Nobody Remembers: James J. Hill

Nobody Remembers

When we think of the history of the world, and WHY Western Civilization gave us all the inventions that the modern world uses… it’s pretty clear that all our greatest inventions  came about through Individualism and the freedom for the individual to be able to develop and prosper without government interference.  Real capitalism has advanced the world.

Crony capitalism, is just another name for Fascism, and it only advances the few at the top.

The next election is going to be about whether global fascism takes over with Hillary, or we  return to true capitalism, the kind that Donald Trump wants to try to bring back.  Trump, clearly wants to bring back the entrepreneurship spirit of America.

I don’t know about you, but I miss having enough money to buy a nice dress at Saks Fifth Avenue instead of looking for bargains at the dollar store.

That’s globalism. You don’t get much to pick from. 

Remember Tom Edison? You should every time you turn on a light.  There should be an Edison day, but the progressives of the world have deliberately hidden the greatness of Tom Edison, because he showed the greatness of the individual…and what can happen..when great men are allowed to ‘spread their wings” and soar.  The world gets richer. Any Rand tried to tell us.

But…she too has been placed on the back shelves of book stores.

A reader sent me this link to another great man who has been completely ignored in all history books. Why? Because he did NOT get government help in any business undertaking he ever did. No wonder many of us have never heard of him.

I certainly had never heard of him before this email…so I share it with you…so like me, you too, can learn and be amazed at the life of James Hill.

Another great American story.

Enjoy! (Thanks to tioga.)

https://fee.org/articles/one-of-the-greatest-entrepreneurs-in-american-history/

Portions from the article:

Hill was born in the small town of Rockwood in southern Ontario, on September 16, 1838. Because his father died when Hill was young, he had to temporarily forgo formal education to help with family finances. Showing academic ability, however, he received free tuition at Rockwood Academy. Hill later lost an eye to an accidental arrow shot, which prevented him from pursuing the career in medicine that his parents had hoped for.

In 1870, Hill traveled up the Red River to investigate a French and Indian mob that had captured Fort Garry. During that trip and others, Hill saw the region’s rich soil while observing the St. Paul & Pacific’s steady decline. He became convinced that he could make the line profitable by extending it to Fort Garry. When the panic of 1873 put the railroad under receivership, he saw his chance to buy it and other lines in crisis.

Only a year after purchasing the St. Paul & Pacific, Hill decided to extend his railroad to the Pacific.

In 1893, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Manitoba reached Puget Sound at Everett, Washington.

Hill continued to expand his railroads in the early 20th century. He bought the Spokane, Portland, & Seattle Railway and added a 165-mile line from Columbia along the Deschutes River to the town of Bend. He also purchased several electric rail lines to compete with the Southern Pacific, and an ocean terminal at the mouth of the Columbia River near Astoria. He had two large steamships that operated between the terminal and San Francisco. This proved to be good competition for the Southern Pacific.

Hill had many other business interests, including coal and iron-ore mining, shipping on the Great Lakes, finance, and milling. A major related interest was farmland conservation. Hill was widely known in his day as a leader in this area. Unlike most environmentalists today, Hill believed that natural resources should be privately owned and locally controlled, although in some cases he believed state-level ownership was justifiable. He considered the federal government too distant to competently manage resources. Indeed, he once criticized the US Forest Service, saying that “The worst scandals of state land misappropriation, and there were many, are insignificant when compared with the record of the nation.”

A 1910 speech to the National Conservation Congress in St. Paul summarizes Hill’s views on government. He remarked,

“Shall we abandon everything to centralized authority, going the way of every lost and ruined government in the history of the world, or meet our personal duty by personal labor through the organs of local self-government, not yet wholly atrophied by disuse…? Shall we permit the continued increase of public expenditure and public debt until capital and credit have suffered in the same conflict that overthrew prosperous and happy nations in the past, or insist upon a return to honest and practical economy?”

He died on May 29, 1916 at the age of 77.

Hill was remarkable because he developed an area that most people thought never could be developed. His railroads made Minnesota and the Dakotas major destinations for huge waves of immigrants. In fact, Hill sent employees to Europe to show slides of western farming in efforts to urge Scotsmen, Englishmen, Norwegians, and Swedes to settle in the Pacific Northwest. As a result, more than six million acres of Montana were settled in two years. And because of Hill, the small town of Seattle, Washington, became a major international shipping port.

June 2, 2016 Posted by Joyanna Adams | American History, Uncategorized | American History, James J. Hill | Leave a comment