The colored churches of this denomination are the Wesley Chapel on South Liberty, established 1867; Mount Zion, 1872; Union Chapel, 1872; Thompson Chapel, 1872; Pleasant Plains, 1873; Kenner Mission, 1883; St. Matthew Chapel (Algiers), 1887; Mt. Calvary, 1880; Asbury and Algiers Mission, 1890; Scott Chiun Chapel, 1890; Simpson Chapel, 1872; First Street M. E. Church, 1872; Camp Parapet, J\L E. Church, 1873; Haven Church, Mallalieu, Mount Zion, No. 2, St. John's African, St. James African, St. Peter's African, Union Bethel Church, Williams Chapel, La Harpe Street Church, Cushman Chapel and Nashua Chapel.
The denomination has also three churches among the Germans, known as the First, Second and Third German M. E. Churches. The first is the corner of St. Andrew and South Franklin; the second at Eighth and Laurel, and the third on North Rampart, between St. Ferdinand and Press streets. Among the German divines of the denomination are Revs. L. Allineger, J. Braun, George Doodall, I). Matthaei, John J. Rienle, B. Brezinger, John C. Groth, Henry Dietz, John Pluen-neke, W. A. Moers, J. L. J. Earth, J. Ivienle, William Traeger, J. A. Traeger, G. Schuler, Rudolph Brueck, H. Schmaltz, John Streit, J. Weber, Jacob Brown, Henry C. Hoffman and Jacob Ueber.
From the standpoint of chronology it would be in order here to give some account of the works of the children of Israel in the matter of religious activity, for in New Orleans as in every other city on the face of the earth the Jews had found a home and became valuable citizens early. In 1847 Touro Synagogue was erected. It was then known as the Dispersed of Judea. It is located on Carondelet, between Julia and St. Joseph. It had been formerly located at the corner of Bourbon and Canal, the Church of the Episcopalians originally. Rabbis J. K. Gutheim, R. S. Jacobs, Joseph H. M. Chumaceiro and I. H. Leucht have been successively in charge of this temple. The Chevre Mikveli Israel Synagogue at 510 Carondelet, established in 1872, has been served by Rabbis Abraham Alimo, Elisha Silverstein, Albert Silverstein, Lois Silverstein, M. Man-delstann, who is to-day rabbi. The Gates of Prayer was established in 1854. It is located on Jackson, between Chippewa and Annunciation, the present structure having been built in 1855. Rabbis Sampson Cerf, Nathan Schwersky, M. Eisen-berg, D. Jacobson, Jacob Korn, and M. Sessler have been in charge of this syna-
gogue since the beginning successively. The Right Way Synagogue, Carondelet, between Poydras and Lafayette, established in 1870, has had the following rabbis: B. E. Jacobs, M. A. Seiferth, M. Shokat, Louis Silverstein, and S. Gordon. Temple Sinai was organized in 1870. The movement was inaugurated indeed in 1864. The building was erected on Carondelet, between Delord and Calliope, in 1871. Eev. J. K. Gutheim was selected rabbi in 1872. In 1888 Eabbi Gutheim was succeeded by Eev. Max Heller.
CHAPTER XXI.
MANUFACTURES. Bv Norman Walker.
THE manufactories of New Orleans are nearly all of recent growth and development, a matter of twenty or thirty years at most. In one or two lines there was, from necessity, some development in earlier days, but the city was distinctly not a manufacturing one at that time, but devoted instead to commerce and finance. It did not become a manufacturing center until after the Civil War, when a shrinkage in its trade, or rather, a reduction in the profits therefrom, compelled it to find other employment for its large surplus population.
It would be absurd, therefore, to attempt any account of manufactures in the earlier French days, because there were none. The inhabitants depended on France or Spain for such manufactured goods as they needed. There were a few blacksmith and repair shops—nothing more; and New Orleans could, with difficulty, put in condition such vessels as arrived here in any way damaged by wind or weather. In one line only it did some light manufacturing, but of a very crude character. This was in supplying the lumber or boxes in which Cuban sugar was at that time shipped to market. It could scarcely be called a New Orleans industry, however, for while the lumber was shipped from that city and the boxes were sometimes made there, the bulk of the work, as in the manufacture of staves to-day, was done in the country parishes. The same was true of the small cotton industry
of Louisiana, which was confined exclusively to the rural districts—the Acadian women and daughters turning out the famous Attakapas cottonade, popular iu Louisiana for nearly a centiiry.
Nor did the American domination which brought so many improvements in other lines make any marked change in the conditions prevailing in manufactures. The destiny of the city was believed to be wholly commercial—and commerce wa» very profitable at that time—and manufactories were regarded with more or less contempt. The city had all the raw materials necessary for manufactories, cheap and in abundance, but it was lacking in skilled operatives; and commerce gave employment to nearly its entire population. One serious evil presented itself in this condition of affairs. The busy season of the year was naturally the winter, when the city was marketing the crops of the Southwest. This was followed by a long period of rest, when there was little doing in a commercial line. The consequence was that the laboring classes had six months of good labor and six months of very little work. They had to get very high wages for this first period in order to make up for the long time they were at rest and without anything to do; and the summer saw those who were improvident suffering because of the difficulty of getting any employment at that time. It was a ease, therefore, of feast and famine, alternating. Manufactures could, of course, have averted the evil by giving employment to the operatives all the year round; but it was not until late in the forties when Pittsburg, Cincinnati and other Western cities began to enjoy prosperity as manufacturing centers, that the political economists of Xew Orleans realized that for sound and substantial business their city ought to have factories to supplement its active commerce. An agitation then began, which, however, was productive of few important results. The fact is, slavery was an enemy of manufactories, as some of the great political economists of the South have lately shown. It had a tendency to crowd mechanics out of New Orleans. In the records of that day a general desire is shown to have mechanical work done by negro slaves. Negroes, educated as blacksmiths and carpenters, were in great demand and brought two or three times as much as "green hands," who could only contribute the roughest kind of labor. These skilled negro workmen were rented out, and sometimes were leased to themselves, paying their owners for the privilege of hiring their own labor and in this way accumulating enough money to purchase their freedom. So general was the belief in slavery that the Louisiana Engineering Department secured from the State of Louisiana the right to purchase such negro slaves as it might need in the work of levee building, the construction of canals and such other improvements as it had on hand, much of it requiring more or less skilled labor.
It can be readily recognized how thoroughly demoralizing slavery was under these conditions to free labor and to manufactories; and, as has been stated. New Orleans did not smile on manufacturing. When, in the thirties, it was organizing so many new banks, all of them save one devoted themselves to fostering the commercial interests of New Orleans or the agricultural interests of the State. But a single bank, the Mechanics and Traders, was expected to look after the mechanical and manufacturing arts, and it had the smallest capital of any of the new banking institutions; and it was provided that $100,000 of its stock should be withheld to be subscribed to by mechanics exclusively; but there is no evidence that they did so.
Such manufacturing industries as sprang into existence during that time owed their origin to the absolute necessities of New Orleans, and were mainly for such repair work as could not be done elsewhere. Occasionally, the citv suffered because of a lack of manufacturers. Thus, for instance, an early effort to provide it, or at least the central portion of the town, with water proved a failure, because there was no iron piping or tubing through which the water could be forced. An attempt was made to supply this deficiency with cypress logs, hollowed in the center 60 as to form pipes. The substitutes were not satisfactory; they were too expensive and were not as well suited to water as iron pipes are.
Later on, when the city began its drainage work, it was found impossible to obtain in New Orleans the pumps and other machinery needed, and they had to be purchased in Baltimore. The newspapers of the time complained of these purchases and declared that New Orleans could turn out the machinery needed as well and as cheaply as Baltimore; but they -were probably mistaken. The company which made the purchases was composed of very patriotic and public-spirited men, who were anxious to use the home market as much as possible and to encourage home industries, and the very fact that they went to Baltimore to purchase what they needed may be regarded as proof positive that they could not get it in New Orleans.
The early factories of New Orleans, therefore, devoted themselves almost exclusively to repair work, or turned out such goods as could not be well manufactured anywhere else.
In the first category may be placed the foundries, which soon grew to be the leading industry of the city and remained so for many years. The foundries were originally designed for the repair of such machinery as became broken or could not otherwise be used, and which was too heavy to be shdpped back to the place of its original manufacture. They found plenty of work when the steamboats
came in vogue, for these boats were constantly getting out of order and their boilers needing attention. From this repairing business the foundries gradually branched out and became manufactories of machinery, agricultural implements, boilers, etc. The development of the sugar industry proved a great stimulus to them. That industry called for a great deal of machinery; and while the bulk of this came at first from the manufacturing towns of the North and West, its tendency was to drift to New Orleans, as the planter could then readily order what he needed; and if he broke a roller could get one of exactly the size required close at hand. Under the stimulus of this demand, the foundries and machine shops of New Orleans attained a very high degree of prosperity in ante-bellum days and were decidedly the most prosperous of all the manufacturing industries of the city. They claimed to have been able to manufacture anything in the iron and copper line. Occasionally they ventured on big pieces of work, and New Orleans was inclined to boast in 1848, when the Leeds foundry nianufactured all the machinery necessary to establish a large rope and cordage factory there. It might be stated, however, that these were exceptional ventures, and done naore to show what the New Orleans foundries were capable of than with any idea of profit.
Among the ante-bellum industries which did well in New Orleans because it did not pay to carry them on elsewhere, were naturally the building trades and the manufacture of building materials—brick, tile, lumber, etc. The brick was made almost exclusively in New Orleans, or at points across the lake in St. Tammany pari.sh. The city bricks were manufactured on the river front, mainly of river clay. They are still to be seen in many of the older buildings of New Orleans and in some of the banquettes, or sidewalks. They were a bright red, very soft, but hardened with tiiiic, and resisted fire better than nuniy of the harder varieties, as the latter crumbled away before the flames, whereas the river bricks became harder and stronger the longer they were submitted to fire. In many of the older buildings these bricks were much larger than the standard sizes of to-day and very much like those used by the Egyptians and Assyrians. Several factories also made roof tiling of the same material, the houses in the business section being covered with these tiles instead of cypress shingles, after the big fires, which destroyed so large a portion of the city. The tiles went out of fashion long ago, on the introduction of slate for roofing purposes.
In lumber and similar lines the factories in or around New Orleans, either on the city or Algiers side of the river, did considerable business. Pirogues or skiffs from cypress logs were made in the earliest days, as were boxes for the
marketing of the Cuban sugar crop. Later on, skiffs were made, and still later the small schooners, luggers,etc.,employed in the Lake Pontchartrain and lower river trade. The sawmills made such lumber as was used in buildings, except the finer class of goods—doors, sashes and blinds. Other industries in which wood enters as the principal material, were the manufacture of cisterns, hogsheads, barrels and casks for the sugar and molasses crops. It will be readily seen that the manufacture of such bulky articles elsewhere would have been unprofitable. The cooperage business for years ranked next in importance to the foundries. It also was built upon the success of the sugar industry. To supply from 400,000 to 500,000 hogsheads, and 500,000 to 600,000 barrels annually naturally gave employment to a large number of men and severely tested the output of the New Orleans cooperages. There was consequently a very considerable demand for second-hand hogsheads, and in years of a big crop barrels were brought down the river from points as far distant as Cincinnati.
Similar in its character was the manufacture of bread, which naturally had to be done in New Orleans; but the bread was of a poorer quality than that turned out by the city bakers to-day.
A large business was done in the manufacture of boots and shoes, but they were custom-made and not luudc in factories. Tlie Southerners looked with some contempt on the factory-made shoes of New England, and, save the lower classes and negroes, demanded a much higher grade of goods. As a result the output of the New Orleans shops was very large. This was also true of the tailoring establishments, but such things as clothing factories, which now constitute so important an item among the industries of New Orleans, were practically unknown.
It will be seen from this brief review that manufactories had made little headway in New Orleans up to the Civil War. The city did some repairing and manufactured a few articles which coiild not be easily or profitably made elsewhere. The exceptions were its machine shops, cooperages and a few soap and candle factories, which utilized the refuse of the city. The latter, however, did not begin to supply the large demand and New Orleans depended on the West for most of the candles it used or supplied to tlie neighboring country.
In 1833 it showed commendable energy and public spirit, thanks to Mr. J. H. Caldwell, in the manufacture of gas, using that material as an illuminant in advance of most of the Western cities.
Its other ventures in manufactures were small and unimportant. Although
the center of the cotton trade, it had done practically nothing in the manufacture of cotton goods, although the Soutii Atlantic and Gulf States from 1840 to 1860 were erecting a number of new cotton-mills. There was one venture at a mill which proved a failure, and a second venture, on a small scale, just before the Civil War broke out, which survives to-day in the Lane Mills.
While handling the tobacco crop of the country, it did nothing in the manufacture of tobacco or cigars, and postponed tlie utilization of its possibilities to a much later day; and it equally neglected its opportunities in the manufacture of woolen goods, although it handled a large quantity of wool.
In 1848 a rope factory was established in New Orleans for the manufacture of ropes from hemp, large quantities of which were exported through that city to Europe and the Atlantic States. The "fuss" made over this factory well illustrates the paucity of manufactories in New Orleans at the time. The papers bragged that the machinery had been made in a New Orleans foundry (Leed's) and that the output sold for more than the ropes turned out in the New England factories. The new establishment emplo3'ed 150 hands and was one of the largest factories in the city.
The next twelve years tell of a few similar ventures, but of little importance. It began to be recognized that the prosperity of New Orleans would bo built on much safer and better foundations if it had manufactories to supplement its commerce; and De Bow's Review was filled with strong articles, showing how much more easily and at greater profit cotton could be manufactured in New Orleans than in New England. But in spite of this lucid demonstration the cotton mills did not come to the Crescent City, but found a more profitable home in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The census of 1850 showed the weakness of New Orleans in manufactories, both in the few lines of industry that prevailed there and in the small output of products.
