Great Northern Railway

“ With its "Upper Missouri Historical Expedition" the Great Northern Railway Company began a challenge to the American public to make its travel more stimulative to higher interests and also with this enterprise this railway corporation makes a continuing appeal to the communities along its route to cooperate in exploring the wealth of cultural background of their home regions. ”

“ The invention of the Bessemer process for making steel was intended primarily to give the railway-operator a track that should be free from the defects of the soft, wrought-iron rail; in fact, however, it created new industrial centres all over the world and brought Asia and Africa under commercial conquest. The possibilities of increased trade between the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific Coast States led to the building of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways. ”

“ They struck eastward through Hadley, and there on either side of the road, and at another place farther on they came upon a great multitude of people drinking at the stream, some fighting to come at the water. And farther on, from a hill near East Barnet, they saw two trains running slowly one after the other without signal or order—trains swarming with people, with men even among the coals behind the engines—going northward along the Great Northern Railway. ”

“ He has contrived to make a clear statement of many abstruse matters connected with the making of the Great Northern railway, and as a ‘source-book’ his biography will stand. And, upon reflection, it is only fair to admit that to put a man like ‘Jim Hill’ on paper is a task much easier to criticise than to perform. But—could there not have been a few more anecdotes, say, in the appendix? ”

“ Intimates of James J. Hill, the transportation giant of the northwest, say that the ambition of his life is to [632] encircle the world with a system of railroads and steamships, all of which shall be under his guiding hand. He has nearly attained it. He owns the Great Northern railway, which stretches from Seattle, Washington, to St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota. He is proprietor of the line of steamers which ply between Duluth and Buffalo. He is largely interested in the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, which covers the territory between Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. ”

“ That said Great Northern Railway Company now either owns or controls, and operates and maintains, by virtue of said lease, a line or system of railways connecting with said lines above referred to, and extending from the western boundary line of the state of Minnesota through the states of North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Washington, to Puget Sound on the Pacific coast. The said railway lines covered by said lease, or owned by said Great Northern Railway Company, aggregate a total of about 4,500 miles. ”

“ The Great Northern Railway, during the time of the Manitoba boom, and since, was championed in Canada by “live wires” such as Jack Huckins,39 resourceful Ham McMicken, who is acting for the road in Europe at present, Messrs. ”

“ Running parallel with the Northern Pacific across the continent, but some miles nearer the international boundary, is another great artery of steel which has become a great transportation force in the United States. This is the Great Northern, likewise built through the energy of one man, Mr. James J. Hill, the empire-builder of the Great American west. Mr. Hill is a born railway magnate, and when he shook the dust of his native land—Canada—from his feet, it was merely because the Dominion at that time offered him no scope for his energies and initiative. ”

“ As the Northern Pacific road also controls, by its own construction and by the purchase of stock, other roads extending from the Mississippi river to the Pacific Ocean, and operates, as a single system, an aggregate mileage of 4,500 miles, most of which is parallel to the Great Northern system, the effect of this arrangement would be to practically consolidate the two systems, to operate 9,000 miles of railway under a single management, and to destroy any possible advantages the public might have through a competition between the two lines. ”

“ But never before did a group of men plan to unite, on such a scale, all three arrangements—to build ten thousand miles of railway without themselves investing a dollar and still retain control. The men behind the Canadian Northern not only planned such a project, but carried it through, displaying in the process, and at every stage of the undertaking, a mastery of political diplomacy, an untiring persistence, and great financial resourcefulness. ”

“ While the southern arm of the great line has been pushed on energetically northwards from Cape Town, the northern limb has descended almost as rapidly down the Valley of the Nile to the great interior, so that the heart of the continent is being eaten into spiritedly from both ends. The two branches have been built under totally different auspices. Whereas the southern section was carried out by private enterprise, the northern division is the work of Government effort.
In the north the railway has made history rapidly, and its conquest has been of a complex character. ”

“ The thrilling story of the growth of the company, with its diverse interests which include steamships, hotels, mining properties, land agencies, irrigation developments, a telegraph system, and an express service in addition to the railway itself, is interestingly told. Its powerful rivals like the Northern Pacific, the present Great Northern and its predecessors, and the Canadian National are treated with reasonable fairness. ”

“ In the year 1844 came the great railway mania. Railways were considered as a mine of wealth to whoever would undertake them; and consequently new lines were projected in all directions, and I had my full share of them: amongst others the Great Northern, the Leeds and Carlisle, the Leeds and Bradford, the York and Scarborough, the Bristol and Monmouth, the Bishop’s Stortford and Thetford (called the Direct Norwich) , the Birmingham and Boston, the Newry and Enniskillen, the East Lincolnshire, the Lincoln and Hull, the Cannock Chase, and the North Wales, &c. ”

“ In repeated trials Farley was unable to produce evidence satisfactory to the courts, which held that in any case his claim must be rejected because 'based on inherent turpitude.'
[3] 'Most men who have really lived have had, in some shape, their great adventure. This railway is mine' (James J. Hill, in Valedictory to the Shareholders of the Great Northern, July 1, 1912) .
[4] It was from their St Paul investment that the leading men in the group secured the basis and the bulk of their great fortunes; the Canadian Pacific added little to their coffers. ”

