Industrial Revolution Biographies | James J. Hill Biography

Born September 16, 1838

Rockwood, Ontario, Canada

Died May 29, 1916

St. Paul, Minnesota

Canadian-born American railroad magnate

"The wealth of the country, its capital, its credit, must be saved from the predatory poor as well as the predatory rich, but above all from the predatory politician."

James J. Hill was a Canadian-born visionary who built not only a railroad linking the upper Midwest of the United States with the Pacific Ocean, but he helped populate the region with farmers recruited from Scandinavia. His career encompassed the whole range of events that comprised the Industrial Revolution, a period marked by the widespread replacement of manual labor by machines that began in Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century, including technology, population shifts, and political struggle. Although he was one of the most...