(1908) splendid terminals, including an immense slip in the river
(1500×300 ft., excavated to give 30 ft. of water below zero gauge)
capable of accommodating nine vessels at dock simultaneously,
and arranged with remarkable conveniences for the loading of grain.
Steel-concrete warehouses and elevators surround the slip. The
greater industrial establishments of the city cluster about the
terminals. New Orleans is served by eleven railways, including the
Illinois Central, Southern Pacific, Texas & Pacific and Louisville &
Nashville systems. The New Orleans & North-eastern crosses Lake
Pontchartrain over a trestle bridge 7 m. long (originally 25 m.
before end filling).
Within the city are two canals, now of little importance, because too shallow except for local trade: the Carondelet or Old Basin canal, built in 1798, is 2·5 m. long, 55-65 ft. wide and 7 ft. deep, and goes via Bayou St John to Lake Pontchartrain; and the New Basin Canal, built in 1837 by the New Orleans Canal & Banking Company, and state property since 1866, is 6·7 m. long, 100 ft. wide and 8 ft. deep, and also connects with Lake Pontchartrain. Neither of these canals connects with the Mississippi river as do the following privately owned canals: the Lake Borgne Canal, from a point 10 m. below the city to Lake Borgne, 7 m. long, 80 ft. wide, 7 ft. deep, shortening the water distance between Mobile and New Orleans by 60 m.; and the Barataria & Lafourche Company Canal (7 m. long, 45 ft. wide and 6 ft. deep) and Harvey’s Canal (5·35 m. long, 70 ft. wide and 6 ft. deep), both connecting with the Bayou Teche region.
Manufactures.—Manufacturing has greatly developed since 1890. The value of products increased 146·7% from 1880 to 1890, and in the following decade the increase of wages paid, cost of materials used and value of product were respectively 7·6, 53·3 and 31·5%. In 1905 the value of the factory product was $84,604,006, 45·4% of the value of the total factory product of the state, and an increase of 47·3% since 1900; during this same period capital increased 36·6%, the average number of wage-earners 8·9%, the amount of wages 20·5% and the cost of materials used 53·3%. The sugar and molasses industry is the most important, with a product value of $34,908,614 in 1905; New Orleans ranked second to Philadelphia among the cities of the country in the value of this product, that of New Orleans being 12·6% of the total value of the country’s product. At New Orleans is a sugar refinery said to be the largest in the world. Of the manufactures from products of the state the most noteworthy are rice (value of product cleaned and polished in 1905, $4,881,954), bags other than paper ($4,076,226), cotton-seed oil and cake ($3,698,509), malt liquors ($2,170,714), tobacco ($1,408,883), lumber and timber products ($1,644,329) and planing mill products ($1,105,497) and cotton goods ($1,081,951). Other important manufactures are foundry and machine-shop products ($2,085,327), men’s clothing ($1,979,308), coffee and spice roasted and ground ($1,638,263) and steam railway cars constructed and repaired ($1,627,435). New Orleans is the chief centre of the country for the manufacture of cotton-seed products and for rice milling. Oyster canning is a recent and rapidly growing industry. There are also furniture establishments, paper mills and cotton cloth mills.
Government.—Municipal government is organized under a charter framed by the state legislature in 1896, and amended by acts of 1898 and 1900. The seven municipal districts correspond to seven independent faubourgs successively annexed. A mayor and various other executive officers and a legislative unicameral council are elected for four years. The mayor and the heads of departments consult as a “cabinet.” Various boards—of civil service, public debt, education, health, police, fire, drainage, water and sewerage and state commissioners of the port—control many of the most important interests of the city. The mayor, through his office and his appointive powers, exercises great influence in a number of these. In 1896 New Orleans followed the example of New York and Chicago in subjecting its civil service to a competitive merit system and to rules of a civil service board. The police board is non-partisan. The board of education is composed of seventeen members, each elected by one of the seventeen wards of the city. In addition to the city board of health, a state board acts with municipal authority, and (since April 1907) the United States government maintains the maritime quarantine of the Mississippi. The commissioners of the port are officials of the state. Owing to the complete dominance of the Democratic party, all reform movements in politics must come from within that organization. Reform organizations have been intermittently powerful since 1888, and among their achievements for good were the beginning of the great drainage and sewerage improvements and the adoption of the charter of 1896. The present government of the city compares very favourably with systems tried in the past.[1] In 1909 the total assessed valuation of property was $221,373,362, of which $154,604,325 was realty and the remainder personalty. The bonded debt on the 30th of June 1909 was $32,521,040 and the floating debt at the end of 1908 was $1,264,030.
