Editing Northern Pacific Railway (section)

===From Hill to Howard Elliott===
[[File:Northern Pacific Railroad - DPLA - 7d420a037748741b50d661d5d0633a45.jpg|thumb|A giant James J. Hill lifts the track of the Northern Pacific Railroad over his head. Hill had acquired the track in 1901.]]
In 1903, Hill finally got his way with the House of Morgan. [[Howard Elliott (railroad executive)|Howard Elliott]], another veteran of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, became president of the Northern Pacific on October 23. Elliott was a relative of the Burlington's crusty chieftain Charles Elliott Perkins, and more distantly the Burlington's great backer, [[John Murray Forbes]]. He had spent 20 years in the trenches of Midwest railroading, where rebates, pooling, expansion and rate wars had brought ruinous competition. Having seen the effects of having multiple railroads attempt to serve the same destination, he was very much in tune with James J. Hill's philosophy of "community of interest," a loose affiliation or collusion among roads in an attempt to avoid duplicating routes, rate wars, weak finances and ultimately bankruptcies and reorganizations. Elliott would be left to make peace with the Hill-controlled Great Northern; the Harriman-controlled Union Pacific; and, between 1907 and 1909, the last of the northern transcontinentals, the [[Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad]], more commonly known as the Milwaukee Road.