When at last the little, ragged, but ever-heroic remnant of the Confederate army surrendered, and the worn and weary soldiers set their faces to the north again, Major Jewett’s name was known throughout the country.

At the close of the war, in recognition of his ability and great service to the Union, Major Jewett was made a brevet colonel, by which title he is known to almost every railway man in America.

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Many opportunities came to Colonel Jewett to enter once more the field in which, since his school days, he had been employed.  One by one these offers were put aside.  They were too easy.  He had been so long in the wreck of things that he felt out of place on a prosperous, well-regulated line.  He knew of a little struggling road that ran east from Galena, Illinois.  It was called the Galena and something, for Galena was at that time the most prosperous and promising town in the wide, wild West.

He sought and secured service on the Galena line and began anew.  The road was one of the oldest and poorest in the state, and one of the very first chartered to build west from Chicago.  It was sorely in need of a young, vigorous, and experienced man, and Colonel Jewett’s ability was not long in finding recognition.  Step by step he climbed the ladder until he reached the General Managership.  Here his real work began.  Here he had some say, and could talk directly to the President, who was one of the chief owners.  He soon convinced the company that to succeed they must have more money, build more, and make business by encouraging settlers to go out and plough and plant and reap and ship.  The United States government was aiding in the construction of a railway across the “desert,” as the West beyond the Missouri River was then called.  Jewett urged his company to push out to the Missouri River and connect with the line to the Pacific, and they pushed.

Ten years from the close of the war Colonel Jewett was at the head of one of the most promising railroads in the country.  Prosperity followed peace, the West began to build up, the Pacific Railroad was completed, and the little Galena line, with a new charter and a new name, had become an important link connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific.

For nearly half a century Jewett has been at the front, and has never been defeated.  The discredited captain of that promising company of car-boys has become one of our great “captains of industry.”  He is to-day President of one of the most important railroads in the world, whose black fliers race out nightly over twin paths of steel, threading their way in and out of not less than nine states, with nearly nine thousand miles of main line.  He has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams; and his success is due largely to the fact that when, in his youth, he mounted to ride to fame and fortune, he did not allow the first jolt to jar him from the saddle.  He is made of the stuff that stands.