Who was responsible for the construction of the XIT ranch as noted in the nonfiction book, The Worst Hard Time?

The XIT ranch in the Texas Panhandle was legendary. A Chicago syndicate took the government up on an offer of free land to build the statehouse. It stocked the land with cattle, built windmills to pump water and erected fences. The XIT ranch became the biggest ranch in the world. Towns sprung up around the ranch and there were plenty of jobs for cowboys. Later, when the dust storms came, the syndicate sold the land to farmers promising them that they could turn the grassland into farmland. The farming of this farmland was one of the leading causes of the development of the Dust Bowl.