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Tariff and Profit in the Antebellum Louisiana Sugar Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

David O. Whitten
David O. Whitten
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Auburn University
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Abstract

In the manner of the Creole tradesmen of Louisiana, whose lagniappe to their patrons is legendary, the Editor offers a similar bonus to readers of the Review. Instead of trifling presents added to a purchase, however, our lagniappe will be notes and documents illustrative of the evolution of business enterprise.

Type
Lagniappe
Information
Business History Review , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , Summer 1970 , pp. 226 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1970

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References

1 “Nowhere except on the sugar plantations of Louisiana were there such large and fertile estates amply stocked with slaves and such conspicuous display of luxury as in this rice country.” Gates, Paul W., The Farmer's Age: Agriculture, 1815–1860 (New York, 1968), 120.Google Scholar The following is a commentary on contemporary Congressional debate over the tariff issue: “Mr. Huger, of South Carolina, believing that no protection was necessary to encourage the production of raw sugar, by which large fortunes were made, moved to reduce the duty on brown sugar from four cents to two-and-a-half cents per pound.” Stanwood, Edward, American Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1903), 144.Google Scholar

2 Gates, The Farmer's Age, 130.

3 This is an earning below which the planter will discontinue sugar production.

4 U. S. Treasury Department, Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, V (Washington, 1851), 189, 192.Google Scholar

5 Sitterson, J. Carlyle, Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753–1950 (Lexington, Kentucky, 1953), 173.Google Scholar

6 The following commentary of a Congressional action serves as evidence of the extent of the political struggle: “Sugar, also, which was not as generally dealt with in the Act of 1828 as the Louisiana members thought it deserved, was subjected to another reduction – a punishment dealt out by the Southern members to the Louisiana delegation, which stood sturdily by the principle of protection, and a penalty which the popularity in the Northern communities, of cheap sugar rendered it easy for them to inflict” Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies, 385.

7 Continuing the commentary from note 1: “Mr. Robertson, of Louisiana, … denied that great fortunes had been made, argued that sugar was peculiarly an article to which protection should be granted, and protested against the idea which he thought was prevalent that every other interest must give way before that of the manufacturer.” Ibid., 144.

8 Stephenson, Wendell Holmes, Alexander Porter, Whig Planter of Old Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1934), 27.Google Scholar

9 R. F. W. Allston, “In Answer to Circular Number Two” Reports of the Secretary, 272.

10 Gray, Lewis Cecil, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1958), 746, 1034.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 Flint, Timothy, Recollections of the Last Ten Years (Boston, 1826), 247.Google Scholar

13 Olmsted, Frederick Law, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States (New York, 1953), 253.Google Scholar

14 Sitterson, Sugar Country, 178.

15 Gray, History of Agriculture, 746, 1034.

16 Ibid.

17 More sugar was imported into the United States in 1847, the first year of the ad valorem tariff on sugar, than any year between 1790 and 1846, inclusive. For sugar import data see: U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, 1960) Series U 99, 549.Google Scholar

18 Champomier, P. A., Annual Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1844–1862).Google Scholar

19 This assumption results in an error of less than 0.5 percent of the total crop produced in 1853 when the sum of the products of estates and midpoints is taken.

20 Costs of production of sugar varied from plantation to plantation. Generalizing, operating expenses of sugar production ranged above $10 a hogshead. Rillieux's estimates for a 650 hogshead capacity plantation ranged from approximately $10.80 to $12.30 a hogshead, and his estimated cost per hogshead for a 1,000 unit plantation was $10.40. The Madewood plantation figures for 1849 show an operating expense of $13.45 per hogshead for the 700 hogshead crop of that year. Rillieux, Norbert, “Sugar Making in Louisiana,” De Bow's Review, V (1848), 285–288.Google Scholar Rillieux, a free man of color, was responsible for several important advances in sugar manufacturing equipment. Many of his innovations are still employed in the 1960's. The Madewood plantation figures are found in, Keller, Herbert A. (ed.), Solon Robinson, Pioneer and Agriculturist (Indianapolis, 1936), 197–198.Google Scholar

21 Gray, History of Agriculture, Table 45, 1033.

22 The high cost of land for sugar cane planting and the expenditures for manufacturing equipment necessitated by the extreme bulk of havested cane, required even “small” sugar plantations to be heavily capitalized by the 1850's. Solon Robinson estimated the value of Madewood plantation's sugar land at approximately $60 an acre in 1849. (Robinson estimated a value of $50 an arpent which equals about $59.52 an acre.) Kellar, Solon Robinson, 198–199. Heavy investment in machinery is reflected by the fact that the twenty-four sugar parishes (the parishes that produced at least 1,000,000 pounds of sugar each, and, together, accounted for 99 percent of Louisiana's 1860 crop) accounted for 77 percent of Louisiana's estimated value of farm implements and machinery in 1860. In terms of dollars invested in farm machinery per acre of improved land in farms, in 1860 the Louisiana sugar parishes had an investment equal to $10.85 per acre. South Carolina rice planters, also reputed to be highly capitalized, maintained an investment of $3.14 per improved acre in 1860 (this figure represents the value of machinery and implements in the four rice districts of 1860 South Carolina). U. S. Bureau of the Census, Agriculture of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Eighth Census (Washington, 1864), 66, 128.Google Scholar Some additional figures for comparison follow: Virginia, $0.82; North Carolina, $0.90; Alabama, $1.16; Mississippi, $1.74; Louisiana, $6.80; Massachusetts, $1.80; Ohio, $1.38; New York, $2.03; and Pennsylvania, $2.14. Gates, The Farmer's Age, 291.

23 I have assumed that the liquidated value of investments in sugar producing land, slaves, and machinery, approached their book value. See, Ibid., 131–133.

24 Conrad, Alfred H. and Meyer, John R., The Economics of Slavery and Other Studies in Econometric History (Chicago, 1964), 53–57.Google Scholar

25 Computed from data published by Champomier in his Statement of Sugar Made in Louisiana, 1852–53.

26 History of Agriculture, Table 45, 1033.

27 The returns figures are high compared to Conrad and Meyer's estimated range of 4 to 8 percent, The Economics of Slavery, 53–57.

28 39 percent when each of the 548 in the lowest class is assumed to produce the upper limit of the class, 100 hogsheads, and the 347 in the second class is assumed to produce the upper limit of that class, 200 hogsheads. The employment of more realistic assumptions, 50 and 150 hogsheads, respectively, indicates that 60 percent of the sugar houses produced only 17 percent of the 1853 sugar crop.

29 Taken from Table I, above.

30 Estimated in Gray, History of Agriculture, Table 45, 1033.

31 See note 20, above.

32 Consideration of the inflation of land and slave values in the 1850's would, of course, reduce this estimate.