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strategist had long ago foreseen the emergency and laid plans to meet it. He was well used to thinking in terms of continents, for, when money had been needed by millions for the building of "Hill's Folly," he had simply packed a country satchel, taken steamer and borrowed the required sums from conservative old Dutch and German bankers on bits of paper signed with the single name of James J. Hill. Also he had seen, in a vision, that the Norsemen were the fittest settlers for his new empire and that dream had long ago proved its truth. So now his imagination had crossed the Pacific and pictured the swarming yellow millions on the far shores of that ocean buying the goods which Great Northern steamers should bring them from the distant Western terminus of the railroad on Puget Sound. Already Hill agents were at work in all the ports of China and Japan, copying off the bills of lading of coastwise junks and studying the needs.

the Western traffic to balance the lumber coming East."

By this time men laughed no longer. They simply wondered. But one still had his objection and he was fresh from the field. "The Japanese are satisfied with the short staple cotton from India," he put in.

"Ours is better," Hill answered and, presently, when a party of Japanese capitalists visited this country, he caught them on the wing and made this proposal: "I will send you a cargo of our long staple cotton. Use it to mix with the stuff you are now using. If it is not satisfactory I will pay the bill." So, in the face of Oriental prejudice, the trial was made. And, since then, the shipments of raw cotton from the southern states to Asia have approximated two hundred millions of pounds in a single year, of which the Great Northern carries more than seventy-five per cent over the mountains.

But long before the dream of clothing

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the yellow coolies had come so far true, the man was so sure of his vision that he had put on the stocks for service on the Pacific the two greatest freight carrying steamships in the world, twin sisters so enormous that their joint tonnage equals that of whole fleets of modern freighters.

He sent also a score of men to knock at the doors of New England cotton mills, drumming up trade with the far East, and filling empty West bound Great Northern freight cars. In a few years the shipments of rough cotton cloths, fit for the clothing of the Chinese, who bought, rather than manufactured, their wearing apparel, was multiplied by six, and Hill got most of them. The Great Northern road was carrying also the hard wheat flour of the Northwest, by the million barrels to the great cargo ships on Puget Sound. And the lumber came streaming back, inexhaustible. The Hill freight cars were full both ways.

Now, one might well conclude, the farthest limit of the man's vision had been reached. His great, new, silent empire, wrapped in drifts of snow, had been quickened into marvelous life. Across it swept the splendid trains of his railroad, the only line across the continent which has always stood on its own bottom, never passed a dividend or lost a cent for its stockholders. The dream of '56 was vastly more than realized.

Already the exports from the new cities on Puget Sound had passed those which went out through the portals of the Golden Gate. And now from the East came the menacing fulminations of other great dreamers-though, born of Wall street frenzies, theirs were chiefly visions of piratical exploitation. The gray old Emperor of the Northwest was injuring their interests, which centered at San Francisco-meaning to them that the tremendous success of the Great Northern was inevitably and unintentionally bearing their stocks and making profitable coups in the stock market difficult. So these men set about teaching the frontiersman a bitter lesson in the New York art of high finance.

Hill needed no warning. He had dealt too much with other and more literal Indians to mistake the signs of coming treachery and trouble. Perhaps he smiled his slow smile as he sat at the old desk and the deep-set eyes lit with the joy of battle. At any rate he took out of the inexhaustible pocket-book he has seemed always able to command the vast sum of two hundred million dollars and bought, out of hand, before the staring, incredulous eyes of New York's craftiest, the great Burlington railroad system, with its nearly 9,000 miles of through trackage. He must, at whatever cost, make his just-realized vision a permanent reality.

Possession of the Burlington gave Hill his own markets in the greatest lumberconsuming states of the Union; it gave him a base on the Great Lakes at Chicago and terminals at St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver and the Black Hills. At Chicago he might load, on his own cars, goods brought from the East by train or lake boats; at St. Louis he made direct connections with roads which tapped the great Southern cotton belt and made that part of his export business secure; the other branches put him in close touch with the great packing houses, the smelting furnaces and steel mills, the factories and farms of the whole middle West.

The sullen masters of the New York stock market roused from their trance to find that, at a single tremendous stroke, "Jim" Hill had not only won his own battle, but had, at the same potent instant, dealt them a blow from which they have not yet recovered. And Eastern respect for the business strategy of the crude Northwest, as exemplified by the grizzled old pioneer, became, directly, both deep and somewhat fearful.

