its present name, in 1884, the former university of Louisiana (1834)
being merged in it; it gives free tuition in the academic department
to one student from each senatorial and each representative district
or parish in the state, and its income-producing property, up to
$5,000,000, is exempted from taxation by the state. In 1908–1909
Tulane University had 192 instructors and 2236 students; and it
included a Graduate Department, a College of Arts and Sciences
(1884), a College of Technology with 157 students, Extension Courses
with 148 students, the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for
Girls (1886; endowed in memory of her only daughter by Josephine
Louise, wife of Warren Newcomb, a sugar merchant of the city),
with 288 students in the college and 102 in Newcomb High School,
a Teachers’ College, a Law Department (1847), a Medical Department
(1834) with 648 students, a Department of Pharmacy and a
Summer School with 860 students. The College of the Immaculate
Conception (Jesuit, 1847) is an important school. Higher schools for
the negroes include Leland University (1870; Baptist), with college
courses, preparatory courses (there are several Baptist secondary
schools affiliated with the university), normal and manual training
departments, a school of music, a theological school, a woman’s
Christian Workers’ Class and a night school; Straight University
(1870; Congregational), with kindergarten, primary, high school and
industrial departments; New Orleans University (1873; Methodist)
and Southern University (1883). The last is supported by the state.
Libraries.—The public, society and school libraries in the city in 1909, many being very small, aggregated 301,000 volumes, 227,000 being in five collections. A central library building and three branch buildings, costing $275,000, were presented to the city by Andrew Carnegie. The Howard Memorial Library (1887) is an important reference library, peculiarly rich in books on the history of Louisiana. The Louisiana Historical Society (1836) and the Athenée Louisiannaise (1876) may also be mentioned; the latter has for its purpose the conservation and cultivation of the French language. The Union Franchaise (1872) supplements with educational and charitable activities the general bond of fraternity offered by it to the French population. In New Orleans there is a State Museum, devoted to the history, institutions and resources of the state.
Newspapers.—Among the older newspapers are L’Abeille (1827) and the Picayune (1837), which is one of the most famous and influential papers of the South, and was founded by George Wilkins Kendall (1809–1867), a native of New Hampshire, who organized a special military correspondence for his paper during the Mexican War, probably the earliest instance of such service in the United States. The Times-Democrat (1863) is counted among the ablest and most energetic papers of the South. De Bow’s Commercial Review (published in New Orleans 1846–1864), founded and edited by James D. B. De Bow (1820–1867), was in its day one of the most important periodicals of the country, and remains a valuable repository of information on conditions in the South before the war.
Commerce.—It was its potential commercial value, as indicated by its geographical position, that in 1803, when New Orleans was only a small, poor and remote Franco-Spanish-American port, led to its purchase by the United States. But various causes operated to impede the city’s growth: the invention of railway transit, the development of the carrying trade on the Great Lakes, the bars at the mouth of the Mississippi, over which few large ships could pass, the scourge of yellow fever, the provincialism and the lethargy of an isolated and indolent civilization. Slavery kept away free labour, and the plantation system fostered that “improvidence and that feudal self-complacency which looked with indolent contempt upon public co-operative measures” (G. W. Cable). However, in 1860 the exports, imports and domestic receipts of New Orleans aggregated $324,000,000. As a result of the Civil War the commerce of New Orleans experienced an early paralysis; the port was soon blockaded by the United States navy; the city fell into the hands of the Federal forces (1st May 1862); its commerce with the interior was practically annihilated until after 1865, and from the depression of the years following the war the city did not fully recover for a quarter of a century. Only after 1880 did its total commerce again equal that of 1860. It was almost solely as the dispenser of the products of the greatest agricultural valley in the world that New Orleans grew from a little frontier town to the dimensions of a great city. This trade is still dominant in the city’s commerce. In the season that follows the harvest of the South and West, the levee, the wharves and the contiguous streets are gorged with the raw staples of the regions that lie about the Mississippi and its greater and lesser tributaries—sugar, molasses, rice, tobacco, Indian corn, pork, staves, wheat, oats, flour and, above all else, from one-fourth to one-third the country’s entire supply of cotton. All other movement is subsidiary or insignificant.
