, 600 towards the expense of the
first work. But the work is not finished,
You ought to-, i'll some way. see to it
that the work that was so well started is
at least advanced so that it will serve
you to reasonable extent. 1t can be
done. 1t does not take great deal more
money and you should get some help
from the state without the state doing
itself any injustice.
Need of Good Drainage.
There are a great many swamp :, lands o41s
Red river valley Now, until you have
good drainage your land will not do itself
justice, and you will not get the reward of
your labor, through any industry that you
ought to get if your lands were we'll
drained. l say the state can help ycu.
because you can go back, if you wish,
and take the lands that the state held
and could not sell at 81 an acre and 50. so
an acre-Some of them were sold at that
price and parties threw the contract back
to the state. 1 saw that you will find
that those lands sold by the thousands of
acres since at $15 an acre, simply because
of the drainage, SO that the state has
not given to you alone. They have got
back $8 for every 81 they put in and they
can afford to be a little reasonable with
you inasmuch as they took the land that
was granted no drain yours. and used it
for other purposes. i remember when the
bill appropriating 100000 by the SPITE
and our $25,000 was passed. 1t was sew
eral days before we were sure 1t would
around the capjtol-afraid that it had
railroad woode huck' in it somewhere. They
thought surely that if we paid $4,000 of
the money, we wanted one of the COM
missioners to try and help see that the
money was intelligently expended and
that is was not frittered away. But the
it w.es passed, afraid that somebody
might be charged with having some in
terest in helping a railroad.
Now, l want to say to you that today
I am going to take the privilege of talk
ing very plainly. l have not often the op-
portunity to meet you. 1 have a great
many places TO V1Slt. II L ShOulQ start
out and travel 200 miles every day in going
over the Great Northern railway, it would
take me thirty days to get over it,.
have. other places to go to and other
things to do but I will be glad at any
time, and no man takes more interest in
your welfare than l do, to meet you; to
come to your meetings. AS someone said
today, This might become permanent
Make it permanent, but if you do have
1t in the summer between hay and grass,
when you have got more time. I do not
VIZ mt fO hn iT1Ci tad 1n,o
but before | am through you may think
am scolding or advising you. My only
excuse for doing it is that for twenty
five years l have watched the progress
of the valley. 1t is twenty-five or thirty
years since my first night in Crookston,
and it was spent over there near the foot
of an oak tree, and the mosquitoes were
so bad that did not sleep; but I have
had an interest in the growth of this
country and in its settlement. 1t was the
first railroad line that was built and
1t was the first highway to the Canadian
Northwest, and my hardest work, because
1 was beginner, was put in on this line,
and l remember it probably better than
do any other portion of the road.
Land In Minnesota Superb.
you have a good country here and
you have excellent land. Let me compare
It with the country across the river in
North Dakota; Is there man in the
world who will say that you have not got
more clean water running in the streams,
more timber. deeper soil, as good a eli
IndIe-eVerylnlnS 10 cOnQuco TO a man S
happiness and his prosperity. You are
nearer market. You have lower rates on
the railways, and there is no reason on
the face of the earth why your side of
the river ought not to have more people.
1t had railroads before the other had.
You ought to have more people; you ought
to have more business, and land ought to
be worth more here.
Now, I can think of nothing in the
wide world that we have omitted to do
for you that we have done for them. We
have given you miles OF railroad We
have given you, because you are nearer
market, lower rates than they have had,
but for some reason this side of the river
has not grown as the other side has.
do not know why. We have tried to
make it grow. but we want the people to
work with US, to help US along. 1 want
you to ask yourselves the question
and answer it for yourselves: Did you
ever know of any time or place where
we ask the people here to join US in
helping the procession forward the set
Element, of the, country forward, or any
thing else, but somebody would get up
and say oh. this is a railroad wood
chuck and we have not time. We try
to push along with people who try to
help themselves. Now, you may think