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The King Of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of A Secret American Empire Paperback – February 15, 2005
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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.
- Reading age9 years and up
- Print length592 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level11 and up
- Dimensions5.5 x 1.5 x 8.25 inches
- Publication dateFebruary 15, 2005
- ISBN-101586482815
- ISBN-13978-1586482817
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- Publisher : PublicAffairs; Revised edition (February 15, 2005)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 592 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1586482815
- ISBN-13 : 978-1586482817
- Reading age : 9 years and up
- Grade level : 11 and up
- Item Weight : 1.47 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.5 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #544,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #192 in Agriculture Industry (Books)
- #1,675 in Business Professional's Biographies
- #8,581 in U.S. State & Local History
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

Rick Wartzman is director of the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society at the Drucker Institute, a part of Claremont Graduate University. He also writes about the world of work for Fortune magazine online. Before joining the Drucker Institute in 2007 as its founding executive director, Rick worked for two decades as a reporter, editor and columnist at The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. While business editor of The Times, he helped shape a three-part series on Wal-Mart’s impact on the economy and society, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

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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.
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.