The industries singled out by that census as worthy special mention show the following output in New Orleans in 1850:
Agricultural implements $ 25,010
Iron foundries 312,500
Lumber 112,967
Leather 47.000
Boots and shoes 203,213
Soap and candles 175,000
The output, it will be seen, was in those lines of goods which were successful
in New Orleans because they had for special reasons to be located there. Few, if any, factories had selected that city as their site through preference. The manufacturers of machinery and the iron foundries were part of the same general business which owed its vitality to the steamboats and the sugar industry. There was little else of any importance. Nor did the decade show any improvements worth mentioning. Indeed, the census of 1860 showed a decline in some lines, such as the manufacture of soap and candles, which was being cheapened by the competition of the West. The principal items of manufacture in New Orleans in 1860 were as follows:
Agricultural implements $ 86,408
Machinery 318,400
Iron foundries 535,800
Lumber 131,855
Cotton goods 101,850
Leather 78,085
Boots and shoes 664,990
Soap and candles 156,310
Here is little to boast of. All the factories of New Orleans gave employment to scarcely 3,000 hands, and their united output was less than cither the sugar refining, rice-cleaning or manufacture of clothing amounted to in 1900. In fine, when the Civil War came on, New Orleans was practically without manufactories. The war naturally did not improve conditions, and, the city being without the commerce that supported it, a large part of its population was dependent on rations furnished by the Federal government during this period of great depression.
In 1865, when peace returned and New Orleans began to rebuild, it found so mixch to do in other lines that manufactories could not at first receive the attention they deserved, but the popular sentiment at this point was decidedly better than it had been. The disappearance of slavery alone had a beneficial effect, as it had shown itself incompatible with factories, crowding out free labor, while the negroes were not adapted to industries which required care and skill.
Manufactories received more attention in the post-bellum period than ever before, and the city was in a more favorable condition to venture into them. They, indeed, were necessary to give employment to the large surplus population which commerce no longer required. There was a large supply of labor of excellent quality, even if somewhat unskilled. In the matter of raw materials there was all that could be asked for by any important industry; and New Orleans had a better
supply of such materials at small cost than any city in the Union. It was the principal exporting port for cotton, hides and wool, the center of a vast lumber region, near to the iron fields of Alabama, and it had all the coal required for its factories floated to their very doors, via the Mississippi. In the matter of markets it was most favorably situated, having not only the neighboring districts of the South and West, but Mexico and Central America, within its reach.
The chief difficulties and hindrances under which it labored were the lack of capital and skilled labor and the prejudice which exists in most countries against home-made goods—a prejudice which New Orleans is only just overcoming. The lack of capital was the most serious objection, and the large mimber of failures in the factories which occurred must be credited to it. Such skilled labor as was needed was readily imported, and, as a matter of fact, most of the new industries required only rough labor, the ventures being mainly of a simple and light character, the result of new discoveries and improvements.
Among the earliest industries to show vitality were the cleaning of rice, the manufacture of artificial ice and of cotton-seed oil. The use of machinery in rice-cleaning had been tried a couple of years before the war and it had been found that it was superior in every respect to the old farm process that had prevailed before that time, when a horse-mill had been employed in preparing the rice for market. A great development took place in the rice industry from 1865 to 1875, growing out of the fact that many of the sugar planters found it impossible, because of the bad condition of the times and the lack of the necessary capital and machinery, to continue the manufacture of sugar. Much sugar land, therefore, was planted in rice, which costs less to cultivate, and the rice crop greatly increased. The New Orleans mills added to their machinery from time to time, improving the quality and consequently the value of their product. The result was that the city mills completely monopolized the product of the State, buying all the rice in rough, cleaning and polishing it, and selling the cleaned product. The output of the rice mills varied from $2,500,000 to $5,000,000 a year, dependent upon the greater or less success of the crop. Of late years, since the transfer of the rice industry to Southwest Louisiana, New Orleans has not enjoyed that monopoly of the rice-cleaning business it once maintained, for there are a number of rice mills in Crowley, Rayne and other country towns. Still the bulk of the rice crop comes to the city and is cleaned and marketed here. The rice-cleaning industry of New Orleans dates back nearly forty years. Previous to the Civil War nearly all the rice raised in Louisiana was grown in Plaquemines parish. The process of cleaning it was very primitive, and was done generally liy the rice-grower himself. The rice was cleaned
cither by a large wooden drop pestle or by horse mills. The first steam mill in Louisiana was erected by Mr. W. N. Thompson in Plaquemines parish, in 1858. It was sold in 1875, and destroyed by fire in 1877.
In 1863 Mr. John Foerster erected the first mill in New Orleans, on Adele street. He erected a second mill on Magazine and Julia street in 1882, and soon after a third mill on the corner of Magazine and Notre Dame streets, and knovra as the Orleans Mill. In 1899 the style of the firm was changed to the Orleans Kice Milling Company. It has a capacity of 800 barrels of rice per day.
In the meanwhile other mills were erected by Allen and Symes in 1868, on Magazine street, near Lafayette; on Elysian Fields avenue, near the river, by Siew-ard and Kip (the mill was recently destroyed by fire); and on Toulouse street, near the river, a mill, now known as the Crescent City Eice Mill, was erected by J. David, with a capacity of 400 barrels of rice per day.
T. J. Thompson, son of the pioneer in the milling business, erected a mill on North Peters street, which was conducted for some years under the firm name of Sieward and Thompson. It was sold in 1882 to Isaac Levy, and in 1886 to M. E. Legendre. It has passed through several hands since then and is known to-day as the Planters' Rice Mill, and has a capacity of about 500 barrels of cleaned rice per day.
The National Eice Milling Company entered the field in 1892 and erected a very large mill on the corner of Chartres and Montegut streets, with a capacity of from 1,500 to 2,000 sacks of rough rice per day.
The People's Eice Mill, located on North Peters street, has a capacity of 450 barrels of rice per day.
Thompson's Eice Mill, on Marigny street, erected in 1895, has a capacity of 325 barrels per day.
Lanaux's Rice Jlill, located on Decatur street, near Conti, employs about 20 hands and has a capacity of about 500 sacks of rough rice per day.
Socola's Eice Mill, located on Decatur street, near St. Peter, has a capacity of about 750 sacks per day.
Levy's Eice Mill, on Julia, near Alagazine, has a capacity of about 800 barrels of rough rice per day.
The latest rice mill to be established in New Orleans is Eickerfs Mill, at the corner of South Peters and Notre Dame streets, erected in 1898 by Frank Eick-ert, Jr., with a capacity of 400 barrels of rice per day.
Other rice mills are the Crescent City and Ward's, on Toulouse street, and the Dixie, on Tchoupitoulas street.
The manufacture of cotton-seed oil from cotton-seed also dates back to a few-years before the Civil War, when Messrs. Fisk and Maginnis were successful in extracting the oil from the seed of the cotton plant; but the industry was of little practical value until 18G5 and 1866, when improved processes used made it an exceedingly profitable one. The period from 1865 to 1885 may be considered the most prosperous in tlie cotton-seed industry in New Orleans, and during part of that time it was the most important and profitable industry in tiiis city, there being no less than eight mills employed in the manufacture of cottonseed oil and its by-products. The mills refined and steadily improved the quality of the oil turned out by them. The bulk of their output was shipped to Europe, whence it returned to America labeled "olive oil." Indeed, cotton-seed oil was found 80 useful as an adulterant, and even as a substitute for olive oil, that the olive-producing countries, like France and Italy, took steps to prevent its introduction or to compel it to pay such a heavy duty as would prevent it from being used to any great extent as an adulterant. The uses of cotton-seed oil greatly increased from year to year. It was found to be an excellent adulterant in the manufacture of lard, and thousands of gallons of it are so used in the lard refineries of Chicago and Kansas City. An attempt to use it in the manufacture of artificial butter has not been so successful. The oil, however, proved a magnificent material from which to manufacture soap, especially the higher grades. An excellent imitation of the castile soap of Spain, which is made from olive oil, was obtained from cotton-seed oil, and in their earlier days several of the cotton-seed oil mills used their entire product in the manufacture of soap.
The oil mills also manufactured cotton-seed cake and meal, these being the residue of the kernel after the oil had been extracted from it. They have ever been found excellent as a food for cattle,—and thousands of tons are exported to Europe each year for feeding stock,—as well as a high-grade fertilizer, and they enter into the manufacture of nearly all the commercial fertilizers produced in the South to-day.
The cotton-seed oil industry owes its origin to New Orleans. The process of manufacturing oil from the seed was discovered and improved there. New Orleans has always been the center of the industry, and the largest manufacturer of cotton-seed oil in the world. The industry attracts less attention now than in the earlier days, when there were half a dozen mills competing for the cotton-seed to be crushed by them, as it is in the hands, and more or less under the control, of a single concern to-day. the American Cotton-seed Oil Company. Moreover, a
number of nil mills have recently sprung up in the interior towns in order to be near the supply of cotton-seed. These mills manufacture crude oil, which is shipped to New Orleans and there refined and prepared for the market. This city has, therefore, become more of a refining than an oil-manufacturing center. It still turns out more oil than any other city in the Union and handles the bulk of the product of the South, which is shipped through it to Europe or Chicago and other points where lard-rendering is an important industry. The largest mill, the Union, is situated at Gretna, immediately opposite New Orleans, and represents the consolidation of several large companies. There are several independent concerns, of which the Standard Cotton-seed Oil Mill, Independent Mill and the Delta Eefining Company may be mentioned.
Outgrowths of the cotton-seed oil industry are the soap mills and fertilizer and acid factories, of which New Orleans boasts several. The city possessed in its earlier days several large factories, manufacturing soap and candles, but the manufacture of cotton-seed oil gave them much better material with which to work than they had used before, and the consequence was a larger production of soap, and of a better quality. The same is true of the fertilizer factories, which have found in cotton-seed meal the very material they needed for the manufacture of a high-grade fertilizer for use in cotton and sugar lands.
The Standard Guano and Chemical Manufacturing Company is one of the pioneers in Louisiana in the manufacture of commercial fertilizers. It was organized in 1872, as Stern's Fertilizer and Chemical Company. The present company was established in 1887, with a capital of $200,000 and a plant costing $100,000. It employs 200 hands and has an output of $1,000,000 a year—most of the fertilizers being manufactured for the cotton and sugar plantations.
The Standard Cotton-seed Oil Mill is an outgrowth of the Standard Guano and Chemical Company. It was established in 1878, with a capital of $130,000, employs 100 hands and does a business of about $500,000 a year. Its works are located at the corner of Elysian Fields and Marigny avenues.
The National Acid Company is an outgrowth of the Standard Guano Company. It was organized in 1889 and manufactures sulphuric, muriatic and nitric acids and acid phospate, which are sold throughout the South and West. It has a capital of $210,000, employs about 100 men and has an output of $400,000 per year.
The Planters' Fertilizing Company was established in 1886. It is the outgrowth of the Maginnis Oil Mills, which were for years pioneers in the manufacture of cotton-seed oil, as well as of soap manufactured from that oil.
J. H. Keller's Soap Works cover two squares of ground at Felicity, Josephine and Front streets. They were established on a small scale by John H. Keller in 1849. The capital of the company is $150,000 and the output is $200,000 a year.
The Crescent City Soap Works, limited, are situated on Girod and Notre Dame streets.
Ice was first introduced into New Orleans about 1826, when it was regarded as a great luxury. It came from New England, mainly from Maine, in sailing vessels. A large part of the cargo was naturally lost in the long voyage, and the ice when it reached New Orleans commanded a high price. The supply was uncertain and the city was frecjuently without ice for weeks at a time during the hottest weather of summer. The importation of ice continued up to 1868, when the manufacture of artificial ice in New Orleans drove out the New England or natural product.
The first company in the field, the Louisiana Ice Company, was formed in 1868. The process of manufacturing was very expensive and the factory of the company cost no less than $-150,000. It could be easily duplicated to-day for $50,000. Its output was 50. tons a day and sold for $20 a ton. Ice was then made with the Carre machines, manufactured in France. In 1878 the Louisiana Ice Company erected a second factory, on Front and Poydras streets, with a capacity of 75 tons per day.
A third factory was erected on Delord street, the capital, $150,000, being supplied by Senator Jones, of Nevada. A new process was employed in the manufacture of the ice, by the spraying of water on pipes. Senator Jones lost all the money he put in the enterprise.
The People's Ice Company erected a factory at the corner of Fulton and Julia streets, at a cost of $75,000, with a capacity of 50 tons a day. This factory went out of existence in 1892.
The Southern Ice Company erected a factory in 1881-2 at Tchoupitoulas and Third streets, at a cost of $133,000 and with a capacity of 50 tons a day. It is now owned by the Crescent Ice Company.
The Consumers' Ice Company erected a factory on Magazine and Girod streets, which cost $300,000 and had a capacity of 120 tons of ice per day. It is now owned by the Crescent Ice Company. The latter company, which had been in the natural ice business as early as 1866, erected a factory in 1889, at the corner of Front and Lafayette streets, and in 1890 a second factory, at the corner of Decatur and Elysian Fields streets, the cost of the two factories being $250,000. A third factory
was built in 1894, at the corner of Antonine and Tchoupitoulas streets, at a cost of $50,000 and with a capacity of 40 tons a day.
The Municipal Ice Company, established in 1892, built a factory at the corner of Market and Tchoupitoulas streets, at a cost of $350,000, with a daily capacity of 200 tons of ice. This property was sold by the United States Marshal in 1899 for $60,000 and was bought in by the Crescent Ice Company, which now largely controls the manufacture of artificial ice in New Orleans, operating six factories, three of which it erected itself and three it purchased. Its total output is 650 tons a day—more than enough to supply the needs of New Orleans and vicinity.
Since 1898, when the Crescent Ice Company secured a control of the artificial ice business of New Orleans, several new ice companies have been organized—the Carrollton Ice Company, on Burthe street; the Crystal Ice Manufacturing Company, on St. Peters street; the Hercules Ice Company, on North Peters street; the Home Ice and Distilled Water Company, at the corner of Water and Milan streets; and the Independent Ice Company, on North Basin street. The processes used in the manufacture of artificial ice have been so improved, and simplified, and the cost of the machinery has been so reduced, that it calls for very little capital to embark in the business of making ice, and new companies are constantly springing into existence.
An outgrowth of the ice industry has been the distillation of water and its sale as a commercial product. The water from which ice is manufactured in New Orleans is purified by distillation. As the water supply of the city is deficient, the river water being too muddy for use, several companies have embarked in the distillation of water, which is sold as low as five and six cents a gallon.
