land. This build-and-they-will-come model of infrastructure-led development
was followed in virtually every corner of the expanding New World in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with private entrepreneurs,
rather than governments, carrying most of the risk. Australia was the excep-
tion. Its reliance on government-driven infrastructure, notably railways, had a
profound influence on the continent’s human geography and economic
development. In Australia, railways would chiefly service existing communi-
ties; in North America, railways would forge a passage into the wilderness to
encourage new settlement.
The role of the rail barons in driving the expansion of wheat farming in
North America is illustrated in the life of James J. Hill. As a shipping clerk in
Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Hill developed an interest in the potential of the
undeveloped territory between Minnesota and Washington state. In 1878,
with the support of Canadian investors, he bought the bankrupt St. Paul and
Pacific Railway and began to extend it into North Dakota, empty and unset-
tled territory. He offered settlers a $10 passage on the condition they settle
near his railway. The company established experimental farms and sponsored
agricultural competitions to encourage innovative farming. It courted invest-
ors to construct elevators along the track.
Hill’s Northern Pacific competed with the government-assisted Union
Pacific (UP) and Central Pacific that had been granted land and subsidies for
each completed mile of track. The rush for subsidies led the rail builders to cut
corners. Workmanship was substandard; rails laid in the frozen winter months
had to be rebuilt in the spring; the tracks meandered circuitously into waste-
lands, driven by the lure of working capital rather than any considered plan
for settlement. In the drive to court politicians, the UP spent lavishly on
hospitality, to no obvious benefit to its shareholders or customers.
Hill, on the other hand, directed his efforts to build efficient railways taking
the most economical path:‘What we want is the best possible line, shortest
distance, lowest grades and least curvature that we can build. We do not care
enough for Rocky Mountains scenery to spend a large sum developing it’
(cited in Malone 1996, p. 249). The Northern Pacific grew incrementally,
nurturing new settlements and realizing a return on capital before forging
further west.
In was in Hill’s interest that the farmers should succeed. He promoted dry-
farming to increase yields, and gave away 7,000 cattle imported from England
to encourage diversity. He subsidized the fares of settlers, telling immigrants,
‘we are in the same boat as you, we have got to prosper with you or be poor
with you’(Folsom 1987, p. 27).
While the federally-assisted transcontinental projects were obliged to use
American steel, Hill bought higher-grade steel from Britain and Germany,
giving the Northern Pacific lower fixed maintenance costs. Unlike his
Nick Cater