Machines After Sun

West from Hardin, Mont, one day last week rolled a remarkable caravan bound on an extraordinary journey. Thundering in line went three huge trucks with trailers, a fleet of small trucks and passenger automobiles. The trucks carried six $6,800 tractors, four giant plows, four seeding outfits, a mass of trip hammers, lathes, forges, tools. They were bound through snowy valleys and over icy mountains for California's warm, rich San Joaquin Valley and the newest venture of Tom Campbell, world's No. 1 Big Farmer.

A chapter of U. S. history is the story of how, during the War, Tom Campbell got $2,000,000 from J. P. Morgan and some other bankers and the Government's permission to choose his land from 10,000,000 Indian Reservation acres, brought mass production to agriculture on the biggest wheat farm in the world (TIME, Jan. 9, 1928).

Drought and Depression cost Farmer Campbell $600,000 from 1929 to 1934, cut his wheat plantings to 20,000 acres. They also gave him time to think. Through long Montana winters he saw his expensive machinery and skilled workmen standing idle. Why not, he asked himself, scatter crops in other climates, harvest the year round by sending his machines and men after the sun? Matching his equipment, experience and Government credit rating with outside money, Tom Campbell leased 14,000 fertile, irrigated acres in San Joaquin Valley. When his caravan arrives this week, he plans to begin planting 3,000 acres to flax, harvest it in May, then send his machines back with the sun to Montana.

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