These industries, the manufacture of artificial ice and cotton-seed oil, with its kindred products, and the cleaning of rice, sprang into existence in New Orleans, in the period 1865-1870, as the result of improved processes in manufacturing. At the same time that they were building up, an industry, which had been one of the oldest and most successful in the city, was seeing now life and vigor. This was the foundry business and the manufacture of machinery. It had owed its origin to the necessity of keeping in repair the steamboats engaged in the trade of New Orleans and the construction and repair of the sugar-houses. The year 1865 saw these sugar-houses almost completely wrecked by four years of civil strife, overflow and neglect; and the foundries and machine shops of the city had an accumulation of work on their hands suffi-
cient to keep them busily emploj'ed for a decade. The result was an activity even greater than in the most prosperous ante-bellum days. Nor did this activity let up. On the contrary the development of the sugar industry of Louisiana kept the foundries and machine shops busier than ever, and compelled them to steadily improve the quality of their output. The manufacture of a higher grade of sugar required more complicated machinery than had been used, and the New Orleans foundries were no longer mere repair shops, but turned out the most complicated machinery, supplying not only Louisiana, but other sugar-producing countries.
The McKinley law, with its bounty proviso, stimulated the output of high-grade sugar machinery, since the bounty depended on the manufacture of the best quality of sugar. The Louisiana planters had to overhaul their sugar-houses and are estimated to have expended between $5,000,000 and $6,000,000 for improved machinery during the tirst two years the bounty was in operation. Nor did repeal check the demand for improved machinery, which has continued steady ever since. Formerly the planters made a large part of their purchases in Cincinnati, Pittsburg and other Northern points, but to-day the manufacture of sugar machinery is almost wholly concentrated in New Orleans, which city has latterly been supplying not only Louisiana and the neighboring States of Texas and Florida, but Mexico, Central and South America and even for distant Hawaii.
The principal business of the New Orleans foundries is in the manufacture and repair of sugar machinery, but the cotton-presses and gins also give them some business, as do the steamboats and steamships with their boilers, etc. These facts will explain how it was that the foundry, boiler and machine shops of New Orleans enjoyed a prosperity in ante-bellum days which were not shared by any other manufacturing industries, not even by the manufacture of cotton goods and lumber, for which the city seemed in so many ways admirably adapted.
The foundries and machine shops were highly prosperous as early as 1840, employed a large number of hands, who were paid handsome wages and who were easily princes among the mechanics of the few struggling industries which at that time managed to survive in New Orleans.
One of the first factories in New Orleans was Leed's Foundry, established in 1825, in the square bounded by Delord, Constance, Tchoupitoulas and St. Joseph streets. It manufactured all kinds of machinery, but made a specialty of that employed in the manufacture of sugar. The founder of this factory, Jedediah Leeds, died in 1844, and the foundry passed into the hands of his heirs and his
partner, John Leeds. It was doing a large manufacturing business when the Civil War broke out. The Confederate Government, finding New Orleans in danger from the Union fleet under Farragut, lying off the Passes, set to work to construct at New Orleans several powerful vessels of a new type and more or less ironclad, which would be able to meet and overcome the wooden vessels of which Farragut's fleet was mainly composed. Two of these vessels, the Louisiana and the Mississippi, were far in advance of anything in naval architecture which America had yet ventured on. The contract for the supply of the machinery to be used was let in New Orleans, and the Leeds Foundry, as the principal one, secured the best contracts. The two vessels of w^hich so much was expected were not, however, completed in time and were set fire to and destroyed when it was announced that Farragut had passed Forts Jackson and St. Philip and was on his way up to New Orleans. There was some complaint made about the slowness of the New Orleans foundries in supplying the necessary machinery, and the whole transaction was made the subject of a special inquiry by the Confederate Congress, which showed that no blame attached to the local factories. As a matter of fact these foundries were in no position to manufacture ironclad men-of-war, however successful they might have been in turning out high-grade sugar machinery. In this connection it may be mentioned as an evidence of the development and improvement in New Orleans manufactories that in 1S99 the Johnson Iron Works of that city furnished all the steel gunboats used by the republic of Mexico in patroling its Atlantic coast and in carrying on war with the Maya Indians of Yucatan.
The Leeds Foundry also turned out the cannons used by the citizens of New Orleans in the battle fought on the levee at the foot of Canal street, September 14, 1874, and which resulted in overthrowing the Kellogg State Government.
The Leeds foundry was subsequently incorporated as a company, with Mayor Charles J. Leeds as president. In 1896 the plant was purchased by the Schwartz Foundry Company, Limited, of which company Moses Schwartz was president, and the plant materially improved and enlarged.
The Daniel Edwards Foundry was established in 1846, by Daniel Edwards, an Englishman, who had been brought up in the business. After conducting the establishment for some years alone he associated with him in the firm his son, James D. Edwards, under the firm name of Daniel & James D. Edwards. It became James D. Edwards on the death of the founder, and in 1884 Edwards & Haubtman, when Mr. Leon F. Haubtman was taken into partnership. On the retirement of Mr. Haubtman, in 1893, the business was turned over to Daniel Edwards, grand-
son of the founder, so that the firm, after many changes, returned at the end of a half century to its original name. The Edwards Iron Works are on Front street and extend through the square to Delta street. They employ from 200 to 250 men, with a yearly output of $750,000, turning out all kinds of brass, copper and sheet-iron works and making a specialty of sugar machinery, as well for Cuba as for Louisiana. They have paid special attention to the diffusion process of extracting sugar from the cane and have built and equipped most of the diffusion plants in Louisiana and Texas.
John Ward established iron works in New Orleans in 1847. He was succeeded by John W. Ward, a son, in 1876, and in 1899 by John A. Ward and Patrick Kelly. They employ 150 hands and manufacture sugar machinery and ship-work, boilers and tanks.
The Shakespeare Iron Works were established in 1845, on Girod street, between Dryades and Baronne. They were operated originally by John Shakespeare, but passed at his death into the hands of his son, Joseph A. Shakespeare, for two terms mayor of New Orleans. Mr. Shakespeare took Julian Swoop into partnership, and the latter is now sole owner of the works. The foundry manufactures steam engines, sugar-mills, sawmills, drainage and centrifugal machines, gin gearings, grate l)ars, stone fronts, columns, ventilators and all kinds of blacksmith work. About 100 men are employed and the output is some $200,000 a year.
The McCann Iron Works were established by David McCann at their present location, Julia, South Peters, Fulton and Notre Dame streets. The business carried on has been that of general repairing of steamboat and steamship machinery—all heavy work; and about 40 men are employed.
Joseph Sutton & Son, iron founders at 1158 South Peters street, are successors of Mims & Cochran, who established the business in New Orleans in ante-bellum days. The present firm dates from 1886 and makes a specialty of marine and architectural iron work, including columns, posts, railings, etc. It also does some work for sugar-mills.
The Johnson Iron Works, Limited, are on Julia, from Delta to Water streets. The works were established in 1869 and incorporated as a company in 1889, with a capital of $100,000. They employ 100 hands in the manufacture and repair of marine work, sawmills, electric plants, railroad work, etc. In 1899 the foundry began building stern-wheel steamers, lighters and small gunboats at Algiers, on the site formerly occupied by the McLellan Dry Dock Company.
The Reynolds Iron Works Company, Limited, was established in 1869, at
the corner of Fulton and Delord streets, with W. H. Reynolds as manager. It manufactured cotton-presses, elevators, irrigating and drainage machinery and building ironmongery, and employed 125 men, with an annual output of $150,000. Tlie affairs of the company are now in the process of liquidation.
Murphy's Foundry, on Magazine street, near Lafayette, was established in 1884, and is especially devoted to sugar machinery, including nearly all the kinds used except the mills themselves. The New Orleans Boiler Works have been recently added to the plant as a branch, manufacturing steam boilers and bagasse furnaces and drags and conveyors for sugar-houses. In the machine shops 125 men are employed and in the boiler works 75, with a total output of S600,000. The sugar machinery manufactured is not confined to Louisiana, but a very large portion of it goes to Cuba, Mexico and other sugar-manufacturing countries.
The Algiers Iron Works Company, Limited, originally situated near the Good Intent dry docks in Algiers, opposite New Orleans proper, was established by A. Tufts & Company in 1890, but was purchased in 1896 by Mr. Connell, renamed the J. D. Connell Iron Works and transferred to 1307 South Peters street.
The H. Dudley Coleman Machinery Company was organized in 1890, as the successor of H. Dudley Coleman & Company. The business dates originally from 1850, when Willis P. Coleman began the manufacture in New Orleans of cane-mills. In 1865 Mr. Dudley H. Coleman was taken into partnership. The works of the company were situated at the corner of Erato and Magnolia streets and at one time were most prosperous, having a capital of $100,000, employing 150 men, with an output of $200,000, doing general foundry work of a heavy character, such as cane-mills and sugar-evaporating machinery, steam engines, boilers, mills, machinery and mill supplies. The company is now in process of liquidation.
The Whitney Iron Works were incorporated in 1883. The business now owned and operated by the company was begun, in a small way, before the Civil War by E. M. Ivins. It was sold out to Charles G. Johnson, under whose proprietorship it was known as Johnson's Iron Works and was sold by him to the present company. It was always located on Tchoupitoulas, between Julia and St. Joseph streets. When the Whitney Iron Works were incorporated Mr. George Pandely was made president and Newell Tilton, manager. Upon the death of Mr. Pandely in 1894, Mr. Charles M. Whitney became president, and upon the death of Mr. Tilton, in 1895, Mr. A. H. Swanson succeeded as manager. The works have been increased in many respects of recent years and are now one of the largest of their kind in the Southern States. Their principal business is the manufacture of sugar ma-
chinery, repair work for steamships, sawmill machinery and a general line of heavy castings and all kinds of foundry work. Of recent years the company has been shipping sugar machinery in large quantities to South America. It employs from 200 to 400 men, dependent upon the season and the amount of business on hand.
There has been some development in other lines of iron and other metal manufactories, such as agricultural implements, but nothing like that in sugar machinery, foundry work, etc.
The Crescent City Cornice Works, situated on Perdido, between St. Charles and Carondelet streets, were established in 1892 by E. A. Vancleave. It employs 60 hands and confines itself to cornice and ornamental work, building fronts, skylights, ventilators, ice-cans and exhaust and blow pipes.
Hinderer's Iron Fence Works are located on Camp street, opposite Margaret Place. They were established in 1884, and employ 20 hands, manufacturing artistic iron fences and iron furniture of all kinds.
The Haller Manufacturing Company was established in 1888, by Mr. H. Haller, who had personally been in the biisiness since 1S65. The company, which is incorporated with a capital of $50,000, is located at the corner of Constance and \.)range streets. It manufactures all kinds of sheet-metal goods and stamped tinware. It employs 150 men.
The sugar industry of Louisiana may claim to have founded the important machinery and foundry business of New Orleans. It also naturally built up the business of refining sugar, as well as the refining and clarifying of molasses.
The largest single manufacturing industry in New Orleans is that of sugar-refining. The business, however, is almost exclusively in the hands of the American Sugar Refining Company (the so-called sugar trust), and it is difficult to get exact data on the subject of production. Even in 1890, when the Government was taking the census, the statistics were deficient and unsatisfactory. The American Sugar Refining Company's plant in New Orleans is one of the largest manufacturing establishments in the country, and the third sugar refinery in size. It consists of two large refineries, adjoining each other, including a cooperage, where are manufactured the barrels used for the sugar turned out by it. Of these two refineries, the Planters' was erected by E. J. Gay in 187'6, for the purpose of refining the sugar crop of Louisiana, the bulk of which at the time was low-grade sugar. The Louisiana Refinery was erected in 1883. Both ultimately passed into the hands of the American Sugar Refining Company and have been greatly improved and added
to by it since then. The capacity of the two refineries is 1,250,000 pounds of sugar per day, and not only is all the sugar crop of Louisiana needing refining handled by them, but many million pounds are imported annually from Cuba, Hawaii and even Germany. The output frequently runs up to $10,000,000 or more a year, a large part of the sugar consumed in the Mississippi Valley being refined in New Orleans.
Henderson's Sugar Eefinery, located at the corner of South Peters and Julia streets, is the successor of a small refinery established in 1867 by Adam Goodal. It was purchased by William Henderson in 1876, when it was removed to the Pelican Warehouse, where it remained until 1892; it was then established at its present site. It has a capacity of 800 barrels of sugar per day.
Another outgrowth of the refining and sugar industries of Louisiana are the molasses factories of New Orleans, which take the crude molasses, much of it of a low grade, and prepare it for the market. Among the factories are the Louisiana Molasses Company, Constance and St. Joseph streets; National Refining Company, North Peters street; Southern Molasses Company, St. Louis street; and Wogan Brothers, North Peters and Port streets.
The lumber industry of New Orleans is one of the oldest. As has been noted the city even in its earliest days shipped a large qiiantity of lumber or lio.xes to Havana to be used in marketing the Cuban sugar crop. Later on it manufactured such lumber as it needed for its building trades, cisterns, tanks, shingles, etc. Cypress was almost exclusively used for these purposes, and it was not until about twenty years ago that the value of yellow pine was fully recognized. Even today cypress is the only wood mainly sawed in the New Orleans mills. The concentration of the lumber industry in the city has been due to Ihe ease with which the lumber can be marketed there. The mills are situated either on the river front or on the new or old basin. The logs are floated down to them, while the lumber, doors and other output, are easily conveyed to any market. AVhereas a few years ago the greater part of the lumber consumed in New Orleans in the building trades was imported into the city from the rural districts, mainly the Mississippi Sound country, now three-fourths of the lumber used in the city, whether for building or in the furniture or other kindred trades, is sawed in the city itself; and the output of the city mills is constantly increasing. The output of the city sawmills was 49,000,000 feet of lumber in 1897, 60,000,000 in 1898 and 85,000,000 in 1899, and will probably reach the 100,000,000 limit in 1900. The citv mills also turn out nearly all the laths and shingles used in New Orleans.
On the other hand, the brick industry, which was formerly in a very healthy condition, has moved away from New Orleans, and now nine-tenths of the brick used in the city is imported from St. Tammany Parish or from along the line of the Illinois Central Railroad.
The Fischer Lumber and Manufacturing Company, Limited, operates the Picayune Saw and Planing Mill on the banks of the Mississippi in Carrollton. It was established in 1868 by F. Fischer, handling mainly cypress lumber, The firm became F. Fischer & Sons in 1887 and was incorporated as a limited company under that name in 1890. The mill manufactures cypress lumber, shingles, barrel headings and staves, and carries a large quantity of lumber in stock. It employes 100 hands, and, with a capital of $850,000, turns out products to the value of $500,000 per year.
The Algiers Saw and Planing Mills, which was formerly the property of Hotard and Lawton, is now operated by Albert E. Hotard alone. The mill proper employs only 35 men, but it has a number of others engaged in the parishes in getting out timber, chiefly yellow pine. The plant was established in 1870 by Peter Fink, who retired in 1892.
