310202 - James J. Hill: Background of Empire

Recording Status:  recorded, circulating

Of the nine circulating Empire Builders shows, which have all been available to old time radio enthusiasts for many years now, this one seems to have been just about the only one of the lot where the correct title of the story was used. However, since it is a retelling of the very first broadcast of the series (back on January 14, 1929), it is worth mentioning that the subtitle should be “Background of Empire.” The story captured anecdotes (fictionalized, of course, but based on real life accounts) of the adventures of James J. Hill in his youth, and his initial arrival near the head of navigation of the Mississippi River, at St. Paul, Minnesota.

If you have arrived at this blog without already being aware, you should know that James J. Hill was the man most responsible for creating and building the Great Northern Railway, one of the most commercially successful and culturally impactful railroads in North America – or perhaps the world. Through all the lives his enterprise touched, all the communities his railroad helped to establish, and all the businesses, farms, and ranches he supported as they grew and flourished, James J. Hill earned the sobriquet “Empire Builder” – and justly so.

 

There were certainly those detractors who disliked, even despised him. But conversely there were many more across the Pacific Northwest who came to darned near revere him. As for the railroad company he built from the ground up, well after his death this institution of his continued to pay him due respects in a variety of ways. This very advertising campaign, the Empire Builders radio series, was a honorific nod to Hill and all the other “empire builders” of the Northwest. When the railroad rolled out their new premier passenger train in June of 1929, it was naturally named the “Empire Builder.” And this same passenger route, with only minor alterations, continues to serve the same territory with daily service as Amtrak’s “Empire Builder.”

The Empire Builders radio series would only remain on the air for less than five more months, but in that time, the weekly radio broadcasts highlighted events in the life of James J. Hill twice more after this night's program. The broadcast of February 23^rd featured what the GN called “the first of a series of dramatic episodes from the life of James J. Hill, the Empire Builder.” At the end of that program, they announced the next such installment would air on March 23^rd, but evidently plans changed. On that date, Empire Builders presented a story about Charlie Russell. A story about Jim Hill aired on March 30^th – this was the one that had been scheduled for March 23^rd.

This night’s radio broadcast opened with a scripted conversation between Harvey Hays as the Old Timer (in character) and his fellow performers Bernardine Flynn and Lucille Husting. The discussion centered on the fact that the Empire Builders players had in fact performed this story once before. However, on that night – January 14, 1929 – the cast of the show was almost completely different. Only Harvey Hays was on hand for both broadcasts.

The actual audio for the broadcast differs considerably from the copy of the continuity that I’ve located. It’s the same preamble conversation between the Old Timer and actresses Flynn and Husting, but the dialog was changed more than what I suspect was simple ad libbing.  You can access the audio and listen to that yourself, but here’s how the dialog played out in the continuity:

            (ORCHESTRA UP AND FADE TO SIGN OF WIND AND GABBLE OF VOICES AROUND CAMPFIRE, WHICH FADES TO BACKGROUND)

OLD TIMER:  Yep, just about two years ago that I begun my radio career! Two years ago th’ fourteenth o’ January, t’ be exact ….

B. FLYNN:     Did you get mike-fright, Old Timer? Were you afraid of the microphone, I mean?

OLD TIMER:  (CHUCKLE)  Well, now, Bernardine, don’t you go a-askin’ personal questions. I –

L. HUSTING: I’ll bet you did, Old Timer. I know I did, first time I faced a microphone.

OLD TIMER:  Well, Lucille, I guess I might ‘s well confess, I did get just a lee-eetle mite a-scared, with that there black box a starin’ at me, an’ everybody a-waitin’ for me to go on.  (CHUCKLE)  Never knowed my voice to sound so loud.

HUSTING:      Funny, isn’t it – speaking about voices – how quiet our voices sound out here among the mountains? Have you noticed it, Bernardine?

FLYNN:          Yes. Especially at night, alongside the campfire like tonight. You just sit here and look up at the stars – aren’t they big and bright? – and you seem so small and insignificant alongside the mountains, so grey and big there against the sky … (VOICE TRAILS OFF AND ONLY THE CRACKLE OF THE CAMPFIRE IS HEARD)

OLD TIMER:  (AFTER A PAUSE)  There was something about stars in that first radio show o’ mine two years ago. Wonder how much of it I could remember.  (MUSINGLY)  ‘Twas a right interestin’ show …

HUSTING:      Let’s hear it, Old Timer. This is a wonderful time and place for a story.

FLYNN:          Yes, do tell it to us, Old Timer.

