Building A Railroad Without Government Help: Why Barack Obama Doesn't Like James J. Hill

Did Barack Obama learn about railroad magnate James J. Hill at Columbia University? We doubt it. Professor Thomas J.DiLorenzo explains:

James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railroad "without any government aid, even the right of way, through hundreds of miles of public lands, being paid for in cash," as Hill himself stated.[2]

Quite naturally, Hill strongly opposed government favors to his competitors: "The government should not furnish capital to these companies, in addition to their enormous land subsidies, to enable them to conduct their business in competition with enterprises that have received no aid from the public treasury," he wrote.[3] This may sound quaint by today's standards, but it was still a hotly debated issue in the late nineteenth century.

James J. Hill was hardly a "baron" or aristocrat. His father died when he was fourteen, so he dropped out of school to work in a grocery store for four dollars a month to help support his widowed mother. As a young adult he worked in the farming, shipping, steamship, fur-trading, and railroad industries. He learned the ways of business in these settings, saved his money, and eventually became an investor and manager of his own enterprises.[4] (It was much easier to accomplish such things in the days before income taxation.)

Maybe Barack Obama should learn about James J. Hill instead of reading Marxist Franz Fanon.