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The King Of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of A Secret American Empire, by Mark Arax, Rick Wartzman, Rick Wartzman
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J.G. Boswell was the biggest farmer in America. He built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields." The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s,drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world. Indeed, the sophistication of Boswell 's agricultural operation -from lab to field to gin - is unrivaled anywhere.
Much more than a business story, this is a sweeping social history that details the saga of cotton growers who were chased from the South by the boll weevil and brought their black farmhands to California. It is a gripping read with cameos by a cast of famous characters, from Cecil B. DeMille to Cesar Chavez.
- Sales Rank: #63597 in Books
- Brand: Brand: PublicAffairs
- Published on: 2005-02-15
- Released on: 2005-02-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.50" w x 5.50" l, 1.26 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 592 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From The New Yorker
This meticulous narrative of the rise of the cotton magnate James G. Boswell begins in the nineteen-twenties, when his family was driven from Georgia by boll-weevil infestations and brought its plantation ways to California's San Joaquin Valley. Not to be defeated by nature again, the Boswells leveed and dammed Tulare Lake, the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi, to the point of extinction. In its six-hundred-square-mile basin they grew cotton, while in Los Angeles office towers they built one of the country's largest agricultural operations, swallowing small farms and multimillion-dollar subsidies with equal vigor. Arax and Wartzman strive for evenhandedness but acknowledge the costs of Big Ag—such as evaporation ponds with selenium levels so high that ducks are born with corkscrewed beaks and no eyes, and the recurrent "hundred-year floods," stubborn attempts by the old lake to reassert itself.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
From Booklist
You may never have heard of him, but J. G. Boswell controls the biggest farming empire in America. In the early part of the twentieth century, his family moved from Georgia to California, where they drained one of the country's biggest lakes, Tulare Lake, and planted cotton. Soon their cotton empire became the richest and most technologically sophisticated on the planet. This book is many stories, all rolled into one epic. It's the story of the Boswells from the 1800s to the present day; of cotton farming in America; of California itself; and of the evolution of race relations as the country dragged itself out of the era of slavery and, not at all smoothly, into the modern era. Written in a lively style that matches the bigger-than-life qualities of its subject, the book is far more exciting than you might think the story of a cotton farmer would be. With proper marketing, it could smash through genre barriers and become the Seabiscuit of agricultural biography! David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"A rollicking tale. . . ." -- Raleigh News & Observer
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Great Read about a Mysterious Company
By MicroCapClub
I've written about JG Boswell (BWEL) a couple of times here on MicroCapClub, but I finally finished reading the only book that gives a detailed history of the company and man behind it. JG Boswell is known as the country's largest farm (150,000 acres), which is located in California. The intrigue with the company isn't in the size of the farm, but how it got so large in the first place.
The farm itself is on an old lake bottom, what used to be Tulare Lake. 100 years ago this lake was the largest lake (600 sq miles) west of the Mississippi River, and it was drained dry by farming. The farm to this day continues to tap 15% of the river system/aquifer as irrigation. The true value of the farm even today isn't really the abundance of crops that are produced but in these water rights that are thought to be worth $10's of billions.
The company was started in 1921 by J.G. Boswell, and later run by J.G. Boswell II who is credited for the company's growth from 1952-1984 (died 2009). JG Boswell II was a very intelligent and influential businessman who even served on the board at General Electric (GE) when Jack Welch was CEO. Welch said of Boswell, "A very independent outside the mold thinker, just a maverick sort of a guy".
The book gives a fascinating account of the history of JG Boswell, and how environmentalists and the US government tried to step in and stop the company several times. The fact that the company still exists today is just a testament of sheer will power and leadership by JG Boswell II. The company is a very private company even though it is publicly traded. As in most cases, the more private a company or person is, the more intrigued outsiders are to learn more. The book was a great read and provides one of the only detailed accounts of this mysterious company.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Another Fine Chapter in California's History
By Philip Carl
This particular chapter details the rise of a farming empire in California's Central Valley. Coming from Greene County Georgia, the Boswell family built this empire largely on the backs of migrant labor and water--lots and lots of water. One other point: on the way to becoming one of the largest landowners in California, the Boswell's forever reshaped the landscape and drained Tulare Lake.
Prior to settlement, the Central Valley's river floodplain system nourished some 1.4 million acres of tule marshes and wooded wetlands. The draining of vast sweeps of wetlands along with the damming and channeling of four major rivers has altered the landscape in both a manner and at a scale that is, quite literally, unprecedented. If you wanted to focus on a single family/farming empire that played the biggest role in this alternation, then you could do no better than The King of California.
Tulare Lake lies near the southern end of California's Central Valley. The proximity of such a huge, seasonal lake to a large farming operation was a mixed blessing. During dry years, as the shoreline contracted, the land could be transformed to grow grain or row crops. In wet years, however, as the Sierra Nevada snow pack melted, the runoff of the Kings, Kaweah, Tule, and Kern Rivers filled this basin. The big runoff produced high flows into July and August, resulting in a vast and expanding lake shore. The flooded farmland resulted in less crops, less money... J.G. Boswell was determined to rein these waters in and convinced the Federal Government to help.
In an errant attempt to encourage small family farms, loopholes in the reclamation laws brought most of the land in the Central Valley under the control of a handful of private landowners. The Californian land barons went by the names of Henry Miller, J. G. Boswell, and "Cockeye" Salyer. The land around Tulare Lake eventually got folded into Boswell farming empire. In the final analysis, the Boswell's got the land, the water rights, and handed the tax-payers the bill for the construction of Pine Flat Dam on the Kings River.
I feel a bit of guilt when I throw on a mass produced cotton T-shirt (e.g., I can buy a three-pack for under ten dollars). Because this cheap cotton underwear really isn't that cheap. Mass produced cotton uses a lot of water. In fact, to grow a single T-shirt takes 257 gallons of water. If you own a piece of cotton underwear, chances are pretty good it's fibers came from land in California's Central Valley. And by default, you can be sure the Boswell family grew it. The King of California tells the interesting story of how the Boswells became the single largest grower of cotton in the United States.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Well written and entertaining.
By Alexs328
All in all I feel the book brought out the good and bad man taming and controlling the Tulare Lake basin. The mixed basket of intended and unintended consequences strong willed individuals and politicians. In the end, poor public policy mixed with a driven group of individuals concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few.
A great history of California water and water policy.
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