OLD TIMER:  Well. Let’s see –

(SOFT MUSIC UP AND FADE FOR DIALOGUE)

OLD TIMER:  You was talkin’ ‘bout those stars up there … big, bright, friendly. Jim Hill – that’s who this story’s about – he used to look up at the stars too. Long before he ever dreamed of the Great Northern Railway that he was to build, he had found his star. Jim Hill’s star (MUSINGLY) it led him from the little town in Canada where he was born toward the great East. Then it veered back and brought him to a greater West … a West that he was to make even greater … an Empire that he was to build. He was a great man, Jim Hill was!  (A PAUSE WITH ONLY THE CRACKLE OF FLAMES HEARD)  Jim Hill was born in a little town in Ontario. There wasn’t much for a youngster to do in them days, but he was the usual bright, carefree young fellow you’d expect. His father sent him to school at a tiny academy run by an old feller – a Quaker, he was, named Wetherald. Jim went to this school till his father died. That was when young Jim was about fourteen. And one evening, he made up his mind he’d have to go an’ talk to his old teacher, Mr. Wetherald. He trudged over to the old Quaker’s house, where he held school, and knocked on the door ….

Although it was not explicitly so stated, it seems the listeners were to believe the radio trio was huddled around a cozy campfire in Glacier Park. February 2^nd would be a rather inhospitable time for such outdoor frolicking in the Montana Rockies, as it would be pretty much anywhere else one might imagine: St. Paul, near the headquarters of the Great Northern; up on the roof of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago . . . So much of radio is left to the vivid imagination. It would be interesting to learn just where the listening audience placed the three and their campfire.

The next scene of the program was an exchange between a 14-year-old James J. Hill and his school teacher in Canada, William Wetherald. When the old Quaker learned that young Jim Hill was on the verge of striking out on his own, he challenged the lad to demonstrate that Hill had learned something of consequence through his teachings. What the boy came up with was an appreciation of the exploits of Napoleon Bonaparte. Wetherald tried to reign the kid in a little, when Hill began to hint that he idolized a man who nearly seized control of all of Europe.

W.W.: Napoleon! That man of wrath!

JIM:    Oh, but think what Napoleon did, sir! He wasn’t anybody at all to begin with, and he ended up by being Emperor!

W.W.: He ended up by being food for worms! An emperor without an empire!

JIM:    But, Mr. Wetherald, just think, he did more than that! He led men, thousands of men, and they were glad to die for him. He beat all of Europe, and if they’d let him alone, he’d have made it into one great empire. And he was brave, sir! Don’t you remember, Mr. Wetherald, the bridge at Arcola, where he charged the Austrians?

This juncture of the dialog prompted the writer to segue the story to a vignette of Napoleon and his officer, Auguste de Marmont, taking on the Austrians in a battle to control the bridge at Arcola in 1796. The radio enactment of this three-day battle was essentially just a campy sound bite for what really happened, but when the radio broadcast turned its focus back to Jim Hill and his teacher, Wetherald took the opportunity to impart what he hoped was one last poignant lesson upon his pupil.

W.W.: James, James! Thee does not know war. I pray thee never may. Set not thy face in that direction, for “he that liveth by the sword shall perish by the sword”. So it was with the Corsican. Thee sees the empty glory of one man. There are millions who see only the sorrow. Go thy way, James, and live in peace.

JIM:    Well, maybe you’re right, sir. Anyhow, it wasn’t just the battles that made Napoleon great. It was his star. He conquered an empire!

W.W.: James, come here. I will tell thee something, and I want thee always to remember it. It is a far, far finer thing to build an empire than it is to conquer one! Thee will remember?

And so the listening audience was left to believe that this conversation between Hill and his mentor back in 1852 was formative in the crafting of Hill’s character and determination, traits that were credited with inspiring his ascension to the throne of “Empire Builder” of the American Northwest.

The section of the radio play demonstrated how the teenaged Hill took a job in Guelph, Ontario, to help support his mother and siblings (his father having passed away when Jim was 14). It was supposedly in this job, as older men discussed over the cracker barrel the economics and politics of early railroading in Canada, that Hill began to form his own ideas of how to best operate a transportation system.

James J. Hill, in a photograph taken of him shortly after his arrival at St. Paul.
He was roughly 18 years old in this photo.
MNHS collection

The Old Timer returned to the microphone to explain how Jim Hill, now at the age of eighteen, decided it was time to set out yet again. This time, it was Hill’s intention to travel to India, by way of New York and passage on a merchant vessel where he hoped to earn his keep. Hill did get to New York, but rather than a ship to India, he found an opportunity to travel west, to the head of navigation on the Mississippi River. He wound up at St. Paul, Minnesota.

