The Railway Library, 1909. Various

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      FOOTNOTE:

      [A] By an alteration of the line, since made, the distance lost by the river route is reduced to four-tenths of a mile.

RAILWAYS AND THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

       Table of Contents

      By James J. Hill.

      [On the occasion of the completion of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Ry., connecting Portland with British Columbia, Mr. Hill delivered three noteworthy addresses at Portland, November 6, 1908, at Tacoma November 9 and Seattle November 10. The speech at Portland was an earnest plea for a more intelligent and economical cultivation and conservation of the vast agricultural resources of the Pacific northwest; the other two related largely to the part played by the railways in the development of that territory. The portions of these addresses which follow are taken from the full reports which appeared in the Seattle and Tacoma newspapers the next days.]

      MR. HILL AT SEATTLE.

      After Mr. Hill had been introduced and warmly applauded as the "Empire Builder," who had been intimately associated with the development of the northern tier of states from the Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, and he had acknowledged his obligation to the indomitable spirit of Seattle and its people, he began his address by disclaiming the ownership of the Great Northern railway. "Fifteen thousand people own it." said he. "The average holding is about 120 shares. Over 6,000 women are owners in the Great Northern railway, and I have to manage their affairs." Then he proceeded:

      "It is three years since I was here, and I never expected that three months would pass without my coming to Seattle, but three years have passed and what do I find? I think the city in three years has doubled. I think it has doubled in everything that goes to make a city. Just look at the streets lined with commercial houses which would be a credit to any city in the world. It is far beyond what I expected to find, and I think that Seattle has a future. Seattle is entitled to her growth, and if the same spirit that has moved her citizens in the past continues, if the mantle of the older men falls on the shoulders of the younger men, Seattle cannot help but thrive. You have behind you one of the richest states in the Union; one of the very richest.

      DEVELOPMENT OF RAILWAYS.

      "Now, to come back to the relation of the railway to the development of the country. Next to the cultivation of the soil itself, in the amount of money invested and in the importance to all the people, is the railway property of this country. It is on a little different basis, I am sorry to say, from the general attitude of the public, from any other property. From what Judge Burke says as to the Golden Rule, if you can have it fairly applied, it would make our hearts glad.

      "We frequently hear about railroad watered stock. It is a hackneyed phrase which is used with which to catch gudgeons, and it has caught a great many. Now, let us see. You can open a bank—five of us sitting here, if we had the money, could open a bank, put up the building and draw our checks, and that is disposed of. We have a million or a million and a half of capital, and, conducting the business of the bank within the law applied to bankers, we can earn any dividend we like, and we can divide it, even up to 40 or 50 per cent., and it has been done, and nobody finds any fault. Now, we might start a manufacturing establishment and we can divide any profits that we can legally make up to 40 or 50 or 100 per cent., or we can start a mercantile establishment and conduct it so as to bring any profit—there is no limit so long as we are within the laws of trade. But take the railroad.

      "Now, remember, you can run your manufacturing establishment twenty-four hours a day, or you can run it one day in the week, or you can run it half the time and you can close it and it will not affect you, or you need not run it at all; and if you do not like the business you can dispose of it. You can liquidate your bank and go out of business; and so with the mercantile establishment, you can close it at any time. But when you have invested your money in a railway, you have undertaken an obligation to serve the public; you have taken a business risk that is greater than the business risk of any other business in the world. If you do not run it, move your trains with regularity, move your trains so as to accommodate the business, the courts will appoint a receiver and will issue receiver's certificates to an extent that would wipe out your investment. If there were anything left they would hand it back, but the chances are altogether that if you could not make it pay the receiver could not.

      RAILROAD BIGGEST RISK.

      "Now, I mention this simply to show that the business risk in building or operating a railway is greater than it is in any other business. There is nothing guaranteed, and sometimes you are told what appliances you may use; you are told what you must not use; you are told whom you can hire, and you are told when you can discharge him, and it has been at least hinted as to what you should pay him—what his wages and condition of work shall be. So that the only privilege that was left for the railroads was to pay the bills. That they are always expected to do, and it would be a great disappointment if they were not able to.

      "In the section of this country, the portion of this country east of Chicago, I do not know anywhere north of the Ohio River, where a railroad, built with the greatest care and economy, could pay one per cent. on its cost; that is, a new road, built between any of the large cities of the west to the large cities of the east, paying the present price of real estate and terminals and the cost of construction, the cost of eliminating great profits, the cost of the necessary expenditure of money to make life and limb safe.

      "Take, for instance, a railroad from New York to Chicago. I had curiosity enough to inquire from the leading real estate man who was getting the additional property for the New York Central, their terminals, what it would cost from Thirty-eighth street to Harlem River, a narrow strip of blocks on the East Side, say ten blocks, from Thirty-eighth to Forty-eighth street, to be used as a terminal. He told me it ought to be secured for $200,000,000, but he would not like to take the contract. Now, follow that up through Albany and Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo and Erie and Cleveland and on to Chicago, and if you can get into Chicago and get out of New York with any reasonable cost I want to say that when your road was finished, at the present rate, it could not pay 1 per cent. on what it cost in money.

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