The Berwick Lumber Company, situated at Clio and Freret streets, deals in sashes, doors, blinds and saloon and office fixtures. It owns cypress lumber and shingle mills at Berwick, St. Mary parish, Louisiana, its establishment there having a capacity of 60,000 feet of himber and 30,000 shingles per day. The factory in New Orleans, which converts their lumber into sashes, doors and blinds and other finished products, employes 100 hands. Other lumber and planing mills are the Central Manufacturing and Lumber Company, Lambou & Noel Companv, W. Moffett, Roberts & Co., Pelican Sawmills, W. L. Sirjacques & Co., American Manufactory, Crescent City Manufacturing Company and Brackenridge Lumber Company.
The Otis Manufacturing Company, situated at the foot of Marengo street on the Mississippi river, was established in 1860 by Henry Otis, and the present company was incorporated in 1882. Its capital is $100,000, and it employs 75 hands. It is mainly engaged in the manufacture of lumber from mahogany, Spanish cedar and other timber of the tropics, and has vessels running to Mexico and the West Indies for the importation of these woods. They are cut into lumber and veneering, to be used in the manufacture of furniture, cigar boxes, etc. The mill has a capacity of 35,000 feet of lumber per day, and the annual outpiit is estimated at $300,000.
The Orleans Manufacturing and Lumber Companj', located at the corner of Julia and Clara streets, on the new basin, was established in 1888 and for a time was the largest manufacturing establishment of its kind New Orleans, employing 200 hands, having a capital of $150,000 and doing a business of $300,000 a year; but it is now in liquidation. It manufactured sashes, doors and blinds and dealt in lumber generally.
L'Hote & Company's Sash and Blind Factory is situated on Basin street, at the head of the old basin. It was established in 1847 by George L'Hote, now deceased. The factory covers three acres of groimd and is one of the largest of its kind in the South. It makes a specialty of manufacturing cabins and dwellings framed for shipment and for interior finish. It has filled many contracts for foreign countries, particularly for Mexico, and furnished the lumber for the Orizaba exposition buildings and the quarantine station at Vera Cruz George L'Hote, son of the founder of the factory, is now the manager. It employs 200 hands and has an output of 50,000 feet of lumber per day.
The other industries dependent upon wood as the principal material used by them have not made as great an advance as the manufacturers of lumber, doors, sashes and blinds and such other articles used in the building trades. But, even in their lines there has been some advance, and New Orleans now turns out a great deal of furniture, some of it of a high grade.
The cooperage business continues much as it was of old, save that it is concentrated in one or two large concerns, of which the Brooklyn Cooperage Company is an example, instead of being distributed among a score of small factories as formerly.
The manufacture of cisterns and tanks also continues much the same as formerly, but attracts less attention than it did because of the development of other and more important industries. The cypress of Louisiana being found one of the best woods for resisting injury and decay from water, the Louisiana factories do a large business in making tanks for Central and South America and the West and Northwest. The bulk of the business is in the hands of the country factories in Plaquemines and Baton Eouge, although New Orleans shares some of it.
In spite of the fact that New Orleans for more than half a century before the Civil War was the great cotton center of the United States and the world, supplying the cotton mills of New England and Europe with all the raw material used by them, it made no movement in the direction of using the cotton handled in the manufacture of cotton goods. In Southwestern Louisiana some of the small farm-
ers—Creoles and Acadians—had manufactured in their lines a small amount of a cloth which, like all homespun cloth, was coarse, but of a very strong texture. The cloth, known as Attakapas or "Tuckapaw," from the name the district was then known by, was popular and sold well; but the output was very small and there was shown no disposition to increase it. The industry was confined to a few families and handed down from mother to daughter; this spinning and weaving still prevails in many Acadian households, where the hand loom is always a prominent piece of furniture.
The only venture made by Xew Orleans in cotton manufacturing in the early days was the Wliitney mill, erected by Mr. B. Whitney, at the corner of Tchoupi-toulas and Eoffignac streets, in 1838. The machinery was complete in all particulars, and the operations of picking, carding, spinning, dyeing and weaving were carried on simultaneously in the manufacture of twilled and double-twilled cotton goods. The venture attracted less attention than it would to-day. There being no skilled labor in New Orleans, Mr. Wliitney had to import his labor from New England. The venture was only a temporary success, and went the way of several other similar ones of a later day.
In 186-1:, however, a more successful venture was made, although on a smaller scale. Mr. N. L. Lane erected a small cotton mill at the foot of Cadiz street, in what was then the city of Jefferson, but is now the Sixth Municipal District of New Orleans. From a very small beginning the mill gradually increased in size, and in 1883 it was incorporated with a capital of $375,000. At that timr the mill had 2,160 spindles and 68 looms, which were increased to 10,000 spindles and 308 looms, and again increased in 1894 to 17,000 spindles and 368 looms, while important additions were made to the buildings. The Lane ^Mills, for they retained the name of their founder, although they have passed into other hands, employ about 450 hands and manufacture sheetings, twills, ducks, osnaburgs, denims, yarns and camlets to the value of about $400,000 a year.
It is not necessary to mention the several failures in the establishment of new cotton mills, one of the most conspicuous of which was the Louisiana Mill, upon which a considerable amount of money was expended, and which, after promising well in the beginning, proved a failure, and in doing so had a most unfavorable influence on the cotton industry in New Orleans, as it seemed to demonstrate that it could not be carried on here profitably,—a view of the matter which has since been corrected by the success of the Maginnis mills.
The Maginnis Cotton Mill No. 1 was erected in 1881, with 15,300 spindles and
360 looms. John B. Maginnis was the founder and served as president until his death. In 1888 a second mill, called IsTo. 2, was built, with 19,9G8 spindles and 696 looms, the two mills having a capacity together of 11,000 to 12,000 pounds of cotton per day. Upon the death of John H. Maginnis, his brother, A. A. Maginnis, was elected president, and under his management the mill was still further increased to 40,752 spindles and 1,216 looms, consuming an average of 16,000 pounds of cotton each working day and turning out 65,000 yards of cloth, as well as a quantity of hosiery, yarn, cotton-batting and cordage. Its products are largely shipped abroad, going to South and Central America, as well as all parts of the United States. The mills employ 800 to 1,000 people, with a monthly paj'-roU of from $14,000 to $18,000.
In 1899 the movement in favor of cotton mills in the South, which had shown such success in the South Atlantic States and brought about the erection of so many new mills, struck New Orleans, and a meeting called for the purpose of considering the subject appointed a committee to collect subscriptions for a new cotton mill, a number of large subscriptions being guaranteed in advance.
If, however, there are no large cotton mills, there have been established in New Orleans during the last ten years a number of smaller establishments, such as knitting mills for the manufacture of hosiery, jerseys, knitted underwear and similar goods, and these knitting mills supply a very considerable portion of the cheaper class of goods used in Xew Orleans and the region tributary to it.
The Alden Knitting Mills were established in 1891, with an authorized capital of $10,000, and with Joseph E. J. Meyer as president. The works were first located on Julia street, with an output of only 50 dozen pairs of hose per day. In 1894 they were transferred to Decatur street and the product increased to 800 dozen of socks and ladies' hose per day, sold in all parts of the United States, the distributing points being Xew York and Chicago. The works employ 125 girls and about 10 men. The capital remains at $10,000, but the investment amounts to $60,000. Since 1894 the company has done its own dyeing, having established the first aniline and salt dyeing plant south of Baltimore. A. W. McLellan became president in 1892.
The Kohlman Knitting Mills, on St. Thomas street, also manufacture hosiery and underwear.
Although New Orleans handled all the tobacco of Kentucky and Ohio in the earlier days when tobacco was a more important item in its commerce than even cotton, it took no advantage of the opportunity for the manufacture of tobacco.
cigars, snuff and cigarettes. Several small ventures were made in earlier days, and Mr. Sarrazin secured quite a reputation for the snuff his factory turned out. New Orleans factories also did some business in grinding the famous Perique tobacco of St. .James Parish. The city, however, won its importance as a great tobacco-manufacturing center first when Mr. S. Hernsheim embarked in the business.
The factory of S. Hernsheim Brothers & Company was founded in 1857 by Simon Hernsheim, and its business has increased steadily since then to the present day, when it stands third in importance in the United States, giving employment to 1,200 hands and being the largest single factory in New Orleans. It turns out a number of famous brands of cigars, among which may be mentioned "La Belle Creole," "Jackson Square" and "El Belmont," as well as several varieties of tobacco, and controls the Perique tobacco crop of St. James.
The W. R. Irly branch of the American Tobacco Company (the tobacco trust) was established in 1872. Between 1875 and 1899 it absorbed no less than a half dozen tobacco companies. In 1899 it became a part of the American Tobacco Company.
The People's Tobacco Company, Limited, was organized in 1899, as an independent company to fight the trust.
The Southern Tobacco Company, Limited, was organized in 1899, by Mr. Augustus Craft, and others who were crowded out of the tobacco business by the consolidation of a number of concerns in the trust. It also is independent.
New Orleans, from the start, handled a large part of the cigarette business of the South, and claimed that in the manufacture of cigarettes it did not follow the example of so many of the Northern factories, which doctored the tobacco with drugs or chemicals, but that, on the contrary, it used only the highest grade and finest tobacco. The fact is that the cigarette habit is very old in New Orleans, a large part of its population having been smokers of Havana cigarettes for years, and they were not inclined to accept drugged cigarettes made with scrap or refuse tobacco.
One of the most recent industries of New Orleans and one of its largest is the manufacture of pants and ready-made clothing. The output is estimated at from $7,000,000 to $10,000,000 and is increasing. It is all of recent origin, due to the abundance of labor in New Orleans. The industry is in somewhat different shape from that in New York. Sweat shops are almost unknown, and only a very small population, less than one-quarter of the operatives, work in the factories, the others, mainly women, doing their work at home, and, therefore, under more com-
fortable conditions. Only a small part of the output is sold in New Orleans, the bulk of it being distributed in the countrj-, from New York, Chicago and other central points. The tendency is in the direction of improvement in the quality of goods turned out: that is, while there has been a large increase in the amount of clothing manufactured, the amount of the cheaper goods remains the same. The average improvement in quality in the output between 1898 and 1900 was 25 per cent and the value 40 per cent.
The manufacture of boots and shoes has shown a similar change of recent years. The boot and shoe industry was large even as early as 1850, and New Orleans manufactured nearly all the shoes it wore, as well as those needed in the tributary country. These, however, were practically all custom-made, and the industry owed its success to the demand for a higher grade of goods than the New England factories turned out, and to the belief that the Southern foot required a different make of shoes, which were made on what were known as "Creole lasts."
The industry has been completely changed of recent years. The "Creole last" has been discarded, and the shoes turned out are of the same size and pattern as are made in other shoe-manufacturing centers. A large proportion of them, however, are factory-made, the most improved machinery being used. The result is that the New Orleans shoemakers, instead of being confined to a very limited territory, are now manufacturing shoes which are shipped to all parts of the South and West and are in great demand everywhere.
The canning of fish, fruits and vegetables is an important industry of New Orleans, wliich owes its success and prosperity largely to the Dunbars, who have built up the business. The specialties are the canning of oysters, done mainly at Biloxi and other points on Mississippi Sound; of shrimp, of which New Orleans has a practical monopoly; of figs, orange marmalade and of such syrups as can best be produced in a semi-tropical country. The shrimp industry has reached very large proportions. New Orleans shrimp being shipped to all quarters of the world. Several Chinese colonies are engaged in drying shrimp in the neighborhood of New Orleans, and hundreds of tons of dried shrimp are shipped annually to China, where they are considered a great table delicacy.
The manufacture of beer is one of the more recent industries of New Orleans, with some very serious ups and downs. In ante-bellum days a low-grade article had been manufactured in New Orleans, known as "city beer." In 1883 the Southern Brewery was organized for the manufacture of genuine lager beer.
and met with such success in supplying not only the local market, but the neighboring States and countries that a number of other breweries were established, with an output far greater than was needed. The Louisiana Brewery was established in 1885, and in 1887 the Pelican, Crescent, Lafayette and Weckerlings breweries (the latter an enlargement of an old establishment). The fact that these breweries manufactured more beer than was needed led to their consolidation in 1890, under the name of the New Orleans Brewing Association, with a capital of $3,100,000. The new association closed the Crescent Brewery in 1893 and the Lafayette Brewery in 1894. The sale of beer by the company greatly increased, from 50,000 barrels in 1885 to 235,000 in 1894 and 240,000 in 1895. The association, however, did not prosper, and in 1895 Mr. A. G. Eicks was appointed receiver. It was liquidated in 1899, when the property was bought in on behalf of the stockholders and reorganized as the New Orleans Brewing Company.
Besides the business belonging to the New Orleans Brewing Company there are several independent concerns, the Jackson, Security, Standard and Columbia brewing companies.
The advantages New Orleans offers for the construction of vessels have long been recognized, but these advantages have never been fully utilized. It has turned out a number of schooners, luggers and smaller vessels and a few large ones, such as transfer and ferryboats, but its boat-building business has been confined mainly to repair work. Its docks are located at or near Algiers. The United States has ordered the construction of a large dry dock at that point, has purchased the necessary grounds and made all the required preparations, except to vote sufficient money to complete the works. There are several private docks for the repair of vessels.
The Good Intent Dry Dock Company, Limited, was organized in 1866. Its charter expired in 1891, when the company was reorganized, with its dock at the ferry landing in Algiers. It employs 100 hands.
The McLellan Dry Dock Company was established in Algiers in 1866, and employs 100 hands. The Marine Dry Dock, formerly at the foot of Bermuda street, Algiers, was removed in 1897 to Tunisburg (now known as McLellanville), three miles below Algiers; and in 1897 the Ocean Dock was also moved to the same point. In 1897 a sectional steel dock was purchased from the United States Government at Pensacola, and towed around to McLellanville, where it is now located.
Plans are on foot for the establishment of a large shipyard in New Orleans, but nothing practical has yet been done in that line.
It is impossible to review at length on the other industries of New Orleans, as the total runs up to 123. They include nearly all kinds of manufacture incident to a great city. Gas, electricity, paint, willowware, umbrellas, pickles, macaroni, trusses, artificial flowers, china and pottery, perfumery, horse collars, patent medicines, mustard, etc. In fine. New Orleans, which forty years ago manufactured scarcely anything and had to send North for the simplest manufactured articles, now turns out nearly every variety of goods.
