No one ever thought it possible that a railroad could compete with a steamboat, and it was a long time after this that Commodore Vanderbilt had the temerity to build a railroad along the banks of the Hudson and be called a lunatic.
So there being no passenger traffic, the farmers carrying their grist to mill, and the logs being floated down the river to the mills, the railroad was in a bad way. Something had to be done, so the Minnesota and Pacific was reorganized, and a new road, the Saint Paul and Pacific, bought it out, with all its land grants. The intent of the new road was to strike right up into the woods for ten or twenty miles above Minneapolis and bring down logs that otherwise would have to be hauled to the river. For a time this road paid, with the sale of the odd-numbered sections of land that went with it.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-seven, James J. Hill became the Saint Paul agent of this railroad. He had quit his job with J. W. Bass, to become agent for the Northwestern Packet Line; and as the railroad ran right to his door he found it easy to serve both the steamboat company and the railroad.
You will often hear people tell how James J. Hill began his railroad career as a station-agent, but it must be remembered that he was a station-agent, plus. The agents of steamboat-lines in those days were usually merchants or men who were financially responsible. And James J. Hill became the Saint Paul agent of the Saint Paul and Pacific because he was a man of resource, with ability to get business for the railroad.
As the extraordinary part of Mr. Hill's career did not begin until he was forty years of age, our romantic friends who write of him often picture him as a failure up to that time. The fact is, he was making head and gathering gear right along. These twenty-two years, up to the time that Mr. Hill became a railroad-owner, were years of intense activity.
While yet a clerk for J. W. Bass and Company, Mr. Hill made the acquaintance of Norman Kittson, as picturesque a figure as ever wore a coonskin cap, and evolved from this to all the refinements of Piccadilly, only to discard these and return to the Simple Life.
Kittson had been connected with the Hudson Bay Company. When Hill met him, he was running a fast express to Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, going over the route with ox-carts. In Summer it took one month to go and the same to return. In Winter dog-sleds were used and the trip was made more quickly.
Kittson was the inventor and patentee of the Red River Ox-Cart. It was a vehicle made of wood, save for the linch-pins. The wheels were enormous, some being ten feet in diameter. It was Kittson's theory that if you could make your wheel high enough it would eliminate friction and run of its own momentum. The wheels were made by boring and pinning plank on plank, criss-cross, and then chalking off with a string from the center. Then you sawed out your wheel, and there you were.
The creaking of a train of these ox-carts could be heard five miles. Kittson had the government contract for carrying the mails, and managed, with the help of trading in furs and loading up with merchandise on his own account, to make considerable money.