HISTORY. 67 



Valley. It was dry semi-arid land. Some of his associates won- 

 dered what he would do with it. He bought more. After a time, 

 I think in 1872, he took out a canal to water it. In 1873 he im- 

 ported some alfalfa seed from Chili. He sowed 7 acres, a large 

 operation at that time. Gradually the holdings of land and of 

 cattle increased. Today the firm owns about a million of acres 

 of land, most of it in California. They have about 100,000 head 

 of cattle. They have about 120,000 sheep. This growth all repre- 

 sents the profit made in growing, killing and selling cattle and 

 sheep. 



Henry Miller is one of the wonderful men of our time. He is 

 one of the men with foresight and faith. His manager, Mr. 

 Schmitz, of the Poso ranch at Firebaugh, has been with Mr. 

 Miller for thirty years. He told me many incidents that showed 

 the kind of stuff of which the man is made. Here is an instance: 

 When the water was out Mr. Schmitz was instructed to irrigate 

 and sow barley. The land was not prepared for irrigation. Mr. 

 Schmitz and his Irish laborers knew little or nothing of the art. 

 They had a tremendous time of it. Mr. Schmitz lived night and 

 day in the fields, trying to manage the elusive water. The crop 

 was a fair one, but netted a loss of some $2,000. Mr. Schmitz re- 

 ported and asked to be allowed to resign. "What for?" asked 

 Mr. Miller. "Well, it does not pay. I would not mind working 

 if I could see that it was a success," he replied. "See here, Mr. 

 Schmitz, suppose you look after the work and let me do the 

 figuring," said Henry Miller. 



When alfalfa proved the success that it did the solution of the 

 problem was in sight. After that it became a simple matter of 

 steadily enlarging the areas of irrigated lands, of alfalfa fields, of 

 cattle. Today on Mr. Schmitz's division of Poso farm of 160,000 

 acres there are 20,000 acres of alfalfa. There are 25,000 acres of 

 irrigated native grasses. He cuts 15,000 tons of alfalfa hay. He 

 grows 50,000 sacks of barley and 5,000 sacks of Egyptian corn. 

 His tenants grow some 100,000 sacks of wheat and 20,000 sacks of 

 barley. 



Poso farm carries about 25,000 head of cattle. It has about 

 40,000 sheep and ships about 5,000 hogs each year. 



Do those figures make you dizzy? Well, I will not deal much 

 in figures from this time on. You can get the idea that it is 

 not merely a ranch, a farm, but almost a state, certainly a prin- 

 cipality in itself. If there is anything like it in the world' I 

 have not heard of it. We rode up the great weir in the San 

 Joaquin River, whence the canal starts that leads off westward 

 and divides the watered land from the dry. A lovely river is the 

 San Joaquin at this time of the year. Calm, neither hurrying 



