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He gained steadily in influence in the railroad industry following the
Panic of 1873 and is especially remembered as the head of the Great
Northern Railway. He was personally involved in scouting the best routes
for his railroad which by 1893 ran from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle,
Washington, and he successfully navigated the company through the
disastrous Panic of 1893 which left many other railroads bankrupt.
In the 1901, Hill, J. P. Morgan, Edward H. Harriman, and other businessmen
formed the Northern Securities Company which owned the Great
Northern, Northern Pacific, and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads as
well as several smaller railroads and gave them control of shipping in the
northwestern United States. Hill was the president of the powerful new
company, but it was short lived as President Theodore Roosevelt famously
won a suit against the company under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
However, Roosevelt and Hill worked together in support of conservation.
In addition to the railroads, Hill was also active in the coal, iron, steamboat,
and banking industries; agricultural development, international trade
(especially with Canada and Japan), and land speculation, including
actively encouraging the settlement of Russian and Scandinavian
immigrants along his lines in the northern U.S. and thus influencing the
demographics of the region to this day.
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