The development of manufactories in New Orleans, however, is best shown in the following statistics, which give the mimber of separate industries, number of factories, employes, wages paid and products, at the several censuses taken in 1870, 1880, and 1890, carried up to 1899:
No. different
Industries. No. factories. Employes. Wages paid. Total products.
1870 63 554 4,411 | 1,204,254 | 8,450,439
1880 89 915 8,404 3,717,557 18,808,906
1890 145 1,960 25.221 10,887,584 48,295,449
1899 183 2,215 37,622 17,116,420 78,820,960
New Orleans is the largest manufacturer of cotton-seed oil in the world and the largest cleaner and preparer of rice, molasses, prepared moss and of various canned goods; and it holds a high position in the refining of sugar, the manufacture of clothing, cigars and a number of other important industries. Its manufactories now give employment to a much larger proportion of its workers than does commerce, which was formerly supreme.
CHAPTER XXII.
COMMERCIAL AND MERCANTILE INTERESTS. By Norman Walker.
NEW ORLEANS is to-day, and has been for half a century, the second port in the LTnion, its commerce, imports and exports being exceeded only by those of New York. There was a time when it promised to be first. This was the dream of JeflEer-son, who, in a message on the purchase of Louisiana, prophesied that the world would see in the capital of this new dominion, New Orleans, the greatest commercial entrepot of all times. The author of "The Declaration of Independence" could see far enough ahead to know that the center of population, production and wealth of the American Union would be transferred to the great and fertile valley of the Mississippi, two-thirds of which he had purchased for the United States. As the port of this great valley New Orleans seemed destined for the high position that JefEerson had prophesied for it. He could not, of course, foresee that Stephenson's invention, the railroad, would carry the produce of the great valley over the mountains to New York and other ports on the Atlantic and thus deflect a great deal of business which, in his day and long afterward, it seemed certain that New Orleans would monopolize for all time.
But if New Orleans has not yet secured the commercial supremacy in the Mississippi Valley which Jefferson and the other political economists of his time predicted for it, it has never stood lower than second in commercial importance among American cities; and its commercial history is full of interest and plays a leading part in the story of the continent. Spain, France, England and the United States all saw in New Orleans the key to the great Mississippi Valley, and it played a leading part in the international politics of the eighteenth century. When the United States sprang into existence New Orleans became of even greater commercial and political importance than it had been before the birth of the republic. During the last years of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth the great question of the West and Southwest was which power was to possess New Orleans. We are now able to see how nearly this question broke up
the new union of States during its infanev, when the peojik' of Kentuck)', Tennessee and the other settlers who had poured over the mountains into the Mississippi Yalley talked secession loudly and proposed disunion because they thought the Government had neglected their commercial interests, and because they saw their only hope for the future in the possession of New Orleans and the mouths of the Mississippi, which would give them an outlet for their produce. It is unnecessary here, however, to go into the history of the many conspiracies which had for their purpose the separation of the States and Territories of the valley from those of the Atlantic coast, to form with Louisiana a new empire. Jefferson's purchase, accomplished largely in consequence of the European complications then prevailing, prevented the establishment of a new republic on American soil, of wliich New Orleans was to have been the capital and commercial center; but it did not affect its commercial importance; indeed the next forty years raised the Louisiana city to the zenith of its power and importance.
The commercial and mercantile history of New Orleans shows a succession of marked epochs and of great vicissitudes. No city in the world of its importance has witnessed more radical changes in its conunercial methods from the early days of pirogues and canoes to this latter age when the great Father of Waters handles only a small share of its business, and the railroads play the leading part in transportation; yet it has never during all this time, not even during the depression of the Civil War, failed to be a power in the commerce of the world, affecting the trade of both Europe and America.
Just, as in Jefferson's day, the aim of the Government was to secure possession of New Orleans and the outlet of the Mississippi and thus prevent the secession of the Western States, so in the Civil War, Lincoln saw that if New Orleans and the Mississippi remained in the hands of the Confederates it would Treaken the loyalty of the trans-Mississippi States and tend to bring about 9 break-up between the West and East. His first important military movement, therefore, was that directed against New Orleans for the purpose of opening up the Mississippi river—a movement in which he was successful, and which played so important a part in weakening the Southern Confederacy and hastening its end.
Throughout the commercial and mercantile history of the nineteenth century the importance of New Orleans comes to the front. It gave its name to the best grade of molasses, and New Orleans molasses (that is, molasses shipped through New Orleans) is known throughout the world. It gave its name to the best grade of cotton—"Orleans;'' and cotton manufacturers everywhere so called the long staple cotton produced on the fertile lands of the Mississippi bottoms.
It made its impress even upon the size and draft of vessels. It was seen during the middle of the century that freight could be carried far more cheaply in large vessels of great tonnage than in the smaller ones that had formerly been used. The ship-builders everywhere commenced building larger vessels, and therefore vessels of greater draft. The increase in size of the average sea-going vessel was marked from year to year, but was suddenly checked. The ship-builders explained that this check was due to the bars in the Mississippi river. As New Orleans was so important a port it would not pay, they said, to build ships of so great a draft that they could not sail up the Mississippi. It was thus the conditions prevailing at New Orleans which held back for some years the development and growth in size of the merchant marine, not of America alone, but of the whole world.
Of the earlier epochs of New Orleans commerce it is unnecessary to say anything here. The French political economists of the day saw a brilliant future for the colony, but it was merely a dream as far as they were concerned. Nothing practical was accomplished, and the whole matter was badly mismanaged. The city and colony were of no importance in the commerce of the world and were actually a drag and a heavy expense upon France and afterward on Spain, when Louisiana was transferred to it.
Law's great Mississippi scheme, watered as badly as some of the railroad Btock of to-day, did nothing for the colony. The early colonists, like those on the Atlantic coast, came to Louisiana looking for easy fortunes, which they expected to make from the gold mines and pearl fisheries they believed to exist in El Dorado, and with no desire or intention of cultivating the soil or developing the resources of the country, or doing any similar slow and hard work.
They found in the Mississippi a splendid water way opening to them the commerce of a continent; but as there were no settlements of any moment on that river or its tributaries, this water way was of little practical value to them. As early as 1705 the Mississippi had suggested itself as a means of communication between the far North and the Gulf of Mexico. In that year, only six years after Bienville had first visited New Orleans and had seen in it the best site for the capital of the new colony and for the port of the great valley, the first cargo came down the Mississippi. As might be expected, it consisted neither of the product of the field or the factory, but altogether of the fruits of the chase. A number of French voyageurs settled in the Indian country around the Wabash, collected from the several hunting posts in the neighborhood 10,000 deer and 5,000 bear skins and shipped them down the Mississippi as the only way by which they could reach Europe, as it was
impossible to pack them across the country and over the mountains to Canada or Philadelphia. It was a wild experiment, but one that had a most important influence, since it contributed largely to the success of Bienville's plan to have New Orleans made the capital of the colony, as well as to the ultimate settlement of the Mississippi Valley, for it showed that colonists upon the great river had an outlet to the markets of the world, as short in time and less expensive and difficult than packing their products by horse or wagons over the mountains to the Atlantic seahoard.
The Canadian voyageurs who brought down their first cargo on the Mississippi traveled 1,400 miles without seeing a settlement or a white man, and through a country filled with hostile Indians. It took them nearly six months to make the trip, but they got through all the difficulties and reached the Gulf in the early part of 1706. As Xew Orleans did not exist then or until twelve years later, these primitive merchants floated down the Mississippi only as far as Bayou Manchae, then a'navigable stream (it was closed by Gen. Jackson in 1815 as a protection against the British fleet), and sailed through Bayou Manchae and Iberville (now Amite) river into Lake Pontchartrain. Thence they went through Mississippi Sound to Mobile (then known as St. Louis des Mobiles), where their cargo was marketed. The furs were sold in France and the voyageur merchants made a handsome profit, but they did not care to repeat the experiment. They did not return home, but settled in Louisiana.
The experiment produced important results. It inflamed the speculative craze, just then so prevalent in France. The French Western Company, organized by Anthony Crozat, was formed to operate the colony and received a monopoly of its trade for 25 years, on the condition of spending a large sum annually in the development of the country and settling so many families there annually. The movement proved an improfitable one. The amount of commerce handled via the Mississippi was small; the people whom the company brought over to the colony did not care to cultivate the land or did not know what crops to cultivate, and the country selected for settlement—the coast of Mississippi Sound—proved sandy and unfertile. After Igsing considerable money on his investment, Crozat surrendered his charter or contract in 1717 and turned the colony over to the French crown. The change enabled Bienville to carry through his far more practical ideas, which were to transfer the French settlements to the Mississippi and to make New Orleans, whose commercial possibilities he foresaw, the capital.
During the first years of the new city its trade consisted almost exclusively
in the product^ of the chase, and these figured very prominently in its business for nearly half a century afterward. During all of this early time N"ew Orleans was one of the chief entrepots of the Northwestern and Canadian fur trade. About 1720 it began receiving other products by river, from the French settlements on the Illinois and at the mouth of the Missouri. These shipments, as to-day, consisted largely of food products, the country around Xew Orleans being not self-supporting in the matter of food at the time, growing mainly indigo and similar articles, so that it had to get its food supply abroad. In 1730 the exports from New Orleans were valued at only $62,000 a year, of which 65 per cent was in the shape of skins from the upper country.
The early French domination in Louisiana saw little improvement in the commercial conditions of New Orleans, for while there was no monopoly of the trade as there had been under Crozat, it was bound by so many limitations that it was anything but free, the colony not being allowed to sell or buy in the open market, but being compelled to ship to France alone. This restriction proved as injurious to the government as to the colony. At no time was Louisiana self-supporting as the British colonies on the Atlantic were, but France was compelled to make good an annual deficit in the revenues.
In 1763 Louisiana was ceded to Spain. The commerce of New Orleans at that time amounted to only $304,000 a j'ear, less than the value of a single cargo shipped from the city to-day. Of these exports only half came from the country around New Orleans. The items are as follows: Indigo (raised in Louisiana proper, and the main product of the colony at that time), $100,000; deer skins and furs from the Upper Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio, $80,000; lumber, $50,000; naval stores, $12,000; rice, peas and beans, $-l:,000; tallow, $4,000. The smuggled trade was put down as $54,000, but may have been more. Most of this was in the hands of the English, whose commercial influence in the colony was very great. As for the food products brought down from the Illinois country they were all consumed in and around New Orleans and did not find their way abroad.
With Spanish rule the commerce of New Orleans advanced rapidly. This was due less to the policy pursued by the Spanish.government than to the situation of the city itself. The importance of the Mississippi, with its 20,000 miles of navigable water-wavs stretching into all parts of the continent, began to be realized and appreciated, and the great powers of Europe played an exciting game of intrigue for its control.
Spain took Louisiana in 1763, not from any particular desire to own tlie country, but as a protection against British aggression on her Mexican possessions. She was never able to overcome the prejudices of the original French settlers, although she dealt more liberally with Louisiana than with any of her Spanish-speaking colonies and spent far more on it than she got in return. Her commercial polic}-, however, was the same Spanish policy which has lost her all her colonial possessions in America—the restriction of all trade to Spain alone. Xew Orleans was shut out from every market in the world except certain specified ports of Spain— markets in which the merchants of Xew Orleans were completely at the mercy of the Spanish merchants, and could neither sell their goods to advantage nor purchase what was needed in Louisiana. It was prohibited even ■ from trading with the neighboring port of Havana, although that also was iinder Spanish rule.
The natural result of these restrictive regulations was to defeat themselves and build up a smuggling trade, which was almost as large as the legitimate commerce and far more profitable. From one-fifth to one-half of the imports received in New Orleans were smuggled in; and this business was easily enough conducted because by treaty Great Britain had reserved to itself the right for British ships to enter the Mississippi and supply the British settlements on the east bank of the river, above Bayou Manchac, with such articles as they needed. These vessels were supposed to be handling the trade of the English settlements in West Florida and in what is now the State of Mississippi; but their voyages up the Mississippi gave them a splendid opportunity of dealing with the colonists below Fort Bute, the southernmost British port (at the Junction of the Mississippi river and the Manchac). British trading vessels on the way to Fort Bute or Baton Rouge landed part of their cargoes in Louisiana. The center of this smuggling trade was at a point about six miles above the city of Xew Orleans, where entire cargoes were disembarked and where the city merchants had their agents and representatives to purchase the British contraband goods. The slave trade formed a very considerable proportion of this smuggling, and the Louisiana planters were supplied with "Guinea negroes"' mainly by the British vessels. In all the earlier commercial reports this smuggling was spoken of openly. There was, indeed, very little secrecy about it, and during the French regime it was winked at by the authorities, many of whom found it personally profitable. Popular sentiment was very warmly in favor of the contraband trade, which was so profitable to the country and which enabled the Louisianians to get many goods that would otherwise have never reached the colonv.
When the Spaniards took possession of ^STew Orleans they set to work to break up this smuggling, which not only cut down the colonial revenue, but injured the mother country. Governor O'Eeilly found the commerce of the city very much demoralized by this contraband trade. He reported to the Spanish government that he foiind the foreign commerce of New Orleans almost wholly in the hands of the English. "They have their traders and their ships here,'" he reported, "and they pocket nine-tenths of all the money spent in New Orleans and Louisiana."
The extreme measures of O'Eeilly soon broke up the business and ousted the British from their commercial supremacy, which, however, was never quite as great as he asserted. All foreign vessels were prohibited and prevented from trading with the Louisianians. This Chinese policy did not continue very long in the face of the popular protest. New Orleans was granted absolutely free trade with Havana and all the Spanish ports instead of being restricted to a few; and the non-intercourse act was ultimately so modified as to permit two vessels per year to enter New Orleans from France, so that the natives could get the fashions and costumes of Paris, to which they still clung.
The Spanish government grew steadily more lenient in its commercial policy, in the vain hope that it would win by these means the good will of the people of Louisiana. Under Unzaga, who succeeded O'Eeilly, smuggling through British vessels again became common. It enriched the planters and enabled them to greatly increase the number of their slaves. Unzaga, seeing that the Louisiana Creoles, because of their French origin, preferred dealing with France rather than England, gave the former country all the opportunities he could; and during his regime the control of the colonial trade passed into the hands of French merchants and so continued for many years, until the irrepressible American came on the scene.
