James Jerome Hill (September 16, 1838 – May 29, 1916), was a noted Canadian-American railroad executive. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railroad, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and Pacific Northwest. Because of the size of this region and the economic dominance exerted by the Hill lines, Hill became known during his lifetime as the Empire Builder.
Hill was born in Eramosa Township, Wellington County, Upper Canada (now Ontario). A childhood accident blinded him in the right eye. He had nine years of formal schooling. He attended the Rockwood Academy for a short while, where the head gave him free tuition. He was forced to leave school in 1852 due to the death of his father. By the time he had finished, he was adept at algebra, geometry, land surveying, and English.
His particular talents for English and mathematics would be critical later in his life.After working as a clerk in Canada (during which he learned bookkeeping), Hill moved to the United States and settled in St. Paul, Minnesota at the age of 18. His first job in St. Paul was with a steamboat company, where he worked as a bookkeeper. By 1860 he was working for wholesale grocers, for whom he handled freight transfers, especially dealing with railroads and steamboats. Through this work he learned all aspects of the freight and transportation business. During this period, Hill began to work for himself for the first time. During the winter months when the Mississippi River was frozen and steamboats could not run, Hill started bidding on other contracts, and won quite a few. Particularly of note was his contract to provide wood fuel to the nearby Fort Snelling.
The young businessmanBecause of his previous experiences in shipping and fuel supply, Hill was able to aggressively enter both the coal and steamboat businesses. In 1870 he entered the steamboat business, and by 1872 he had a local monopoly by merging (with Norman Kittson). In 1867 Hill entered the coal business, and by 1874 it had expanded five times over, giving Hill a local monopoly in the anthracite coal business. During this same period, Hill also entered into banking and quickly managed to become member of several major banks' boards of directors. Even with all of this, Hill still managed to grab at any extra business opportunities that came his way. He often bought out bankrupt businesses, built them up again, and then resold them—often gaining a huge profit.Virtually all of this early and stunning success was due to a few key traits—traits that would reappear again and again as Hill made his way through the world of business.
Firstly, he was incredibly hard-working. It takes a huge amount of diligence to tackle more than one grand project at the same time, and Hill was not only undertaking to monopolize the steamboat business. He was monopolizing coal, getting friendly with bankers, and buying out other businesses at the same time. All of that requires a large degree of dedication. Hill noted that the secret to success was, "Work, hard work, intelligent work, and then more work." Secondly, he was almost maniacally competitive. He took it almost as a point of personal honor to be the best, the biggest, and the most competitive of any business out there. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Hill was simply a brilliant man and a brilliant leader of men.
He was able to quickly pick up the nuances of working in any new business. His business strategy was amazing, and he was able to convince almost anyone to come to his side. All of these traits had a role in James Hill's precipitous rise to power—most especially his almost uncanny ability to predict the future of business, as shown by the way he entered the railroad business in 1877.
