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 244 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS the expenditure of governmental energy and money in the development of what they thought was an arid and unprofit- able expanse of territory in the Pacific Northwest. Even as they were speaking there were two dauntless souls who had gone forth into the wilderness; with prophetic eye had seen its possibilities, and were fighting their way through the ter- rible blizzards, through the mountain passes, and across the weary plains back to civilization, to lay before the govern- ment of the United States their dream of what the country might become. To-day the dream is a reality, a reality in beauty, wealth, and importance, beyond anything they could have dreamed. The mountain torrents of the Rockies no longer tumble down their shaggy sides to pour their wasted strength into the peaceful sea. Other visionaries have come, the rivers have pulsed their life-giving waters through a million arteries netting the dusty plains until the harvest has yielded bread to the hungry millions of a nation. Land that was once valueless is now almost beyond price. Through the heart of this mighty empire of the Northwest wind ten thous- and miles of steel, those conductors which first carried the electric spark of life to the great wheat growing region of the North American continent. The man who built those railways brought to the city of St. Paul the first fuel coal which turned the wheels of her great milling industries. He brought the first carload of wheat to the mills. He shipped the first barrel of flour out of the Northwest, and he has been a central figure in every great enterprise wrought out among his chosen people. He stands to-day as the man with the largest transportation in- terests in the world. From the millions of acres of waving grain, from the whirl- ing wheels of those great industries which have been made possible through his service, from the hungry nations of a changing Orient, to whom he has carried American food, from the hearts of a nation, who in honoring him honor themselves, there rises the mystic symphony of a world's tribute to the man who fearlessly believed in a dream, who followed through years of sternest battle the vision he had seen, upon whose