How Hill has borne himself in the relentless struggle which has raged since then, sometimes beneath the surface and sometimes in the public eye, men who read current newspapers have seen and pondered. It becomes apparent, that the hitherto irresistible forces of Wall street manipulation have met, in head-on col

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Only the other day, to celebrate his sixty-eighth birthday, Mr. Hill, by closing a contract with the Steel Trust for the mining of iron ore along the southern shore of Lake Superior, gave to the stockholders of the Great Northern a present of four hundred millions of dollars, which vast sum will go to enrich the children and grand-children of the men who, in the days when the wise were still laughing, proved their confidence in "Hill's Folly."

But though to him, more than to any other, is due the prodigious development of their country, one may hear among sincere and prominent citizens of the great Northwest much savage criticism of the man and of his methods. Hill is denounced as a relentless and domineering tyrant. To a large extent the charge may be admitted. But his critics fail to realize that the man could not have been other than he is and do his work. They fail to realize the compelling power of a vision which seizes the soul of a strong man and drives him over all obstacles to its realization.

The Great Tobacco Strike

By René Bache

NDUSTRIALLY speaking, it is a question of life and death with the tobacco growers of the South. For seven years past, the Octopus has had them by the throat, and has been squeezing the breath out of them-until at length they were brought to such a pass that they were compelled either to quit planting the weed or to fight.

What is destined to be known in history as the great tobacco strike, may be said to have begun in Guthrie, Kentucky, on December 24, 1903, when 6,000growers held a mass-meeting and formed an organization for defense against the Trust. The progress of the movement since then affords material for an interesting story;

who, notwithstanding a steadily diminishing output, have seen the price of their product go down at the rate of a cent a pound each year, their loss going to swell the gains of the monster that devoured them.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the situation is the fact that one of the chief partners in the Trust engaged in oppressing American tobacco growers is a foreign Government-namely, that of Italy. In that country the sale of tobacco is a monopoly of the Crown, which, in this branch of its business activities, is represented in the United States by the so-called Italian Purchasing System. This System, the American Tobacco Company, and the Imperial Tobacco Company compose the Trust, which has

TOBACCO SEED-BED UNDER A GAUZE TENT.

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secured such control over the tobacco-growing industry that, so far as export tobacco is concerned, it is practically the only buyer. Other people, it is true, may purchase tobacco from the planters, but, if they do so, they cannot sell it.

As a conspicuous illustration of the methods adopted, it might be mentioned that seven years ago Bremen was the largest open market for our export tobacco. To-day it is closed, being controlled by the American Tobacco Company. Anybody, it is true, may offer tobacco for sale there, but, if he does so, the Trust will immediately put forward. an unlimited quantity of the same quality of goods at a lower rate. It does not matter how low the price demanded by the independent dealer may be; the Octopus will cut under him, and sooner or

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that they compose a syndicate, the agreement among them being cret. Under no circumstances do they bid against one another. The American Company will buy tobacco of the planters in one county, the Imperial in another, the Italian in another. When it comes to stores of tobacco in the warehouses, the American Company will make its purchases on one day, without opposition; on the next day the Imperial will do its buying, with no competitors; and so it goes.

Independent dealers having been dealers having been crowded out by the process already described, the Trust has become the only purchaser, and so is able to pay the planter what it chooses. All competition has been killed, and, under such conditions as have recently existed, it has not been possible for anybody to stand

The blighting effect of Trust control upon this agricultural industry, is shown in a striking way by a few figures, which, being furnished by the Department of Agriculture, may be accepted as approximately accurate. They relate to the tobacco crop of the last half-dozen yearsa crop which in 1899 amounted to 868,163,275 pounds. In 1901, two years later, it showed a considerable diminution, being 818,953,373 pounds. But from that time on, owing to the reduction of the price paid to growers, it has dropped much more rapidly, the crop for 1904 being only 660,460,739 pounds-a loss of nearly one-fourth. In 1905 it sank still lower, to 633,033,719 pounds.

The tobacco planters of the South, are many of them ignorant men. A large number are negroes. Most of them live at least eight or ten miles from any place

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