The Bozeman courier., 1927-12-09

ii y IL
r. United States shipping board
has suggested that, in view of
the government S failure to make a
success of it's merchant marine, the
ships should be turned over to the
American railroads who, it is believed,
would be able to run them profitably
as adiuncts of their rail transportation
systems. This suggestion recalls the
experience Of James J. Hill, the "em-
pire builder who constructed the
Great Northern railway from Mime
sofa through North Dakota and Mon
tana to the Pacific coast and then,
looking for more worlds to conquer,
started a steamship line on the west
ern ocean. This project, after he
proved it could be made a success, was
forced to give up because the inter
state commerce commission interfered
with his rate making plans so that
he could not carry freight from the
interior Of the United States and de-
iver it in the Orient as cheaply as Eu-
ropean countries.
There was no little romance connected
i.
freight business with Japan ana emma:
When he was a boy attending lockwood
academy located in a small town 4O miles
west Of Toronto, his studies in geography
and history fired his imagination and ne
had visions of some day doing business
with the Orient At the age of 18, when
he determined to leave home and make
for himself a work in the world, 1T was
with the more or less fixed idea in his
mind that he would venture to the region
ATnWM NnF
found their lure. And like other boys
of his time, he turned to the sea as the
highroad to that end
In 1856 it was that he started out. He
didn't have much money and he made
the trip from Ontario to Syracuse, N. Y,
thence to Philadelphia and Richmond,
Va slowly as he frequently had to stop
along the way to earn money with which
to move on. He found no suitable op-
pOrtunity to become sailor, so he
turned his steps toward the west. among
his classmates at the lockwood academy
had been some young fellows from the
Red River settlement in what is now
Manitoba and also one from the far
Canadian west in what is now the prov
ince of Alberta.
Gets No Farther Than st. Paul
So, dissatisfied with the chance of
escape into new worlds by the Atlantic
seabOard, he recurred to the idea Of max
ing the trip across the plains and sailing
from the Pacific coast. Chicago was an
outpost of civilization at that time. Be
yOnd that one must make his way to the
Mississippi, take a steamboat to the head
of navigation, and join the Red River
brigade Of trappers and traders that made
trips during the season between the set
tlement at st. Paul and those at Lake
Winnipeg
Young Hill arrived at st. Paul July 81
1856. only to find that the last brigade
for the Red river had left on July 5
There would not be another departure
until spring, so ne settled down to pas
the winter in some occupation that wOulC
employ his restless vigOr and secure hi
means of support He became a shipping
clerk for ]. w. Bass & Co., which wa
agent for a steamship line on the Mis-
sissippi river. For nine years he studied
steamship construction and the trans
pOrtatiOn business and dreamed of SOM
day running boats to the Orient. Blu
his dreams did not come true in eXactl
the way he believed they would. In 1866
he became his own employer and estab
Hshed himself as a forwarding agent
both for steamboats, and railways. i
1870, he extended his activities to tn
Red river.
In 1873, came a panic which thre7
many railroads into bankruptcy. Blu
this panic opened up new oppOrtunitie
for James J. Hill. Ever since he ha
started as a clerk in a steamship freigh
office he had been studying transporta
ton and he now believed that he coul
run a railway successfully especially 6
he understood transportation, a subjeC
which railway managers he knew SCENE
not to understand and to care less. So