Seventy-five sugar mills operating in Louisiana in 1800 produced five million pounds of sugar that sold for eight cents a pound, netting about $400,000 to the planters. That was a lot of money in those days, and the sugar industry was just getting started. The crop became so important that the government decided to protect it with a tariff that has remained in effect in one form or another ever since, although not without some challenges.
It became a big issue during the 1914 congressional election because President Woodrow Wilson wanted to change it. Former President Theodore Roosevelt wanted it left alone and came to Louisiana to defend it.
Roosevelt was out of office at the time, but not without influence. He became the youngest U.S. president in history when he assumed office in 1901 at the age of 42 after the assassination of William McKinley. (John Kennedy, who took office at 43, was the youngest to be elected directly to the office.) Roosevelt was re-elected in 1904 and picked William Howard Taft as his successor in 1908. Taft won that election and appeared to have easy sailing for a second term in 1912 - until Roosevelt caused a national uproar by challenging him for the Republican nomination. Trying for a third term went against the then-unwritten rule that Presidents could serve only two terms. (It did not become law until the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951.)
Bradshaw
When he didn’t get the Republican nomination, Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party, which became popularly known as the Bull Moose Party after Roosevelt was shot on October 14, 1912, while he was campaigning in Milwaukee. Not only did he survive but he went on to deliver a speech with the bullet still lodged in his chest. After showing his bloodied shirt to his followers, he said it took “more than that to kill a bull moose.” Thus, a nickname was born for him and his party.
The Bull Moose finished second in the 1912 election, taking important votes from Taft, who got only 23 percent of the vote. Wilson won with 42 percent.
Roosevelt was not on the ballot in 1914, when only congressional seats were decided, but he campaigned across the U.S. to promote his party’s candidates. He came to Louisiana to woo sugar planters who were upset that Wilson would even think about removing a tariff that they needed to complete with sugar from Cuba and Hawaii.
Roosevelt arrived in New Orleans on September 7 and boarded a train for Franklin that evening. Cathi B. Gibbens wrote about that trip in the quarterly Attakapas Gazette: “September 8 dawned hot and dry. Roosevelt had traveled overnight from New Orleans. Arriving in Franklin at 7:45 a.m., he went immediately to the courthouse and addressed a crowd estimated at 3,000. Promptly at 8:30 the Roosevelt entourage entered automobiles for the trip to Jeanerette and New Iberia. The dignitaries were escorted out of Franklin by 75 automobiles and a delegation of 800 people.”
According to newspaper accounts, Roosevelt was met outside New Iberia by several hundred people on horseback who invited him to ride into town with them. Roosevelt, who had gained fame as colonel of the so-called Rough Riders - the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry - during the Spanish American War, promptly accepted.
According to the New Iberia Enterprise, he rode into town on an “iron gray pacer” and was greeted by a brass band and several young ladies on saddle horses. The town was decked with flags and banners, and a speaker’s stand was put up in front of the courthouse. “Main Street was a mass of humanity. In fact, it was one of the largest crowds that has visited this city for a number of years,” the Enterprise said. The New Orleans Picayune correspondent estimated the crowd at between nine thousand and ten thousand people.
Roosevelt’s visit paid off in the November election. Progressive Whitmell Martin, a lawyer from Napoleonville, beat Democrat Henry L. Gueydan in the Third Congressional District. He was one of only three Progressives elected to Congress that year.
That wasn’t enough to completely block the tariff reforms, but protectionists in the Senate added more than 600 amendments to Wilson’s version of a “big, beautiful bill” that reduced or removed most of them. The sugar tariff remained mostly untouched.
Ironically, Roosevelt may have had more impact on Louisiana sugar as a cavalry leader than as a politician. At the end of the Spanish American War, which he helped win, the United States ended up with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and some other places where a lot of sugar was grown. Reducing the sugar tariff for these places had a direct, detrimental impact on Louisiana growers.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at [email protected] or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
