James G. Boswell II (March 10, 1923 – April 3, 2009) was the head of

J. G. Boswell Company ''J. The Jewish News of Northern California'', formerly known as ''Jweekly'', is a weekly print newspaper in Northern California, with its online edition updated daily. It is owned and operated by San Francisco Jewish Community Publications In ...

, a company that Boswell built from a large family-held cotton farm into an agribusiness giant. After a stint in the

Navy A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Boswell attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, earning a degree in economics. During his career, he sat on various corporate boards, including that of

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

. Boswell inherited the J. G. Boswell Co. from his uncle

James Griffin Boswell James Griffin Boswell (May 13, 1882 - September 11, 1952), was the founder of the J. G. Boswell Company, known today as the world's largest privately owned farm. Primary crops include Pima cotton, alfalfa hay, tomatoes, onions, and wheat, all cul ...

. Boswell grew the acreage more than three times to a peak of more than . In addition to increasing the size, Boswell focused on developing more productive

cultivar A cultivar is a type of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and when propagated retain those traits. Methods used to propagate cultivars include: division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture, ...

s and other technological advances to increase output and efficiency. Among his innovations was using lasers to level fields. Boswell used the company's influence to successfully lobby for advantageous land and water policies in the state, including the construction of the

Pine Flat Dam Pine Flat Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Kings River (California), Kings River in the Central Valley (California), Central Valley of Fresno County, California United States. Situated about east of Fresno, California, Fresno, the dam is hi ...

on the border of

Kings Canyon National Park Kings Canyon National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, in Fresno and Tulare Counties, California. Originally established in 1890 as General Grant National Park, the park was greatly expanded and renamed to Kings ...

. The dam stemmed water flow to

Tulare Lake Tulare Lake () (Spanish: ''Laguna de Tache'', Yokuts: ''Pah-áh-su'') is a freshwater dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. After Lake Cahuilla disappeared in the 17th century ...

, the now dry bed of which is a central part of the company's land. During record-breaking 1969 rains, local residents clamored for floodwaters from

Pine Flat Lake Pine Flat Lake is an artificial lake or reservoir in the Sierra Nevada foothills of eastern Fresno County, California on the western north-south border to the Sierra- and Sequoia National Forests, about east of Fresno. The lake is managed by ...

to be diverted to

Buena Vista Lake Buena Vista Lake was a fresh-water lake in Kern County, California, in the Tulare Lake Basin in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California. Buena Vista Lake was the second largest of several similar lakes in the Tulare Lake basin, and was fed ...

. Representation on the irrigation district board, however, was determined by the value of landowners' land, and J. G. Boswell Company owned the majority of land in the district. J. G. Boswell Co. voted to block the floodwater diversion so that its crops on the Buena Vista lakebed would not be destroyed. Residents whose homes were destroyed by the flood sued. Limiting

suffrage Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...

to landowners violated the

one man, one vote "One man, one vote", or "one person, one vote", expresses the principle that individuals should have equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of political equality to refer to such electoral reforms as universal suffrage, ...

guarantee in the U.S. Constitution, they alleged, because the irrigation district can levy taxes, exercise

eminent domain Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...

, and decide whose land gets flooded. In 1973, a divided

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

disagreed, finding that a private company can exercise control of the irrigation district because flood control is not an important government function..

References

Further reading