The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-06-01
ACHIEVEMENTS
OF JAMES ]. HILL
What He Has Accomplished Is
AS Nothing Compared to
His Dreams of Future.
A TRANSPORTATION GENIUS
SENATOR -GoRMAN PICKS HIM
OUT AS A GREAT MAN.

IF 1 were asked to name. three men
of the United States who tower above
their fellows in the things that make
men great in this workaday, practical
world" once remarked the late Senator
Arthur Pue German 81 should choose
James ]. Hill as one of the three, and
il would need less than three minutes
to make the nomina ton. He is the
greatest genius of transportation the
world has ever seen, and in many 9TH
er ways he looms an intellectual giant"
The reaches of James ]. Hills mind
are like the rays of the sun, shooting
out in every direction with such high
light that the central personality is
made difficult of clear discernment.
He is the concentrated essence of 100
men in one. As occasion requires he
can be James ]. Hill or Jim HILL the
planner or the plodder, the designer or
the builder. He has served in the hum
BILE and the higher posts of life. and in
each the tremendous force of the man
has been spent and felt.
He was Jim Hill, dockhand, at IS
cents a day; he is James j. Hill, crea-
tor and master of transportation sys-
TENS, at thrice 75 cents a minute
He was Jim Hill, barefoot boy, who
dreamed ambitious dreams and did his
tasks well. He is James ]. Hill. who
translated the dreams into realities and
patented them.
He was Jim Hill, peering beyond his
own little sphere into the problems and
the possibilities of the great world out
side: he is James j. Hill. worker of
wonders, still dreaming, still planning,
still achieving.
The Ultimate Dream of Life.
What he has done is to what he
hopes to do as the pigmy is to the
giant; as the 20 cents a day is to the
thrice 20 cents a minute. Presiding
genius over a railroad system that al
most thrice spans the western half of
the American continent and sends out
strong arms to this side and that, he
has set his mind and his heart on an
ultimate achievement that may turn
the tide of the worlds trade the other
way.
Europeans better gauge the force of
the man and the height of his aspira-
tions than do his own countrymen,"
said a friend who has been close to Mr.
Hill in a personal and professional way
for twenty years. Commercially they
fear him more than they fear any other
man or group of men in America.
Viewing him from the other side of the
SVds ttcg StCiu " nave tle true per-
Spective of Mr.. Hill and of the stu
pendous possibilities of his program in
the future of the worlds commerce.
His measure has not been taken here
Some day we shall better understand
the gigantic mold in which the think
ing, acting Jim Hill is cast"
AS a background. to make Hill the
entity stand out in clearer relief. il
may be said that the great remaining
dream of his life is to drive stakes i'm
the Suez canal, figura lively speaking,
and virtually put it cut of the run
ming as a highway of international
trade. He would have under his direct
control lines of steel reaching straight
from the Atlantic seaboard TO Seattle
and the Puget sound. He would ex-
pand his Great Northern Steamship
eompany's marine equipment until it
becomes the most powerful factor on
the Pacific.
Men Have often Laughed at Him.
With huge vessels and fast through"
freight trains he would carry the car
goes of the orient from Manila, Hong
kong and Yokohama to London by way
of the Pacific, New York and Atlantic
route, more quickly ard more eheapIv
than they can be transported today or
at any time in the future by way of the
Sue1 canal. vice versa, he would carry
the tonnage of London to the far east
ern ports by the occidental route 1t
seems like the dream of an optimist
unduly stimulated, but Mr. Hill has
made profound practical study of eV-
cry angle of the startling proposition.
Men have been laughing at Jim Hill
ever since ambition and hard work be-
gan to lift him from lower into higher
places. He was sneered at as dockhand
and as clerk because he talked of big
ger things He was ridicUled when he
bought decrepit, Improbable little
line IN the northwest to make it the
nucleus of a great railroad to the Pa
cific. He was called crazy when the
Great Northern was built to the coast.
and crazier still when the Minnesota
and the Dakota, those magnificent twin
giants of the sea, were launched and
sent on their mission of initiating a
stupendous transoceanic traffic be-