The British traders found themselves treated with rigor by Unzaga, while the French were favored and encouraged. Soon afterward, in 1778, when Galvez, the greatest of all the Spanish governors of Louisiana, and the most interested in its welfare, was at the head of the colony, he issued a proclamation giving New Orleans the right to trade with any port of France, and a little later included among tlie ports -nath which New Orleans was allowed to carry on free and unlimited intercourse the thirteen American colonies, just then struggling for independence. Thus it was that New Orleans entered into business with the country of which it was destined soon to be a part. At that time Spain was at war with England, and Galvez was leading a Louisiana army against the British port of Pensacola (which
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS. S45
he captured). In consideration of the bravery of the Louisiana troops, the commercial facilities of New Orleans were still further extended, and it was also allowed to trade with Mexico, which country had heretofore been completely closed to it.
During this period, with the relaxation of the severe commercial restrictions that had prevailed, the trade of New Orleans had grown very rapidly. It added to the diversity of its exports. In 1750 it, for the first time, shipped a little cotton, and in 1765 some sugar. Its fur trade had grown to over $100,000 a year, all going to Europe. It did a considerable business in lumber, supplying, indeed, most of the Havana demands, and furnishing the boxes in which the Cuban sugar was shipped to market. In 1770 the exports of New Orleans had risen to $631,000 a year, having more than doubled during the short period of seven years of Spanish rule.
In the meanwhile events were occurring that completely changed the commerce of New Orleans and ultimately the ownei-ship and flag of the colony. All the river trade of the city had hitherto been downward, but with the settlement of the Ohio Valley some business sprang up in the way of supplying the people of Kentucky and Ohio with calicoes and such other manufactured goods as they needed.
The first commercial relations between New Orleans and the Americans were of a very friendly nature. During O'Reilly's governorship, when provisions rose very high in price, and there was an actual scarcity of flour and other food products, in consequence of the non-arrival of the Spanish supply ships upon which the people of Louisiana depended exclusively, one Oliver Pollock, of Baltimore, entered the port of New Orleans with a cargo of flour, which he sold to the governor for $15 a barrel, two-thirds of the then current price, in return for which O'Reilly granted Pollock the right of free trade with New Orleans during his life-time. Pollock was the first American merchant to establish himself in New Orleans, and had his agents and representatives in the city, who did a very large business. This commercial venture proved of the utmost importance to the American cause in the end, as much of the ammunition and arms furnished the Continental army was obtained through Governor Galvez, being carried by boat up the Mississippi and Ohio to Pittsburg, and thence distributed to the American forces. At the close of the Revolutionary war New Orleans was receiving produce to the value of $225,000 a year from the settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky, mainly flour, tobacco and similar produce, and was supplying in return manufactured goods, principally cottons and other dry goods, imported from France. At that time there were several American merchants in New Orleans engaged in that character of business, most of them from Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Governor Galvez, who always showed himself deeply interested in the prosperity of the colony, and particularly of New Orleans, was anxious to make that port a free one, with the right to do business with any country. The traditional Spanish colonial policy would not permit this; but Spain made exceptional concessions, apparently realizing the commercial possibilities of the city.
By a royal decree made public in New Orleans in the spring of 1782, the re-shipment to any South American colony of goods received from Spain was permitted, but this was not permissible with goods from other countries. Xegroes were allowed to be imported free of duty from the colonies of neutral or allied powers, save from Martinique, whose negroes had the reputation of being too partial to voudouism. Foreign vessels could be bought and registered as Spanish bottoms. The export duty on staves shipped to Spain, which trade had reached very large proportions then, and has continued large to this day, was renewed, but other duties were advanced in order to produce a war revenue.
The importance of the Mississippi commercially was now fully recognized by all the countries interested; and in the next twenty years American politics centered around "the Father of Waters" and New Orleans. The treaty of Ghent, which restored peace between Great Britain, France, Spain and the United States, provided that the Mississippi river from its source to its mouth should forever remain free to the United States and Great Britain.
This stipulation was never carried out in good faith by Spain ; but it became the origin of a series of Spanish and American intrigues, the aim of the Spaniards being to keep the Yankees away from New Orleans, and of the Americans to secure the free use of the river, if not to annex New Orleans and the adjacent territory, as necessary for the prosperity of the co\mtry above, whose outlet was through "the Crescent City." In ITSe a large number of American flatboats loaded with provisions and breadstuffs, which had been floated down from the Ohio and the Cumberland, were seized at New Orleans and confiscated by the Spanish government on the ground that they had violated some of the revenue laws of the colony. In 1787 General James Wilkinson succeeded in obtaining valuable commercial concessions from Governor Miro, and the flatboatmen were no longer interfered with. He also succeeded in shipping several cargoes of manufactured goods up the Mississippi to the American settlers above. The uncertainty of the trade, however, and the obstacles placed in the way of the American flatboatmen, led the Ohio settlers to demand of Congress that it show itself more interested in their affairs and better protect their interests; indeed the demand was coupled with threats, and the
Kentucky pioneers talked secession very loudly at the time and threatened to sever their connection with the Atlantic States, with which they had free commercial relations. The result of their agitation was the treaty of St. Ildefonso in 1795, the first treaty made by the United States with Spain. It defined the boundaries between the two countries, but the most important provision it contained was in regard to the Mississippi. This was not only made free to the Americans, but they were given the riglit of deposit for three years at New Orleans, without the payment of any duties or charges, save for storage. It was also provided that at the end of these three years a new arrangement of some kind should be made, whereby their right of deposit could be continued, Spain reserving the right to select another point than New Orleans where American goods could be stored.
At that time, wliich was only thirty-two years from the date of the Spanish acquisition of the colony, the trade of New Orleans had increased more than fourfold, and had very radically changed. Indigo no longer constituted the largest item in the exports, for indigo was fast disappearing as a paying crop in Louisiana and sugar was taking its place. The largest single item was Western produce, which constituted more than one-third of the total. The several items were as follows: Cotton (200,000 pounds), $50,000; furs, $100,000; boxes (shipped to Cuba for the sugar crop), $225,000; .sugar (40,000,000 pounds), $320,000; indigo (100,000 pounds), $100,000; tobacco (200,000 pounds), $10,000; timber, $50,000; rice (2,-000 barrels), $50,000; Western produce, $500,000. Total, $1,421,000. The furs came from the North and Northwest; the sugar, indigo, rice and timber from the Spanish possessions in Louisiana; and the rest from Kentuckj-, Tennessee and Ohio.
The treaty of San Ildefonso and the opening of the Mississippi gave a stimulus to the American trade through New Orleans. In 1798 the Western produce received there was valued at $975,000, and was increasing at the rate of $300,000 a year with the heavy emigration then pouring into the Ohio A^alley. For some reason, however, when the three years during which the right of deposit at New Orleans was to continue expired, Spain made no provisions for carrying out the ether conditions of the treaty, to fix another depot. Her attention was called to this by the American government; but no action was taken. The Kentuckians became disturbed over this condition of affairs and called for action. If Spain did not want them to come to New Orleans let her fix another depot, they said. But the Spanish intendant, Morales, declined to do so. He interpreted the treaty to mean that with the lapse of three years the Americans lost all right of deposit at New Orleans. It was a fatal decision for Spain and lost her New Orleans within a few years. If
-tX
Senor Morales had seen the consequences, or understood the sentiments of the people of Kentucky and Tennessee, he would never have been guilty of so great a folly which hastened the expulsion of Spain from America. The freedom of the Mississippi became at once the aim of American diplomacy; and the United States was convinced that the stability of the republic and the commercial necessities of the West required the possession of Xew Orleans as the port of this new country that was being opened to civilization. For the next four years the problem of the Mississippi river and the purcha.se of Louisiana were the chief subjects of discussion in Congress, and the American statesmen at home and abroad worked earnestly to prevent New Orleans, from which so much was expected commercially, falling from the hands of a weak power like Spain into those of a strong one like England or France, both of which had their eyes on the city and the rich and fertile valley whose port it was and whose wealth the world was Just beginning to recognize.
For some time it looked as though the closure of New Orleans as a depot and a port to the people of the upper valley would plunge the United States into war. There was loud talk of an expedition to seize the city, and it was estimated that there were 20,000 men ready for this filibustering expedition. Petitions innumerable poured into Congress, beginning with the declaration "The Mississippi is ours by the law of nature." The difficulty was definitely settled by the action of President Jefferson in purchasing Louisiana, and the people of the Mississippi Valley were more than satisfied; for not only was the great river thrown open to them, but it belonged to them exclusively.
During the period from 1795 to 1802, while the Americans and Spaniards were discussing the navigation of the Mississippi and the right of deposit at New Orleans, the outward ocean commerce of the city was also undergoing important changes, favorable to the Americans. At the time that the Spaniards took possession of Louisiana, and for some little while afterward, the dominant influence commercially had been the English, mainly through a smuggling and contrabrand trade. The Kevolutionary war, but more particularly the war between France and Spain on the one side and Great Britain on the other, naturally cut off the English from trading with the Spanish colony of Louisiana, and the New Orleans merchants, who were almost all of French descent, made their purchases in France. But again the lines of commerce were changed. The success of the Eevolution in France and the British blockade of French ports broke up most of the trade between Louisiana and these ports; and the Americans profited by it. Marseilles, Nantes and Bordeaux lost their hold on the commerce of New Orleans, to be succeeded by Philadelphia,
which then ranked first in enterprise among American cities, Boston, New York and Baltimore. This business was severely interfered with for some little while by the French privateers, who were nowhere more numerous than in the Gulf of Mexico; and it is largely from these privateers that the "French spoliation claims'" sprang which have occupied the attention of Congress so many years.
On October 13, 1795, one of these French privateers entered the mouth of the Mississippi, seized the Spanish naval station at the Balize and occupied it for eight days. The Spanish governor sent down troops to dispossess them, when the Frenchmen destroyed the station and put to sea. When the war ended a number of American vessels which had been captured by privateers in the gulf were brought to New Orleans as prizes and sold there.
The purchase of Louisiana by Jefferson opened a new commercial epoch for New Orleans and offered that city the first opportunity it had ever enjoyed to prove its commercial advantages. While these had been recognized for some time, and the several powers—Great Britain,Spain,France and the United States—had been working and intriguing to secure possession of the city, and while its commerce had very naturally increased, this was accomplished under the most unfavorable conditions, with every possible restriction that could be devised by the Spanish. The city was, under the American dominion, to spring forward as one of the great commercial cities of the world, and for a time it promised to realize all Jefferson predicted for it—that it would be greater than even London itself.
The annexation of Louisiana to the United States was followed by a large increase in the trade of New Orleans. In 1795 its exports were $1,421,000, of which $500,000 was estimated as coming from the West (Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio). In 1801 the shipments from the districts of Kentucky and Mississippi alone were $1,626,672, and from all the American possessions in the Mississippi Valley, $2,111,-672. In 1802, the last year of the Spanish rule, the trade ran up to $2,637,- l^ 564. This was divided as follows: Western Pennsylvania and territory northwest of the Ohio, $700,000; Kentucky and Tennessee, $1,522,064; Mississippi Territory, $412,500. From the Spanish possessions there came $120,000 from Upper Louisiana (mainly furs and skins) and $1,720,800 from lower Louisiana (what now constitutes the State of that name). The total receipts of produce at New Orleans, therefore, were $4,475,364, of which nearly two-thirds were from American terri-tor}'. The produce received included 34,500 bales of cotton, of an average weight of 300 pounds each, the bale being smaller than now; 4,300 hogsheads of sugar, of an \/ average weight of 1,000 pounds; 800 casks of molasses, of 125 gallons each, equal
\
5 so STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
to 2,000 of the barrels in -nliich molasses is exported to-day; 4,000 casks of taiia or rum made from Louisiana molasses, each of 50 gallons; 3,000 pounds of indigo; lumber and (sugar) boxes to the value of $300,000; peltries and skins to the value of $120,000; rice and various other products amounting to some $80,000. These were the products of Louisiana.
Among the chief articles of Western produce coming from American territory were 50,000 barrels of flour, 2,000 barrels of pork, 1,200 barrels of beef, 2,400 hogsheads of tobacco, 25,000 barrels of corn, besides butter, hams, beans, lard, staves and cordage.
Not only did the Americans control the interior trade, but they were rapidly getting control of the exterior or ocean trade of New Orleans, for of the ocean vessels leaving that port in 1802 a total of 265, of a tonnage of 31,241, there were 158 Americans and 104 Spanish and French. The British were shut out altogether by the war.
Such was the condition of affairs when the purchase of Louisiana by the United States opened a new commercial future for New Orleans and a chance to realize Jefferson's prophetic words in his message to Claiborne, the first American governor :
"New Orleans will be forever as it is now, the mighty mart of the merchandise brought from more than a thousand rivers, unless prevented by some accident in human affairs. This rapidly increasing city will in no distant time leave the em-poria of the Eastern world far behind. With Boston, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia on the left, Mexico on the right, Havana in front and the immense valley of the Mississippi in the rear, no such position for the accumulation and perpetuity of wealth and power ever existed."
If this prophecy has not been fully realized in the century that has passed since then it must be attributed to that accident in human affairs which Jefferson spoke of as possibly interfering with his dream of the commercial prosperity of New Orleans.
The transfer of Louisiana to the United States saw a large immigration of American merchants into New Orleans. There had been a number of Americans already settled there even during the Spanish days; but with few exceptions, notably that of Oliver Pollock, they had been regarded with suspicion. Of the new-comers nearly all were from the Atlantic coast cities, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York. Among those prominent in commercial circles were John McDonogh, general merchant, whose magnificent donation has done so much for the public
school system of New Orleans; Chew and Relf, ship agents; George Morgan, general merchant and dealer in liquors; P. Madan & Company, ship agents; Earle Jones & Company, dry goods; Henry O'Hara, hardware; Judah Touro, of Newport, Rhode Island, to whom New Orleans owes so many charities; Stephen Gorton, dealer in coal; Samuel Packwood, wholesale grocer; John Poulteney & Company, James P. Sanderson, Ludlow & Conwell, Clark & Rogers, Richard Thomas, Richard Clague, George T. Phillips, Amory & Callender, Kenner & Henderson, George Pollock, Meeker, Williamson & Patton, and John Myers. Not a few of these merchants dealt in slaves also, as a side issue to their regular business. Of other Americans settling in New Orleans during the first five years of American dominion may be mentioned McMaster and Adams, Williamson, H. Munro & Company, White & Morris, William Simpson, Flower & Faukner, Rezin D. Shepherd (the chief legatee of Judah Touro) and Talcott and Bowers. It will be seen at a glance how few of these firms survive to-day in any form.
