Northern Pacific Railway Company

“ In 1889 negotiations with the Northern Pacific resulted finally in the sale of the Oregon Railway & Navigation stock held by Mr. Villard and his friends. Pending the issue of a collateral trust mortgage the stock was deposited with a trust company, a note was given for the amount, and the sum was carried as floating debt. Whatever the value of the property to the Northern Pacific, it proved of great worth to the Union Pacific, providing it with an independent outlet to the coast, and giving it a haul on its main line of over 800 miles on all interchanged traffic. ”

“ The purpose of the granting act and resolution was to bring about the construction and operation of a line of railroad extending from Lake Superior to Puget Sound and Portland through what then consisted of great stretches of homeless prairies, trackless forests and unexplored mountains, and thus to facilitate the development of that region, promote commerce, and establish a convenient highway for the transportation of mails, troops, munitions and public stores to and from the Pacific Coast, with all the resultant advantages to the government and the public. ”

“ In the meanwhile the Northern Pacific has forged ahead in its earnings and profits, and the stock of the road has come to be known as one of the highest class of investment issues. Although new competition appeared, in both the local and the through business of the company—notably by the extension of the St. Paul system largely through Northern Pacific territory to the Puget Sound region—the superior modern business management of James J. Hill, backed by the strong resources of the Morgan banking interests, made the Northern Pacific one of the standard railroad systems of America. ”

“ By the first section of that act the Northern Pacific Railroad Company was incorporated, and authorized to lay out, construct, and maintain a continuous railroad and telegraph line, with the appurtenances, from a point on Lake Superior, in the state of Minnesota or Wisconsin, and thence westerly by the most eligible route, as should be determined by the company, within the territory of the United States, on a line north of the forty-fifth degree of latitude, to some point on Puget Sound, with a branch by the valley of the Columbia river, to a point at or near Portland, in the state of Oregon. ”

“ To the company, which finally built the line, the government gave $25,000,000 (£5,130,000) in cash, an even greater value in portions of the road already constructed, and twenty-five million acres of land, scattered through the prairie provinces, and the Canadian Pacific Railway is now a very wealthy corporation, which carries on numerous enterprises outside the actual business of railway transportation. For instance, there is a fleet of seventy-three Canadian Pacific Railway steamships, most of which are large vessels sailing the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Great Lakes. ”

“ One of them permitting the Kansas Pacific Railway to connect with the Union Pacific Railroad at any point its projectors saw fit at or east of a point fifty miles west of Denver, Colo., instead of at the hundredth Meridian. This created a competitor instead of a feeder. The second was allowing the Central Pacific Railroad Company to build on east one hundred and fifty miles to meet the road from the East instead of stopping at the California State line. ”

“ For the greater part of the distance it traversed country where the white man was not in occupation, and where several years were certain to pass before it yielded any economic value capable of producing traffic to the railway. The enterprise was jeopardised seriously by the financial panic in the United States, and the Northern Pacific railway crisis, which misfortunes did not augur well for the success of another trans-continental railway. ”

“ Thirty millions of dollars have already been invested on the Pacific railroad, and if the time of completion is hastened one year by this tracklayer, as it will be if Central and Union Companies have money enough to grade each five miles a day, there will be a saving of three million dollars on interest alone on that one road. ”

“ With the completion of its through line, moreover, earnings increased so materially as to cover the interest on the new bonds; and though the road was never to enjoy a monopoly of transcontinental traffic, in February, 1883, it had concluded an agreement with the Union Pacific concerning through rates and a division of territory, and a period of prosperity was hoped for. Meanwhile the Oregon & Transcontinental Company had been hard hit by the decline in Northern Pacific stock, due to the publication of the construction deficit. ”

“ Born during the thirties, the idea of a Pacific railway was of uncertain origin and parentage. Just so soon as there was a railroad anywhere, it was inevitable that some enterprising visionary should project one in imagination to the extremity of the continent. The railway speculation, with which the East was seething during the administrations of Andrew Jackson, was boiling over in the young West, so that the group of men advocating a railway to connect the oceans were but the product of their time. ”

“ It was on the part of our government a sublime recognition of the power of steam, that, while it was struggling for existence, it gave its sanction to the Pacific Railroad enterprise. Curiously enough, it is through Kansas and Nebraska—the Epidaurus of our Peloponnesian war—that the two great rival Pacific Railroad routes are to run.
In the summer of 1861, the project of a trans-continental railway connecting our Pacific communities with the older population of the East first assumed a practical aspect. ”

“ Sir Thomas Shaughnessy maintained the progressive policy and the honourable record of straightforward management which has distinguished the Canadian Pacific—a railway singularly free from the questionable manipulations which have brought so many great American systems to bankruptcy. Other men left their impress on the road: men like Sir William Whyte, for over twenty years in charge of the western lines, David M'Nicoll, and George M. Bosworth and many others, gave most effective service. ”

“ A shipdock twelve hundred feet long will be constructed, with over five thousand feet of side-tracks and other facilities for receiving and discharging grain, the whole to cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
A belt-line railroad around Lake Washington is reported projected, to be built by the Lake Shore and Eastern and Northern Pacific. The Northern Pacific, it will be observed, is at the bottom of most of the greatest enterprises in the Evergreen State. ”

“ For the Pacific Railroad is not simply a gigantic public work, it is the world's great highway. The world has had several grand routes, along the line of which, for certain periods of time, the life-blood and intelligence of humanity have coursed. Such was the route which history discloses as the most ancient from India overland to the Mediterranean, whence it was continued by that old Phœnician Coast Navigation Company to the shores of Britain. ”