By 1900 the drawbacks which have been enumerated had been practically eliminated, and uncertainty as to the investment of capital had been removed. The southward tendency in railway traffic favours the city. Deep water to the ocean was secured by a system of jetties at the South Pass mouth of the Mississippi, built by James B. Eads in 1875–1879; but in time this ceased to maintain an adequate depth of water, and (after the report in 1900 of a board of engineers) in 1902 Congress began appropriations for an improvement of the South-west Pass[1] by opening a channel 1000 ft. wide and at least 35 ft. deep. Many lines of steamers give direct connexion with the West Indies, Central America, Europe, New York and also with Japan (for the shipment of raw cotton via Suez). Ocean steamers, loaded in large part by elevators, now bear away the exports for which a swarm of sailing-ships of much lighter draft and average freight-room once made long stays at the city’s wharves. Passenger traffic on the rivers has practically vanished, and the shrunken fleet of river steamers (only 15 in 1907) are devoted to the carrying of slow freights and the towing of barges on the rivers and bayous of the lower Mississippi Valley.[2]
The total value of all merchandise exported in the six customs years 1902–1903 to 1907–1908 averaged $154,757,110 yearly, and the imports $37,319,254. For the ten years 1890–1899 the corresponding averages were $95,956,618 and $15,924,594. Bank clearings increased in the ten customs years preceding 1906–1907 from $447,673,946 to $1,027,798,476 (bank clearings were $956,154,504 and $786,067,353 respectively for the calendar years 1907 and 1908). There has been an extraordinary increase of exports since 1900, and imports from Central America have similarly increased. Cotton represents roughly two-thirds of the value of all exports. As a cotton port New Orleans in 1908 was second only to Galveston, which had only recently surpassed it; and more than half of the raw cotton exports of the country passed through these two ports. The Board of Trade has maintained a cotton-inspection department since 1884, and its statistics are standard on the cotton crop. Cotton exports in the four seasons 1903–1904 to 1906–1907 averaged 1,001,199,468 ℔, valued at $104,108,824. Wheat and flour, Indian corn, lumber and tobacco are especially noteworthy articles of the export, and bananas and coffee of the import, trade. Importations of coffee have more than quintupled since 1900; the coffee comes for the most part from Brazil and grain wholly from American fields. The imports of bananas, for which New Orleans is the leading port of the country, more than doubled in the same period, and increased more than eight-fold in the twenty-five years following 1882 (1,200,000 to 10,200,000 bunches).
Railway traffic has grown immensely, and port facilities have been vastly improved in recent years. A belt railway owned by the city (built 1905–1907) connects all railway terminals, public wharves and many manufactories and warehouses. Public ownership protects the city’s interest in the harbour front, while at the same time all railways are equally and cheaply served; and new railways, which could not enter the city or have access to the water front because of the impossibility of securing individual trackage, can now enter on the municipal belt. Of privately owned railway terminals in 1908 those of the Illinois Central system had nearly 200 m. of track; the Stuyvesant Docks of the railway have 15 m. of track, a wharf almost 1 m. long, immense Warehouses and grain elevators.
The New Orleans Terminal Company constructed at Chalmette- ↑ The South-west Pass, originally the usual entrance, could not be entered by vessels drawing more than 16 ft.; the Eads jetties, aided by dredging, provided through the South Pass (500 ft. broad) a channel 180 ft. wide and 25 to 28 ft. deep. South-west Pass has always been the primary outlet of the river, venting half or more of its volume. Active work on its improvement was begun in 1903 and practically completed in 1909. Including the jetties, this Pass is nearly 20 m. long and has an average width of about 2150 ft.; the deep channel through it is more than 1000 ft. wide. The jetties, 4 m. long on one side and 3 m. on the other, are 6000 ft. apart at their head and 3600 ft. at the sea line. They are built on willow mats (foundation mats 200×150×2 ft.) in wooden frames, sunk with stone and surmounted above the water by a concrete wall.
- ↑ The value of the river commerce was about $58,000,000 in 1816 and $82,000,000 in 1849. The first steamboat descended the Mississippi to New Orleans (from Pittsburg) in 1811, and the first steamboat trip up the river was made in 1817. The halcyon period of river steamer traffic was from 1840 to 1860. The luxury of the passenger boats then on the Mississippi and the immense volume of the freighting traffic are things of the past since the advent of the railway era. The best time ever made (1870) from New Orleans to St Louis (1278 m.) was 3 days, 21 hours and 25 minutes. The races of these river boats were prominent news items in the papers of America and even in those of Europe, and they have been recorded in more than one page of literature. Steam packets replaced sailing vessels in the ocean trade about 1845.