The first few years of the American dominion did not see as large an increase in the commerce of New Orleans as was expected. The receipts of Western produce were $4,275,000 in 1804, $4,371,545 in 1805, $4,937,323 in 1806 and $5,370,535 in 1807. In the latter year the produce reached New Orleans in 314 keel-boats and barges and 110 flatboats, and was shipped to market in 350 sea-going vessels of a tonnage of 43,220 tons.
The flatboat and keel-boat period lasted for about ten years, and they were years of commercial progress and prosperity, in spite of the disadvantages under which transportation labored from the rude vessels then employed. The traffic was nearly all down stream, because the boats, having no propelling power, could not stem the current of the Mississippi. The flatboatmen, after making the voyage to New Orleans and selling their cargoes, generally broke up their boats for lumber and sold them and walked home to the Ohio or Cumberland overland. The up freight was almost prohibitive, five or six cents a pound, with not much profit in it even at those figures.
The barges and flatboats generally landed immediately above the corporate limits of New Orleans, in front of what is now the first district of that city, and around their landing place soon grew up a settlement, which was first of a very cheap and wild character, but which is now the wholesale district. Further down and immediately abreast of the city and the Place d'Armes (now Jackson Square), at what is the sugar and ship landings of to-day, lay the ocean-going vessels, averaging some 20 or more at a time and ranging from 100 to 200 tons each.
There were no ship lines or cqmpanies, the vessels sailing under charters and having no fixed hour of departure, but going when they had received their cargo.
The next ten years saw a steady growth in the commerce and business of Xew Orleans, restricted, however, by the lack of good transportation facilities, and it was not until Fulton"s invention of the steamboat that the city could fully enjoy the great advantages possessed in having the Mississippi, with its many tributaries, at its door. In 1810 the arrivals by river were 679 flatboats and 392 keelboats, a total of 1,071. These brought to New Orleans a most miscellaneous character of products, which included sugar, molasses, rice, cotton, flour, bacon, pork, whisky, apples, cider, corn, oats, cheese, beans, lumber, butter, lard, onions, potatoes, hemp, yarn and cordage, linen, tobacco, beer, horses, hogs, poultry, etc. Three-fifths of these products originated above "the falls of the Ohio" (Louisville) and two-fifths below that point.
In 1811 the arrival of the Xew Orleans, the first steamboat to navigate the Mississippi, created a revolution in the river business of New Orleans. The change was somewhat slow at first, because the steamers were possessed of so little power that they could with ditficulty resist the mighty current of the river, and found it a most difficult, slow and tedious matter to go up stream. There were only five steamboats built in as many years. Moreover, the navigation of the Mississippi was handicapped by the attempt of the Louisiana Legislature to establish a monopoly. A company had been formed, at the head of which were Fulton and Livingston, who had made the first experiments with steam on the Ohio and the Mississippi. This company had obtained from the Louisiana Legislature an act granting them the exclusive right of navigating the waters of Louisiana with steam vessels for 14 years, with the privilege of renewing their charter at the expiration of that time. Any violation of this monopoly subjected the violator to a fine of $500. But in 1815 the Washington, the first high-pressure steamer on the Mississippi, openly violated the Fulton monopoly, carried the matter into the courts and won, the court declaring that the Mississippi river was the heritage of the people, and that neither Congress nor any State Legislature had the right to give control of its navigation to any person or company.
This decision served as a stimulus to the steamboats, which from this time forward took the place of the flatboats in carrying the traffic of the Mississippi. In 1814 the arrivals at New Orleans consisted of 508 flatboats and 324 barges, of a total tonnage of 88,350, and 21 steamboats, of 2,098 tons. These steamers were the New Orleans, Vesuvius and Enterprise. The sea-going vessels leaving New Orleans
that year were 351, of which 188 were ships, {)5 barges and 5";! seliooncrs, with a total tonnage of 81,180 tons. The chief products received from the interior were 58,220 bales of cotton, 110,872 bushels of corn, 73,820 barrels of flour, 11,640 hogsheads of sugar, 11,220 barrels of molasses, 7,225 barrels of pork, 7,500 barrels of rice, 3,205 casks of rum, 6,210 hogsheads of tobacco and 16,200 barrels of whisk}'.
The return trade, that is the supply of manufactured goods, mainly of European make, came by way of the East from Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore overland. Xor did the discovery of steam as a motive power for river boats cause much change in the business. New Orleans increased its shipments up the river when a better means of stemming the current was discovered, but the bulk of its shipments to the Ohio Valley were heavy articles that could be transported cheaply. Most of the importers in Xew Orleans were Creoles or French, who imported French goods. As a consequence the Kentuekians or Tennesseeans of eighty years ago were supplied from New Orleans with French prints and broadcloths, while their brethren on the Atlantic wore almost wholly the products of British looms. This early French influence, due to the large French population in New Orleans, made itself felt throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley almost to the outbreak of the civil war; and in many portions of the country the demand was for French rather than for English goods. The United States at that time was manufacturing very little in the way of calicoes and cottons, save of the lowest grade. Nothing better illustrates the early commercial influence of New Orleans than this very fact—that for years it set the fashion in the goods used tliroughout a large portion of the Mississippi Valley.
The introduction of the steamboat as a means of transportation on the river brought about a radical change in trade lines and gave an immense impetus to the business of New Orleans. The quarter of a century between 1815 and 1840 was tiie golden age commercially of that city, when it saw its greatest prosperity. Its trade is larger in the aggregate to-day, but not relatively and proportionately, and there is not as much profit in it. During the early steamboat period New Orleans, in spite of epidemics, rose to be the wealthiest city in the Union, the third in point of population, and disputed with New York the rank of the first port in America. It was the metropolis of the great valley, leading in all industrial, financial and commercial enterprises; indeed, no other American city ever occupied the metropolitan position that New Orleans filled for half the century during its "flush days."
The opening of the Mississippi to steamboats without let or hindrance in 1816 saw a total of $8,052,540 of produce received at New Orleans, about double the re-
A
554 STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
eeipts of the first year of the American dominion. Cotton still constituted only a small part of this commerce, amonnting to 37,371 bales, or twelve per cent in value, and the bulk of the receipts were from the Ohio Valley and included breadstufEs, provisions, tobacco, and other Western produce, or eighty per cent in value of the receipts. New Orleans was the center not of the cotton and sugar trade alone, but of the grain, tobacco and provision trades, and received more tobacco then than it does to-day. The river traffic of Xew Orleans at that time required six steamboats, 594 barges and 1,287 flatboats, of a total tonnage of 87,G70. The trip down the Mississippi was full of danger, because of the many snags and other river accidents, and a rough estimate placed the losses at 20 per cent; that is, only 80 per cent of the goods which started down from the Ohio to Xew Orleans ever reached that port, the remaining fifth being sunk or burnt in the Mississippi on its way down stream.
From 1816 the river trade destined for Xew Orleans increased rapidly, thanks to the steamboats. It had been $8,062,-540 in 1816; it was $9,749,253 in 1817; $8,773,379 in 1818; $13,501,036 in 1819, and $16,771,711 in 1820, having doubled in the short period of four years; nor did the improvement stop then. The trade of New Orleans with the interior country continued to increase with years in spite of the heavy losses of the river and the very expensive commercial methods that prevailed, until the construction of the Erie and other canals diverted some of the business of the Upper Ohio. The merchants of New Orleans did not notice this diversion at the time, nor as a matter of fact did it make itself felt upon the aggregate trade of the city until long afterward. The Mississippi Valley was growing so rapidly in population and production that there was a? much as New Orleans could handle, notwithstanding diversions of business to the East.
The chief feature of this quarter of a century, from 1815 to 1840, as far as New Orleans was concerned, was the war between the steamboat and the flatboat—between the old, rough and piimitive way of doing business and a more systematic method with boats running on schedule time and with fixed charges, and with the trade in the hands of merchants instead of fiatboatmen. It is needless to say that the steamboat and civilization triumphed over the primitive flatboat, but not immediately, as one would have imagined. Flatboats continued to be used to a large extent up to the time of the civil war, and some reach New Orleans even to-day, but generally in tows. However, the steamers steadily gained on them, handling a larger share of the trade each year and relegating the old "arks"' to the transportation of apples, potatoes and similar articles that can be carried in bulk.
The first steamboat, the New Orleans, had reached New Orleans the dav before
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
555
Christmas, 1811. In 1815, when the river was declared open to all steamers and the Fulton-Livingston monopoly was pronounced unconstitutional, forty steamers reached jSTew Orleans; in 1880 the arrivals were one hundred and ninety-eight; and they continued to increase as follows:
In this period of twenty years, during which the trade of New Orleans was transferred from the flatboats and other lesser craft depending entirely upon the current for their motive power to take them to New Orleans, to the steamboats, the receipts of produce from the interior increased fourfold and the ocean traffic showed a similar improvement. The increase in the number of steamboats reaching New Orleans does not fully show the improvement which took place because the steamers not only became more numerous, but of larger tonnage and could therefore carry more freiglit. The tonnage of the steamers reaching New Orleans in 1815 was only 77,220, whereas in 1840 it was 537,400 tons.
In regard to the flatboats and other craft during this period there is no sufficiently definite information. It should be said that while the steamboats supplanted the barges and other floating vessels in many lines, they did not entirely drive them from the river. The Mississippi counted some hundred or more tributaries. On some of these tlu- settlements were sparse and the surplus to be exported to market afforded at best only one or two cargoes a year and these were sent far more cheaply and conveniently in flatboats and barges than in steamers. As late as 1840 one-fifth of the freight reaching New Orleans was carried by flatboat, keel-boat or barges. The early flatboats had depended exclusively on the current of the river to carry them to New Orleans. The system of towing, so general now.
and used almost exclusively in the coal and grain trades, was tried as early as 1829 and a small steamer—it would be called a tug to-day—was successfully used in towing keel-boats down and up stream, thus doing away with the necessity of selling the boats when they reached New Orleans, as had formerly been the practice.
During this quarter of a century the steamboat had secured a practical monopoly of the trade of the Mississippi; and New Orleans, as the city to which all the steamers of the Mississippi and its tributaries went, became the commercial center of the great valley. The other river towns, particiilarly St. Louis and Cincinnati, prospered, but none did as well as New Orleans. Of the 362 steamers navigating the Mississippi and its tributaries in 1840, none were over eight years old. Their average tonnage was 302 tons, and only four exceeded 500 tons.
The ocean commerce of New Orleans had increased in exactly the same proportion with the river business. The city was not a manufacturing one, and but a small proportion of the produce received there was consumed. New Orleans was simply a point of transshipment, which took what it got from the South and West and exported it, sometimes not even repacking it; hence its exports were within a few millions of the receipts, the difference being such breadstufEs and provisions as entered into local consumption. A number of changes occurred, but they were not of great importance. These changes were in the size of the vessels coming to the city, the gradual displacement of sailing by steam vessels, the substitution of foreign for American bottoms, and again the change in the ports to which the exports from New Orleans were shipped.
At the time that JefEerson purchased Louisiana the ocean trade of New Orleans was almost exclusively with the American colonies and consisted in the shipment in American vessels to the towns of the Atlantic seaboard, of the products of the vast interior country, the basins of the Ohio and Mississippi. The merchants of Baltimore and Philadelphia had been the first to establish agencies in New Orleans, doing so while the city was still under the control of Spain. Next in importance was Boston in the receipts of produce from New Orleans, while New York, Charleston, South Carolina, Newport, Ehode Island, and other seaboard towns did some business with "the Crescent City." In the first years of the acquisition of Louisiana, this coastwise trade between New Orleans and other American ports far exceeded the foreign commerce of the city; and from three-fourths to four-fifths of the vessels entering and leaving New Orleans were American bottoms. Cotton for Europe had not yet become the chief export article, and indeed
STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS. SS7
cotton was one of the smaller items in the commerce of the city in those daj's, the bulk of the exports being flour, pork, tobacco, sugar and similar produce. The vessels engaged in this trade were small sloops and schooners of 250 tons burden or thereabouts, in the handling of which the American seamen of the day were unexcelled.
It was not until 1830 that the foreign commerce of New Orleans exceeded its coastwise shipments, when the two stood as follows: Exports to coastwise ports, $8,357,788; to foreign ports, $9,868,328. The coastwise traffic of New Orleans has improved very considerably since then, but it never afterward caught up with the foreign trade. In 1840 this coastwise traffic reached a total of $21,960,-859. It remained for years at or near that figure. The opening of the Erie and Ohio canals, followed soon afterward by the construction of railroads, diverted the Western produce of the Ohio Valley to New York and Philadelphia. New Orleans began to devote itself more exclusively to cotton and other Southern products, which were shipped to Europe rather than to the American seaports. A radical commercial change was going on which in time completelj^ revolutionized the trade of the city.
With the prosperity of the steamboats came also the prosperity of the ocean commerce of New Orleans. At the beginning of the steamboat epoch, 1815, the imports at New Orleans were half as great as the exports of Southern and Western pz-oduce; that is, the people of the West supplied themselves through New Orleans with nearly half the manufactured goods which they needed. This continued up to the time when the canals and railroads began to invade the Mississippi Valley. In 1840, the imports were still one-third of the exports, but they dropped to one-fourth in 1850 and to one-fifth in 1860.
The size and character of vessels engaged in the commerce of New Orleans were radically changing during all this period. Merchants, the world over, were finding that they could send their goods more profitably in larger vessels and the average size of the merchant vessel was constantly increasing, although the low water on the bars of the Mississippi had a very material influence in delaying this growth, as shipyards, especially the American ones, were unwilling to turn out vessels which could not engage in the most profitable trade then known—that of New Orleans.
In the earlier days American bottoms had handled nearly all the trade of New Orleans, and even as late as 1857 eighty-three per cent of imports at this port came in American ships, and only seventeen per cent in foreign ones, whereas, to-day the American vessels carry only eight or nine per cent of the total.