“ The embankments are in spring often covered with a myriad wild flowers; the viaducts give a human interest to coombe and gully. Lovers of the country can certainly point to places which, once remote and solitary, have been populated and spoiled by the readiness of railway access; but the locomotive has rendered more holidays possible, and has kept the roads in a decent solitude for the cyclist. Imagine, if you please, the Great North Road nowadays without the railway. ”

“ First to seize the golden opportunities were the group of men who built the Canadian Northern. Railway history offers no more remarkable record than the achievement of these few men, who, beginning in 1895 with a charter for a railway one hundred miles long in Manitoba, leading nowhere in particular, succeeded in building in twenty years a road from ocean to ocean, and in keeping it in their own hands through all difficulties and vicissitudes. ”

“ Almost as the northeastern corner of England is the undisputed principality of a single system so does a single railway, the Great Western, stretch alone directly west from London and almost completely dominates its territory. To bring it into regional grouping with any of the other important British railway systems has been well-nigh impossible. After a number of futile attempts the professional and amateur railroaders who have been attempting the solution of the regional plan for Great Britain have given up the idea. ”

“ The new railroad, the first public line, was opened in September, 1825. As its construction progressed, its engineer had become increasingly sanguine of success. He said to his son Robert at this time: "I venture to tell you that I think you will live to see the day when railways will supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the great highway for the King and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a workingman to travel upon a railway than to walk on foot. ”

“ The atmospheric system of working railways found favour for a time, and was tried on the West London Railway, on the South Devon system, and in other parts of Great Britain, also in France, but nowhere was it permanently successful. ”

“ Railway-building in these twin countries has been attended always with grave difficulties, owing to the rugged nature of the country and the extreme hardness of the rock. When the sea is left, and the interior plateau is gained, the full brunt of the Arctic weather is experienced, and it is of a character to deter the most intrepid engineer.
One of the most momentous enterprises that has been carried to fulfilment in this northern country is the trans-Norwegian railway, whereby Christiania is brought into direct communication with the Atlantic seaboard at Bergen. ”

“ Gray published the result of his studies in his ‘Observations on a General Iron Railway,’ in which, with great cogency, he urged the superiority of a locomotive railway over common roads and canals, pointing out, at the same time, the advantages to all classes of p. 149the community of this mode of conveyance for merchandise and persons. In this book Mr. Gray suggested a railway between Manchester and Liverpool, “which,” he observed, “would employ many thousands of the distressed population of Lancashire.” ”

“ In 1909, a railroad line with earnings of ten million dollars a year west of Port Arthur alone, and twelve thousand people on the regular pay-roll. Beginning in Manitoba and operating in the three prairie Provinces, the Canadian Northern is primarily a western railway, its remarkable growth being coincident with and closely related to the tide of immigration. ”

“ Certain it is that Old England—every part of Great Britain—knows well the efficient handling of short-haul freight-traffic. The ten-ton goods-wagon (at the most, fifteen) of the British railway is a small unit, easily handled, if necessity arises, by a horse or two at a country station. It is an inexpensive unit [Pg 203] too; and being inexpensive England is able to have over a million freight-cars for her 25,000 miles of line as against but a little more than two million for 265,000 miles of railroad in the United States, which makes much for the flexibility of her railway freight service. ”

“ These three great railroad systems, the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, constituting nearly twenty thousand miles of railroad, have been known ever since as Hill lines.
Since the dramatic days of the Harriman-Hill contest the history of the Northern Pacific system has been simply a striking reflection of the growth in population and wealth of the great Northwest. The States through which it operates have grown with astounding rapidity during the past two decades; small cities have spread into great centers of manufacture and trade ”

“ Here then are four railways created out of fifty-four—some 24,500 miles of line as compared with the 27,000 miles of French railway. The groupings have followed the lines that I have just shown and take the names of the Southern; the Northeastern, the Eastern, and the East Scottish; the Western; and the Northwestern, Midland, and West Scottish groups respectively. The smaller and comparatively unimportant lines of the United Kingdom fall easily into some one of these four great regions. ”

“ The construction of the railways in insular countries is governed wholly by mercantile considerations, while, in countries whose boundaries are exposed, military and political objects claim prominence. Thus, an English railway-map affords a most accurate picture of the relations of the country to production and trade, and of the office of the railroads as the medium of communication between the great coal and iron fields on one side and the world's mart on the Thames on the other side. ”

“ In proportion to the rapid extension of railways the demand for locomotives became very great. As our machine tools were peculiarly adapted for turning out a large amount of first-class work, we directed our attention to this class of business. In the course of about ten years after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, we executed considerable orders for locomotives for the London and Southampton, the Manchester and Leeds, and the Gloucester railway companies. ”

“ The first result of the swarming of thousands to the West was a demand for new railways, to open up plain and prairie and mineral range, and to make connection with East and West. The building of the railways in its turn gave a stimulus to every industry. As in the early fifties and early eighties, this period of rapid railway expansion—much longer, however, than previous periods—was {183} an era of optimistic planning and feverish speculation. ”