James Jerome Hill was a Canadian-American railway director. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and the Pacific Northwest in the United States. Because of the size of this region and the economic dominance exerted by the Hill lines, Hill became known during his lifetime as "The Empire Builder", and died in 1916 with a fortune of about 63 million dollars. His former home, James J. Hill House, is now a museum in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known as J.P. Morgan and Co., he was a driving force behind the wave of industrial consolidations in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.
BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, 33,400 miles (53,800 km) of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles in 2010, more than any other North American railroad.
The Burlington Northern Railroad was a United States–based railroad company formed from a merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1995.
The Northern Pacific Railway was an important transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. It was approved and chartered in 1864 by the 38th Congress of the United States in the national / federal capital of Washington, D.C., during the last years of the American Civil War (1861-1865), and given nearly 40 million acres of adjacent land grants, which it used to raise additional money in Europe, for construction funding.
The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad was a railroad that operated in the Midwestern United States. Commonly referred to as the Burlington Route, the Burlington, CB&Q, or as the Q, it operated extensive trackage in the states of Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and also in Texas through subsidiaries Colorado and Southern Railway, Fort Worth and Denver Railway, and Burlington-Rock Island Railroad. Its primary connections included Chicago, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Denver. Because of this extensive trackage in the midwest and mountain states, the railroad used the advertising slogans "Everywhere West", "Way of the Zephyrs", and "The Way West".
Robert Bacon was an American athlete, banker, businessman, statesman, diplomat and Republican Party politician who served as the 39th United States Secretary of State in the Theodore Roosevelt administration from January to March 1909. He also served as Assistant Secretary of State from 1905 to 1909 and Ambassador to France from 1909 to 1912.
Ralph Budd was an American railroad executive who was the president of the Great Northern Railway from 1919 up until 1932, when he served as president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad until his retirement in 1949.
John Warne Gates, also known as "Bet-a-Million" Gates, was an American Gilded Age industrialist and gambler. He was a pioneer promoter of barbed wire. He was born and raised in what is now West Chicago, Illinois. He did not enjoy farm life and began offering neighbors various business propositions at an early age, including the sale of firewood to homes and to the local railroad. When he started a local grain brokerage that failed, Gates began spending time at the local railroad station and became reacquainted with the men he previously sold firewood to. He was invited to join their poker games and through this, Gates' aptitude for cards and other games of chance was developed.
The Panic of 1901 was the first stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange, caused in part by struggles between E. H. Harriman, Jacob Schiff, and J. P. Morgan/James J. Hill for the financial control of the Northern Pacific Railway. The stock cornering was orchestrated by James Stillman and William Rockefeller's First National City Bank financed with Standard Oil money. After reaching a compromise, the moguls formed the Northern Securities Company. As a result of the panic, thousands of small investors were ruined.
Charles Sanger Mellen was an American railroad man whose career culminated in the presidencies of the Northern Pacific Railway (1897-1903) and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (1903-1913). His goal, along with the New Haven's financier J. P. Morgan, was to consolidate, electrify and modernize all the main railroads of New England, so as to lower competition and produce higher profits. The result of his abrasive tactics alienated public opinion, led to high prices for acquisitions and costly construction; the accident rate soared when efforts were made to save on maintenance costs. Debt soared from $14 million in 1903 to $242 million in 1913, when it was hit by an antitrust lawsuit by the federal government on the charge of monopolizing New England's rail traffic. He was called, "The last of the railway czars."
Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197 (1904), was a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1903. The Court ruled 5-4 against the stockholders of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroad companies, which had essentially formed a monopoly and to dissolve the Northern Securities Company.
John Marshall Budd was an American railroad executive who was the chairman and chief executive officer of Burlington Northern Railroad from 1970 to 1971, chairman from 1971 to 1972, and a director from 1970 to 1977.
The Gould transcontinental system was a system of railroads assembled by George Jay Gould I and the Fuller Syndicate in the early 1900s. This was Gould's attempt to fulfill a goal of his late father, financier Jay Gould. Due to financial troubles following the Panic of 1907, the system was never completed as a fully transcontinental line.
The Wabash Railroad was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. It served a large area, including track in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri and the province of Ontario. Its primary connections included Chicago, Illinois; Kansas City, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Buffalo, New York; St. Louis, Missouri; and Toledo, Ohio.
Charles Elliott Perkins was an American businessman and president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. He was so well respected that historian Richard Overton wrote, "From the time that Charles Elliott Perkins became vice president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy [1876] ... until he resigned as president in 1901, he was the Burlington."
The history of United States antitrust law is generally taken to begin with the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890, although some form of policy to regulate competition in the market economy has existed throughout the common law's history. Although "trust" had a technical legal meaning, the word was commonly used to denote big business, especially a large, growing manufacturing conglomerate of the sort that suddenly emerged in great numbers in the 1880s and 1890s. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 began a shift towards federal rather than state regulation of big business. It was followed by the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950.
The Railroad and Bank Building at 176 E. 5th Street in St. Paul, Minnesota, renamed Great Northern Building in 2019, was the largest office building in the Upper Midwest from its completion in 1914 until 1973. For most of its existence, it was the headquarters of the business empire created by 19th century railroad entrepreneur James J. Hill. The building is the work of architect Charles Sumner Frost and is a contributing property of the St. Paul's Lowertown Historic District. After the decline of the railroads in the United States, the building has been used as leased office space with some retail operations on the lower floors.