At the beginning of the century the average tonnage of the vessels trading with New Orleans had been 150 tons. They increased slowly to 236 tons in 1840, which would be regarded as a pleasure boat to-day; to 376 tons in 1857; and to 531 tons in 1860. Of the arrivals in 1846 only 109 were steamers, against 2,863 sailing vessels, consisting of 1,997 ships and brigs and 875 schooners. Even when the Civil War broke out the number of steam vessels calling at the port of New Orleans was barely 300 a year, against from 1,000 to 1,200 sailing vessels. The following gives the gradual growth of the ocean tonnage of New Orleans, by decades, and will furnish some idea of the troubles encountered at the bar: Average size of vessel engaged in the New Orleans trade: 1820, tons 183; 1830, tons 217; 1840, tons 236; 1850, tons 362; 1860, tons 521; 1870, tons 645; 1876 (construction of the jetties), tons 732; 1880, tons 998; 1890, tons 1,193; 1899, tons 1,702. The increase in the last ten years is really larger than these figures of the average vessel indicate, being pulled down slightly by the development of the Central American trade, the steamers in which have to be small and of light draft in order to enter the shallow harbors on the Atlantic coast of Honduras and Nicaragua.
The height of New Orleans' commercial prosperity and prestige was reached about 1840, when there seemed every certainty that it would become the greatest port in America, but about that time new conditions arose which threatened New Orleans' monopoly of the trade of the Mississippi Valley. The merchants of the city did not see the danger at the time, and did not fully realize that their territory was being invaded. To the superficial observer, it was impossible to see that the commerce of the city was affected when its receipts of produce and its exports and imports continued to grow larger from year to )'ear. None the less the city was relatively losing ground commercially, for it was losing its hold upon the trade of the great West, then forging ahead so rapidly in population and production, and was concentrating itself too much on handling a single product—cotton—which the South unfortunately believed to be the king and master of the commercial world. New Orleans had, up to that time, been the port not for a section onlj', but for the whole great valley; it had handled the sugar of Louisiana, the tobacco of Kentucky, the flour of the Ohio, and the products of all the States of the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri valleys. It let these slip away from it to worship at the shrine of cotton.
The first diversion came from the canals which entered the field as competitors with the Mississippi river, upon which New Orleans placed all its de-
pendence, imagining that its prosperity was coincident with that of the river traffic. The Erie and Ohio canals were begun in 1853. By 1832 the waters of the Upper Ohio were connected witli Lake Erie by canal and the latter with the Hudson river by the Erie canal. This gave New York a direct all-water route to the Ohio valley. It was a somewhat long and circuitous route, slow, because of the many locks in it, and completely closed during the winter; but on the other hand, the route to New Orleans down the Ohio and Mississippi had many obstacles and difficulties. The river was full of snags and lined with wrecks, and the winter closed the OKio as well as the canals. In 1835 the State of Ohio alone shipped 86,000 barrels of flour, 98,000 bushels of wheat and 2,500,000 staves to New York, all of which had formerly come to New Orleans. It was a startling commercial change, the first blow that the trade of the city received. Hitherto all the heavier products had gone down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans to be shipped thence to New York, a roundabout route of 3,000 miles, whereas, the direct distance by canal was not more than five or six hundred miles. Many shipments were now made by way of Cleveland and Buffalo. New Orleans scarcely felt the diversion at first and paid too little attention to it. It had as much business as it could well handle and did not see anything to fear from the competition of the canals; and indeed, though the canals continued to improve tlieir business, and to handle each year a large amount of Western produce, they did not seem to affect the trade of New Orleans in any material way. The period between 1825 and 1850 showed a greater increase in the river than in the canal trade; and it became at once apparent that the canals were only a makeshift, and were not destined to control the commerce of the country. The fifteen years of competition from 1825 to 1840 between the canals, representing New York, and the river, representing New Orleans, showed the latter to still hold its own well. The products of the lake country of Northern Ohio and those of Western Pennsylvania found their way to the seaboard by the canals, but as far up the Ohio as Wheeling goods were shipped mainly by river. The competition was scarcely felt at Cincinnati before 1850. All the leading tributaries of Ohio, but particularly the Cumberland and the Tennessee, sent all their produce down the river to New Orleans in steamers and flatboats. A comparison of the business done by the rivers and canals in 1840 shows that the increase in the canal traffic did not keep pace with the rapidly increasing population and production of the valley. But a new and more dangerous competitor was entering the field, one that was destined to seriously cripple the commerce of the New Orleans, and to transfer
to other ports much of the trade it had monopolized. A few miles of railroad had been constructed in 1830. The experiment was successful and the railroad mileage increased each year. For the first fifteen or twenty years the railroads were almost wholly local, and of very short mileage. There was no idea of competition with the water routes, and the roads were regarded as excellent institutions to supply transportation to market where there were no waterways open. For many years there was no through line connecting the seaboard with the West. There were breaks and gaps in all of the then existing companies. From such transportation as this New Orleans had nothing to fear, and the merchants of the city unfortunately flattered themselves with this idea, that they would be safe years after the railroads had proved their strength and shown that they were likely to control the trade of the country.
In Spanish days, about forty per cent of the exports of New Orleans had consisted of Louisiana products and sixty per cent came from the Ohio valley, and was what is called to this day "Western produce." With the annexation of Louisiana to the United States, the Western produce became a larger element in the commerce of the city. About 1815, when the steamboat came into vogue, cotton constituted only 12 per cent of the commerce of New Orleans, and all the Southern products only 20 per cent, while 80 per cent of the articles reaching New Orleans were from the West, the upper Ohio and the Mississippi. By 1840 the Western produce had fallen to 61 per cent of the total commerce of New Orleans and 28 per cent was from Louisiana and the neighboring States. From 1840 on, the proportion of Western products reaching New Orleans steadily decreased and cotton correspondingly grew in importance.
Some of the more far-seeing political economists of the time, and a few, but only a few, of the merchants of New Orleans began to see that the city was losing a very valuable part of its trade; and there were demands upon Congress that it improve the Mississippi so as to get rid of the dangers to navigation at the bar. It was still insisted that the river would suffice for all the needs of the valley if only it was put in good condition, the snags removed, the rapids and falls obviated by means of canals around them and the shallow places deepened.
At the time of the meeting of the great Memphis convention of 1845, over which Henry Clay presided, and which called for the improvement of the Mississippi and its tributaries by the Federal government, it was found that two-thirds of all the steamboat tonnage was owned and controlled in New Orleans, which had regular steamers running as far up the Ohio as Pittsburg and on the Mississippi as St. Paul.
In 1849 the river commerce of Xew Orleans, that is the receipt of produce at that port from the interior, had in spite of canals and railroads, reached the magnificent total of $81,989,692. It was at this time that New Orleans began entering on its career as the great cotton cit}' of the world. The twenty years between 1840 and 1860 were years of great prosperity in New Orleans, when its merchants won fortunes and could rank among the mereatores principes of the world; but it cannot be said that the commerce of the city was in as good a condition as in the previous quarter of a century. New Orleans was devoting itself too exclusively to one article. Instead of being the port for the valley, it was becoming the port only for the cotton country. Its prosperity was based on cotton and on slavery, and any injury to either of these meant a commercial downfall. The South insisted on the sovereignty of King Cotton, and New Orleans claimed, like Mahomet, to be its prophet. It was overflowing with money in those "flush times."' Its banks had larger capitals and larger deposits than they have even to-day, and they loaned their money readily, thus establishing the credit system which became universal among the planters, particiilarly those engaged in raising cotton and sugar. New Orleans became not only the lender of money at a high rate of interest, but the depot of AVestern supplies—corn, pork, etc., which it advanced in large quantities to the planters in the vast region tributary to it. The whole agricultural country along the lower Mississippi became in a manner commercial slave and was not allowed to sell to or to buy of any one else. The Western produce shipped down the river did not stop at the plantations, but went direct to the city, and was transshipped thence and sent up the river to the plantations by the very same route it had come down.
The prediction that Jefferson had indulged in when he purchased Louisiana, that New Orleans "will be forever the mighty mart of the merchandise brought from more than a thousand rivers, leaving the emporia of the Eastern world far behind," was again repeated and thoroughly believed in by New Orleans. So disinterested a witness as the British Quarterly Eeview declared that New Orleans, because of the Mississippi, must ultimately become the most important commercial city in America, if not in the world; and that eminent statesman and political economist, De Boro, stated that "no city in the world has been advanced as a mart of commerce with such gigantic strides as New Orleans."
Nor was this an idle boast. Between 1830 and 1840 no city in the United States kept pace with it. When the census of 1840 was taken it was fourth in population, exceeded only by New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore;
S62 STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
and it stood fourth in point of commerce among all the ports of the world with only London, Liverpool and New York ahead, and only slightly behind the last of these cities, with every prospect that it would pass it before the century ended. It was ahead of New York in the exports of domestic products, but unfortunately its import trade was small. It shipped coffee, hardware and many heavy articles up the river, but it left the West dependent upon New York and the other Atlantic cities for nearly all the finer class of manufactured goods. Later on, when Cincinnati, Pittsburg and other Western cities engaged in manufacture. New Orleans bought their goods and reshipped them to the plantations. Of these shipments up-stream more than 75 per cent, strange to say, were articles which had previously been shipped down-stream. There was no trade between the Western manufacturing cities and the Southern plantations, very little even with the towns on the lower Mississippi. All this traffic paid tribute to New Orleans. Some thirty-two steamboats of a tonnage of 48,726, was required for the trade between St. Louis and New Orleans, and thirty-six steamers, of 26,932 tons, for the Cincinnati trade.
The change in the commerce of New Orleans from Western to Southern produce is most marked during the second decade of the period. In 1815 cotton had constituted only 12 per cent of the receipts of the city. In 1850 the value of the cotton received at New Orleans was $41,885,156, against $55,012,675 for all other articles, cotton being then 43 per cent of the total trade. It continued to increase both in the aggregate and proportionately up to the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1855 the value of the cotton received at New Orleans was $51,390,729; in 1856, $70,371,729; in 1857, $86,255,079; in 1858, $88,127,340; in 1859, $92,-037,794; and in 1860, $109,389,228. All the other exports amounted to only $75,822,026. Cotton constituted 58 per cent of the total trade of the city. If the other Southern products—sugar, molasses and tobacco—be included, only $42,-881,486 remained for Western produce. Those articles which had contributed at one time 80 per cent of the commerce of New Orleans had sunk to only 23 per cent. The city had largely abandoned its Western trade for what it believed to be more profitable—the cotton business.
In 1845 it was estimated that half the produce of the Mississippi Valley shipped to seaboard found its way to market via the canals, railroads and other routes, and half by way of the Mississippi to New Orleans, thus showing how much business had been diverted as compared with the period when New Orleans had a practical monopoly. In 1846 the receipts of flour and wheat at Buffalo exceeded
those of New Orleans for the first time. This created somewhat of a sensation and was discussed at length in the newspapers. The New Orleans press expressed the sentiment that this diversion was merely temporar}', that an artificial waterway could never compete successfully with a natural one; and that sooner or later this flour and wheat trade would return; but it never did return. On the contrary, Western produce was more and more diverted over the Eastern route. The Erie canal captured the flour trade. The Pennsylvania canal took annually some twenty thousand' hogsheads of tobacco that had formerly been marketed in New Orleans, all the pig iron manufactured in the Pittsburg district, and large quantities of lard, bacon and other Western produce from the upper Ohio. It supplied in return manufactured goods, china ware, drj' goods, hardware, hats, shoes, etc., and as early as 1846 it furnished the Ohio basin with more manufactured goods than New Orleans did.
In 1846 the rate on flour from Cincinnati to New York was $1.53 per barrel by the Erie canal; $1.40 per barrel by way of Pittsburg and the Pennsylvania canal, and $1.30 by way of New Orleans, but on the other hand the river route was much the longer, and far more dangerous, so that, the insurance added, it was really more expensive than to ship the flour by canal.
The result was the loss of the grain and flour trade, save such flour as New Orleans reshipped to the cotton and sugar planters of the territorj' tributary to it, or exported to Cuba, and other countries of Latin America. It lost, also, and from the same causes, its tobacco trade, which in the earlier days, had outranked cotton in importance. In 1852, the lead trade of Illinois and Missouri, which had formerly passed through New Orleans, was lost to it, in consequence of the railroads having made through connection with Galena, the center of the lead indiistry. In 1846 New Orleans had received a maximum of 785,495 pigs of lead, and the average for the decade was 600,000 pigs. The trade sank suddenly. In 1856 New Orleans received but 15,291 pigs of lead, and soon afterward the trade disappeared altogether from the commercial records, or was of too little importance to deserve separate enumeration. The merchants of New Orleans took their losses philosophically and congratulated themselves upon the fact that there was more money in the cotton business than in these other lines of trade diverted elsewhere. The exports of Western produce had become, they said, merely a transit business. The wheat, flour, etc., from the West left but little money in the city, whereas the cotton trade paid splendidly. They got an advance on the cotton, on the supplies furnished the merchant, and it returned a profit in many other ways; there was, in fine, more money in it.
$64 STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
But about this time another difficulty assailed the trade of Xew Orleans, which proved extremely injurious to it and affected it for nearly thirty years, until Congress took the matter in hand; this was the difficulty of getting the produce from New Orleans to the ocean on account of the bar at the mouth of the river. The use of steam had greatly increased the size of vessels engaged in the New Orleans trade. As early as 1829 attention had been called to the mouth of the Mississippi and the changes which were going on there in consequence of the formation of bars. In 1837 Northeast Pass, through which a majority of the vessels had previously entered the river from the Gulf, shoaled up and became useless. Southwest Pass then came into vogue and was used by most of the entering vessels up to 1850, it being from fifteen to sixteen feet deep. The draft of many of the vessels was sixteen feet or more and those of one thousand tons or over encountered great difficulty in getting over the bars in this Pass. In 1853, within a few weeks there were forty vessels aground on the bar, suffering a detention there of from two days to eight weeks. Many of them could not get over the bar with their cargoes and had to discharge the latter into lighters. In 1853 the same difficulties occurred, and in a memorial presented to Congress by the merchants of New Orleans, it was represented that vessels with cargoes valued at $7,367,339 were delayed at the mouth of the Mississippi, being unable either to get into it or to get out. This n<iturally increased the freight rate from New Orleans and tended to injure the commerce of the city. The trouble was constantly recurring for the next twenty years or more, and was only cured in 1874 by the construction of the Eads jetties. It is difficult to determine to what extent the trouble about low water at the passes affected the trade of New Orleans. That port had always been a very expensive one from the earlier days, because of the high insurance rates; but it could afford to be expensive. As the rates of transportation were decreased elsewhere it began to feel the influence of the decline and it became evident tliat New Orleans would have to cut down its port charges and expenses and that freight could not stand se^'eral weeks' detention at the passes.