competitors, Hill was under no obligation to carry mail at a loss. Finally, Hill’s
Northern Pacific could build branch lines without congressional approval,
enabling it to push north across the Canadian border as far as Manitoba,
with a series of spurs along the way. Thus, the Northern Pacific’s network
came to resemble a riverine system with a vast number of tributaries, each
joining the main current thatflowed like a mighty river into the heart of
Minneapolis–Saint Paul.
In Australia, the political and economic climate made it difficult for entre-
preneurs like Hill toflourish. Thomas McIlwraith, a Scottish-born engineer,
surveyor, politician, embryonic shipping magnate, and the eighth premier of
Queensland, was arguably the closest Australia came to a rail baron. McIl-
wraith proposed a privately funded 2,000 km transcontinental line in Queens-
land, linking the Darling Downs with the Gulf of Carpentaria, which would
form a freight corridor for pastoralists and a putative grain trade. It would
unlock the interior, encourage settlement and migration, and link south-east
Queensland with an imagined port in the Gulf of Carpentaria, shortening
travelling times from Europe to the Australian continent.
The Railway Companies Preliminary Act of 1880 made possible land grants
to private railways, a model that had already proved successful in the USA and
had recently been adopted by the Canadian federal government for the con-
struction of a transcontinental line. The following year theBrisbane Courier
cited the North American experience where private interests had‘made avail-
able for profitable occupation millions of acres which would have otherwise
lain waste’(Brisbane Courier1881, p. 4). The promise of land had attracted a
better class of migrant;‘the cream of pioneer populations, and worthy of the
highest praise for their eminent respectability and their standing in imparting
character to the country’.^3
Opposition to the proposal was strong, however.The Telegraphobjected to
the granting of land at a knock-down price to‘dummiers and landsharks’.
It is proverbial that large companies have no conscience and are mercilessly cold-
blooded...The only place in which land grant railways have been constructed as
yet is the United States of America, and they have been gigantic swindles from
beginning to end. (‘The Telegraph’1881, p. 2)Pastoralists from the north and west of the state joined forces with McIlwraith’s
political opponent, Samuel Griffith, to block the proposal. While the
dream of a Queensland transcontinental railway lived on until the early
twentieth century, in reality it was a lost cause. Political parochialism played
a part in the failure of McIlwraith’s scheme, and investors may well have been
nervous at the fragile business case. Waterson (1986) highlights the
(^3) The Brisbane Courier, 6 August 1881, p. 2.
Barons versus Bureaucrats