From 1890 to 1900 the expenditures for permanent works (including sewerage, lighting, paving, levees, improvements in connexion with street and steam railways, docks, &c.) aggregated $30,000,000. Almost all the public services, nevertheless, were in 1909 in private hands. Electric traction was introduced in 1891–1895, and the street railways were consolidated in 1902 under one management. In 1869 the city bought, and nine years later sold again, the waterworks; municipal ownership and control, under a sewerage and water board, was again undertaken in 1900. In 1900 arrangements were made to transfer the extensive markets from private lessees to direct municipal control, and in May 1901 the wharves of the city passed from private to municipal control.[2] The municipal belt railway was constructed in 1905–1907.
Until 1900 there were no sewers, open gutters serving their purpose. It is remarkable that the city twice granted franchises to private parties for the construction of a sewerage system, but without result. The low and extremely level character of the city site, of which nearly one-third is at or below the level of the Gulf, the recurrence of back-water floods from Lake Pontchartrain and the tremendous rains of the region have made the engineering problems involved very difficult. In 1896 a Drainage Commission (merged in 1900 in a Sewerage and Water Board) devised a plan involving the sale of street railway franchises to pay for the installation of drainage canals and pumps, and in 1899 the people voted a 2-mill tax over 42 years assuring a bond issue of $12,000,000 to pay for sewerage, drainage and water works to be owned by the municipality and to be controlled by a Sewerage and Water Board. Work was begun on the sewerage system in 1903 and on the water works in 1905. In 1906 the legislature authorized the issue of municipal bonds for $8,000,000 to be expended on this work. Up to 1909 the drainage system had cost about $6,000,000 and the sewerage system about $5,000,000; and 310 m. of sewers and nine sewerage pumping stations discharged sewage into the Mississippi below the centre of the city. Garbage is used to fill in swamps and abandoned canals. The new water-supply is secured from the river and is filtered by mechanical precipitation and other means. By 1909 about 500 m. of water-mains had been laid, $7,000,000 had been expended for the water-system, and filtering plants had been established with a capacity of 50,000,000 gallons a day. In August 1905 a city ordinance required the screening of aerial cisterns, formerly characteristic of the city, which were breeding-places of the yellow fever Stegomyia, and soon afterwards the state legislature authorized the Sewerage and Water Board to require the removal of all such cisterns. About two-thirds of the street surface in 1899 was still unpaved; the first improvements in paving began in 1890.
As regards hygienic conditions much too has been done in recent years. New Orleans was long notorious for unhealthiness. Yellow fever first appeared in 1769, and there were about thirty epidemics from 1769 to 1878. Though the first board of health and first quarantine system date back to 1821, from 1787 to 1853 the average death-rate was 59·63 per 1000; never did it fall below 25·00, which was the rate in 1827. In 1832, a cholera year, it rose to 148; in 1853–1854–1855, the great yellow-fever years, complicated in 1854–1855 by cholera, it was 102, 72 and 73. During these three years there were more than 25,000 deaths. The millesimal mortality in 1851–1855 and succeeding quinquennial periods to 1880 was as follows: 70, 45, 40, 39, 34·5 and 33·5. The rate reported by the
national census of 1900 was 28·9, the highest of any of the large- ↑ The charter of 1805 organized the old cité (the Vieux Carré) and the faubourgs as distinct municipalities with almost wholly separate governments: they issued paper money independently, for example. The charter of 1836 was also an extreme statement of local self-government; the municipalities were practically independent, although there was a common mayor and a general council of the entire city meeting once annually. This organization was in large part due to the hostility of the creoles to the Americans. The charter of 1852 formed a consolidated city. That of 1856 added to and amended its predecessor. That of 1870 was very notable as an attempt to secure a business-like and simplified administration. A mayor and seven “administrators,” elected on a general ticket and constituting individually the different administrative departments, formed collectively a council with legislative powers. All sessions of the council were public, and liberties of suggestion were freely accorded to the citizens. Tried in better times, and as a movement for reform sprung from the people and not due primarily to an external impulse, this system might have been permanent and might have exercised great influence on other cities. The early ’seventies were marked by a great widening of the city’s corporate limits. In 1882 another charter went back to the ordinary American plan of elective district councillors chosen for the legislative branch, and executive officers chosen on a general ticket. The latter held seats in the council and could debate but not vote. This is the present system.
- ↑ They were leased to a private company in 1891–1901, but the lease was unprofitable and was disadvantageous to trade. From 1901 to 1908 wharfage and harbour dues were reduced 25 to 85%.
