LOUISIANA

Natural resources and farming hold a significant place in Louisiana's economic history. However, the cultural spice of New Orleans has added to the state's economic base by setting the city apart from any other cities in the world and, over the years, making it a unique tourist attraction.

Indians were the first known inhabitants within Louisiana, living in small pockets. Spanish and French explorers navigated the Gulf of Mexico even before Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle named the land at the mouth of the Mississippi River Louisiana. He did so in honor of King Louis XIV, claiming the land for France in 1682. In the 1700s the French began developing settlements in Louisiana and in 1722 New Orleans was established as Louisiana's capital. These early French settlers started tobacco and indigo farms and brought in slaves from Africa and the West Indies to work them.

Louisiana was not particularly prosperous under French rule, however French culture did take hold. In 1762 France ceded Louisiana to Spain during the French and Indian War (1754–1763). The area fared very well under Spanish rule as American settlers and immigrants from Spain and the Canary Islands relocated to the area. The Spaniards also brought black slaves, but there were also many "free people of color" in Louisiana. However the largest number of immigrants were French-speaking Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia who were driven from their homes by the British during the war with France. Their descendants are now known as Cajun. The mixture of these early Spanish, French, and black cultures became the unique and colorful Louisiana of today.

In 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte forced Spain to return Louisiana to France. Three years later Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States for $15 million. President Thomas Jefferson's (1801–1809) real estate deal doubled the size of the United States with a cash outlay of about 3 cents per acre.

In the early 1800s Louisiana saw an influx of immigrants from surrounding southern states. On April 30, 1812, Congress approved Louisiana's bid for state-hood. Between 1815 and 1861 Louisiana's sugar and cotton production made it one of the most prosperous states in the south. The state was also an important location on the inland north and south water route. Steamboats traveling the Mississippi River transported goods such as cotton, grain, and sugarcane to New Orleans, where it was trans-shipped on ocean-going vessels. This assured the city's commercial and strategic importance.

Wealthy planters in Louisiana depended on slave labor. In 1860 there were more than 330,000 black slaves, nearly half of Louisiana's total population. At that time the north no longer allowed slavery and when Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865) became president of the United States in 1861, southerners feared he would outlaw slavery in the south as well. The planters in Louisiana held the majority of economic and political power. Their influence led the state to secede from the union with ten other states and form a separate country called the Confederate States of America, thus beginning the American Civil War (1860–1865). In 1865 the South surrendered having suffered disastrous losses; the war ended, and all slaves were freed. When the Civil War was over, however, opportunities for freed blacks were limited, and former slaves returned as laborers to sugar plantations and cotton fields, which they farmed "for shares," (they rented the land and paid in shares of the crop) along with poor whites.

In the 1880s irrigation systems allowed farmers to plant rice, and midwestern farmers migrated to southwestern Louisiana to become rice farmers. In the meantime, lumber and flour mills were started; oil and natural gas were discovered; and railroads were built.

However, in 1898 a new constitution was drawn up that took voting rights away from blacks as well as many poor whites. Large landowners, businessmen, and politicians controlled the government and resisted social reform, which meant that the small farmers and the urban working class, both white and black, did not share in the general prosperity.

In the late 1920s the Great Depression (1929–1939) caused banks and factories to close around the country and many people lost their jobs. When Huey Long was elected governor of Louisiana in 1928 he based his campaign on the problems in the economy and the growing inequality between the state's citizens. He also campaigned against the Standard Oil Company's high-handed dealings. Although he did not really challenge the racial segregation of the South, he did talk more about class than about race, and he advocated social and economic reforms, such as some improvements in education and health care, for African Americans. Huey Long was an ambitious, talented, and very popular politician who initially supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program of governmental aid to victims of the Depression. However, he turned against Roosevelt and would probably have split the Democratic vote in the 1936 election had he not been assassinated in 1935.

The state's economy gradually pulled out of the Depression with the development of offshore drilling, reforesting, and soybean farming. Many residents were put to work building roads and bridges. Louisiana became one of the world's leading petrochemical manufacturing centers with oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. After World War II (1939–1945) started, additional jobs were created as ships were built for the Navy in New Orleans.

In the 1970s much of the revenue from the high oil prices was put to work to improve the state's schools and highways. But in the mid-1980s world oil prices dropped, which hurt Louisiana's economy. Energy-related industries, such as machinery manufacturing, also suffered. In 1986 unemployment in the state, especially for women, was the highest in the nation at 13 percent. In the 1990s Louisiana had more people living in poverty than any other state.

In 1992 Louisiana tried to revitalize its economy by legalizing riverboat and casino gambling. This effort created thousands of jobs and also helped attract more than 20 million tourists annually. In the 1990s the service industry was the leading employer. While chemicals were the leading product in Louisiana in 1995, others, such as fertilizer, soap, paint, plastic, ships, airplanes, paper, and praline candy, were also growing. At the same time crops grown in Louisiana included soybeans, rice, cotton, sugarcane, and sweet potatoes. Shipping and transportation was also significant because the Port of South Louisiana, the busiest port in the United States in 1995, handled nearly 400 billion pounds of cargo annually.

While the average household income in 1997 was $34,400, the distribution of that income was skewed. In 1995 nearly 20 percent of Louisiana residents were below the federal poverty level, while eight percent had a disposable income greater than $75,000, including 1.7 percent whose disposable incomes were greater than $125,000.

LOUISIANA

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