PIONEER:      Just because you start some place is no particular sign that you’re going to get there! If Jim Hill had got to India that would have been another story. But when he got to New York, Jim couldn’t find the ship he wanted, so he started working his way west again. Finally he got to St. Paul. Just a little settlement on the Mississippi – and all Jim could do was to find a job. As he settled down to grow up with the country, and when the country didn’t grow fast enough to suit him, he just naturally yanked it along after him! St. Paul ate transportation, slept transportation and dreamed transportation in those days, and that was meat to Jim. He’d sooner have that than dinner. Just to show you what sort of a lad Jim was just about then – he was in his twenties – I want to tell you about the time he took it on himself to do a little piloting on the old Mississippi herself, one of the meanest streams to pilot in the world. Jim’s firm was running a steam packet up the river from Dubuque to St. Paul and return and, one night, Jim was on board when something happened. It was like this.

The next scene had Jim Hill aboard the steamer as the ship reached Mendota, just a few miles short of their destination at the Twin Cities. [I’m not familiar with the geography around the Twin Cities, but I’m not so sure about the story’s reference to Mendota – on a map it looks like a steamboat trip on the Mississippi River that reached Mendota would first have to go past St. Paul, and then enter the Minnesota River…] The ship’s pilot asked the captain who was going to relieve him. At this, the captain revealed that it was news to him that the pilot he hired for the trip was not certified to pilot any ship beyond Mendota. The options facing the captain were to tie up and obtain a pilot for the final leg (which would result in an unacceptable delay), or . . .

HILL:              Just a minute, Captain Carter.

CARTER:       Yes, Mr. Hill, you represent the owners. What do you suggest?

HILL:              That’s just it, Captain, I’m responsible for any freight loss incurred. I can’t authorize you to tie up over night. We’re due in Minneapolis tomorrow, and we’ve got to get there!

CARTER:       Perhaps you can suggest how! Who will take the wheel?

HILL:              We – e – ll, I might!

CARTER:       But you’re not a pilot!

HILL:              I know. What I suggest is this. I’ll take the wheel and the responsibility. Mr. Thomas will stand near me, and give me what advice he can. He needn’t take either the wheel or the blame. How about it, sir?

After a predictably harrowing episode of navigating the shallows of that section of the river, Hill of course guided the steam ship safely to its destination. My copy of the continuity stops abruptly at this point. What we know of the ending of the broadcast comes from its only recording, and that is of less than ideal quality. Since this was a retelling of the first Empire Builders broadcast, of January 14, 1929, we also have a copy of that continuity. Although the recording of the 310202 broadcast reveals a few minor edits and/or ad libs, here is the text for the Old Timer’s closing comments from the 290114 broadcast:

PIONEER:      Heh! Heh! That was Jim Hill all over! If he couldn’t get past a sand-bar he’d jump the boat over! Matter of fact, he brought her to St. Paul next day with about thirty timbers broken and half full of water. But he stayed at the wheel until he had brought her in, and not a soul the worse for it! Same day later on when he took to railroading. If he couldn’t run his rails round a mountain, he’d bore a hole in the cussed thing and poked them through! Ye-es, Jim was quite a man. That star of his was a worker. There it is, twinkling up there in the Minnesota sky, right where Jim left it. Well, folks, it’s time fer me to go now. I’ll be back right soon, though, me and Jim Hill. Good bye!

            (THE FIDDLE MUSIC AGAIN)

One notable distinction between the continuity from the first broadcast, and the actual dialog recorded in 1931, is dropping of the word “Minnesota” in describing the night sky. Otherwise, it was very similar.

Ted Pearson came to the microphone and provided the closing announcement.

ANNOUNCER:          You have been listening to Empire Builders – with Harvey Hays as the Old Timer – a presentation of the Great Northern Railway: the swift, clean scenic route between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest. The Great Northern was built by James J. Hill, and it is in his honor that the Great Northern’s crack train, the Empire Builder, is named. This aristocrat of transcontinental flyers makes the journey between Chicago and the Puget Sound cities and Portland, over the short route of low, easy grades and minimum curvature, along the courses of ten great rivers, through the towering splendor of the Rockies and the Cascade Mountains, on to the “Adventure Land of the Pacific Northwest.” The Great Northern Railway maintains both passenger and freight representatives in most of the cities from which this program is broadcast. They will be glad to give you details on traveling or shipping via Great Northern.

This is Ted Pearson speaking. Empire Builders comes to you each Monday night at this time from the NBC studios in Chicago.

Despite the promise he made the previous week, the Old Timer seems not to have provided any new details regarding the planned tours of Glacier National Park in July. At this point in time, officials of the railroad were still nailing down what the future held for the radio series, but it did not look good for continuing the campaign after the scheduled end of the current season on June 22^nd. As for setting up the tours of Glacier Park, it was certain there would be at least one tour conducted, but the plans and logistics of additional tours was uncertain. For his part, Harvey Hays was probably quite happy to spend whatever time the railroad contracted with him to spend in the park. He suffered from hay fever, and the Montana Rockies provided welcome solace. As the weeks went by, the Glacier Park tour plans continued to evolve.

 

Until next week, keep those dials tuned to Empire Builders!