There was to be repeated in this country something of the history
of California. In the great valleys, such as the San Joaquin, the
first interests were pastoral, and the cowmen found a vast realm
which seemed to be theirs forever. There came to them, however,
the bonanza wheat farmers, who flourished there about 1875 and
through the next decade. Their highly specialized industry
boasted that it could bake a loaf of bread out of a wheat field
between the hours of sunrise and sunset. The outlay in stock and
machinery on some of these bonanza ranches ran into enormous
figures. But here, as in all new wheat countries, the productive
power of the soil soon began to decrease. Little by little the
number of bushels per acre lessened, until the bonanza farmer
found himself with not half the product to sell which he had
owned the first few years of his operations. In one California
town at one time a bonanza farmer came in and covered three city
blocks with farm machinery which he had turned over to the bank
owning the mortgages on his lands and plant. He turned in also
all his mules and horses, and retired worse than broke from an
industry in which he had once made his hundreds of thousands.
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