Arizona republican., 1916-05-30
Republican A. P. Leased wireI

llNtIubittttl "A. T 70 l%tdotN " Ai'l James J. Hill discovered the breadbasket of the world" in the Great Northwest: he led in it's development from a wilderness into what now com prises six wealthy states dotted with 400 900 farms; and he blaZed a trail for transportation which eventually reached from Buffalo to Asia, with a total mileage of rail and steamship facilities that would nearly girdle the earth.
 That but roughly spans the story of his achievement.
 Near Guelph. in Ontario, where James J(erome) Hill was born in 1888, the son of an Irish Canadian farmer who died when the boy was 15, there stands a tree stump labeled: The last tree chopped by James J. Hill"
 lt marked the lads resolution to go to the United States. He had been prompted by an odd incident Accord ing to the story that is told, a strange travcler had stopped at the Hill farm 10 take dinner and left his horse at Inc gate. Young Hill saw the animal was tired and he carried it a pail of water The stranger was pleased with the lads thoughtfulness and as he drove off he tossed him a newspaper from the United States, and called out gravely:
 "Go there, young man. That coun- try needs youngsters of your spirit v Hill read the paper carefully. It contained glowing accounts of Oppor- tunities in the States. He resolved to investigate for himself. It was the next morning that he chopped his last tree
 As a mere roustabout lad of IS, he toured from Maine to Minnesota. When in 1856 he disembarked from a Mississippi river packet at St. Paul that place was a frontier town of 5000 inhabitants. At the sign of w. J. Bass 6, O.. agents for the Dubuque X St Paul Packet company, he found job as both stevedore and clerk.
 Tn the fifteen years that followed he seized every opportunity to study the whole problem of river transportation He gathered no end of experience and a little capital with which he launched his own firm of Hill, Grss X Co. which promptly displayed its initiative by bringing the first load of coal that had ever been seen in that section into St Paul. Two years later. with a flat bOttOmed steamer he established tn, first regular communication with St Paul and the Manitoba ports of thu fertile Red River valley.
 At about that time St. Paul wa! having it's first experiment in railroad building. Eighty miles had been lai, to St. Cloud, S16 miles to Breckenridge both of which terminals were at tn southern end of the Red River valley and there were about 100 miles O track which began nowhere and end ed in the same indefinite spot" Thi venture ran up a debt of $33,00O, ,00 and collapsed, with it's only assets be ing "a few streaks of rust and a righ of way"
 Hill had had sufficient success i the region to be seized with q con suming desire to purchase the defunC property. After five years of financi; dickering, including the sale of all hi other interests, which netted a fortur of Sl00,000, he and a syndicate of thre others-Sir Donald A Smith, Georl Stephen and Norman W. Kittson-.ot tained the object of this desire.
 The St. Paul Minnesota and Man toba Railway was formed to opera the property with Hill as general mar ager. When in 1883 MT. Hill wa elected president he undertook the el tension of the road from it's Dako and Minnesota homestead to u Pacific ocean. He was confronted l three great competitors to the sout each of which had received big bonu es as government aid whereas u Manitoba" or the Great Northern it came to be known did not have dollar of government subsidy or acre of grant to forward it's progre from the Minnesota boundary to t sea.
 In this light Hills plan was wide deemed pure folly but he pressed it conclusion by building and populati as he built. For several years he Ia rails westward at the rate of a mile day and at a cost of $30,000 a mi and as he went he left trail of ei bryonic farms by the railside.
 With the line to Puget Sound or laid, he turned Empire Builder introduced the live stock industry il
 
 developed them by importing blood stock; he sent demonstration tra through the country with men W showed the people how to raise mt wheat to the acre: he made an out for the grain by establishing a che rate by rail and steamship to Buff where he built great elevators; in f for upwards of twenty years he nothing in his power undone to deve the country where he had staked
 his claim as the great common carr
 But at the Pacific tidewater he V not satisfied for he saw in the Ori still further opportunities He org ized a fleet of Pacific steamships the commercial invasion of Japan China. Japan at the time wanted s rails, but proposed getting them fl England, as the rates were less. | related that when John w. Gates, steel magnate of Chicago came to with the proposition of getting Am, ca's rails to Japan, the latter replied
 ''I will make you rate of $8
 from Chicago or Pittsburg to Yo hama. If that is too much, will ca