Profiting from the Plains: The Great Northern Railway and Corporate Development of the American West

Environmental History, Jul 2004 by Finlay, Mark

Profiting from the Plains: The Great Northern Railway and Corporate Development of the American West. By Claire Strom. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. x 228 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index, $35.00.

In Profiting from the Plains, Claire Strom offers a thorough examination of railroad magnate James J. Hill's agricultural enterprises. As the only transcontinental railroad that lacked significant land grants, Hill's Great Northern Railway relied on agricultural development projects to generate traffic and to attract permanent settlement to the northern plains. Although the Great Northern's route from St. Paul to Tacoma offered access to rich forest and mining resources, it also traversed a vast expanse of semiarid land that was ill-suited to conventional agriculture.

Hill (1838-1916) has a reputation as a robber baron, but as Strom shows, he also was a passionate defender of the yeoman farmer. Guided by a Jeffersonian faith in agrarian values and small family farms, Hill personally directed and funded a number of projects intended to shape agricultural practice and land use in the American West. For instance, Hill vigorously promoted "dual-purpose" cattle, bred for both dairy and beef production, since he believed that animal husbandry was essential in small and diversified farming operations. He tried to develop a variety of corn adapted to the northern growing season, and he supported an experiment station in northwest Minnesota that would serve the interests of an emerging sugar beet industry. Hill also endorsed various irrigation projects, which he hoped would entice small farmers to settle the plains.

Although Hill certainly succeeded in many aspects of his business, Strom is almost merciless in her portrayal of the "pattern of failure" (p. 133) that followed Hill's agricultural development schemes. In case after case, Hill encountered resistance from politicians, farmers, ranchers, and the environment. Efforts to breed dual-purpose cattle fell apart since farmers were unwilling or unable to turn wheat-producing acres into pasture. "Jim Hill Corn" backfired since it took even longer to mature and was a less nutritious feed than standard corn varieties. The site Hill selected for the northwest Minnesota experiment station proved susceptible to flooding. In several states, Hill could not overcome politicians who disdained investments in irrigation projects that favored farmers over cattlemen. On the whole, large-scale wheat farming and ranching came to the northern plains, not small family farms.

Strom makes useful contributions to the literature in at least two ways. First, she revises previous portrayals that present Full's development schemes as successful. Also valuable is her interesting analysis of definitions of authority and expertise among scientists, reformers, and corporate leaders of the Progressive Era. Strom indicates clearly that Hill tried to operate outside of the mainstream of agricultural science, first by establishing his own credentials as an agricultural expert, and then by hiring a staff of agricultural experimenters and promoters. Yet Hill and his colleagues repeatedly battled agricultural school and experiment station experts who also claimed expertise and legitimacy on agricultural issues. In the long run, Hill's efforts to present himself as a farm expert proved futile, for he could not compete with the professionally trained agricultural scientists and economists.

Profiting from the Plains is less persuasive in its attempts to connect with the themes of environmental history. Strom inserts language about Hill's desire to rcengineer the western environment and about the ecological challenges that hindered these efforts. Yet the text demonstrates that political circumstances, economic pressures, and flawed science caused the bulk of Hill's problems. This handicap is manifest in the mediocre quality of the maps, which are poorly labeled and miss an opportunity to connect the railroad's problems with environmental circumstances. These concerns notwithstanding, Profiting from the Plains makes an important contribution to the biography of Hill, to railroad history, and to the history of the American West.

Mark Finlay is an associate professor of history at Armstrong Atlantic State University. His current project is a study of the American search for a domestic rubber industry between World War I and World War II.