Jim Bradshaw: New century brought electricity, ice and urban 'wickedness'
By 1900, communities across south Louisiana were beginning to prosper again after the vicissitudes of the Civil War. Growing commerce brought new comforts that we take for granted today. Railroads and telegraph lines were bringing speedier communications between our towns for better or for worse.
Telephones were also beginning to link communities, but some people, including the editor of the St. Martinville Messenger, still preferred the telegraph.
The newspaper reported in May 1899, “The Western Union telegraph company is erecting a telegraph line from Cade to Arnaudville, and we learn a commercial office will be established in town. This is to be desired because the telephone is not giving satisfaction for the transaction of business, it is a slow process, unsafe, and too public. Business messages require the greatest secrecy which cannot be secured by the telephone.”
Maybe so, but imaginative users found both the telephone and telegraph adaptable to a variety of uses. The Lafayette Advertiser noted about that time that
“Pellerin Bros. have put up in their saloon a black board which records daily the race winners at New Orleans. … The news is received by special telegraph and telephone lines. Bets are occurring daily.”
Communities were also beginning to see electric lines running alongside the telegraph wires, and that brought once-unheard-of conveniences.
The St. Martinville newspaper bragged, for example, “Since we have two ice depots the price of this useful article has come down, and the poorer people can now indulge in the luxury of cool water.”
Until the 1890s, ice was shipped to our small towns from New Orleans, but the price of transportation and the loss by melting made it hard to keep and expensive to buy.
The Planters’ Banner informed its readers in April 1850 that “Mr. S. Carey has just received a hundred tons of ice, and has it nicely packed away in an ice house in Centreville, for the benefit of the people of this parish during the approaching hot weather. He is determined to sell it at a low price, to induce people to buy liberally, that he may secure a business in this line that will pay in future. When the waste by melting between New Orleans and Attakapas is considered, Mr. Cary’s ice will cost but little more than half what New Orleans ice will.”
Mr. Cary’s 1850 ice house was just a well-insulated building; he couldn’t make his own ice.
By 1899, however, ice houses were connected to plants that provided two necessary ice-making ingredients, clean water and electricity.
Those plants also powered bright new street lights that brought a new perspective to a community once the sun went down.
The editor of the Meridional reflected on that change in a little piece headlined “State Street By Lamp Light,” in 1899. It described Abbeville, but the scenes were probably typical in other communities.
“Wednesday night we took a stroll down our main business artery, State street, and found things quite lively,” he wrote. “At the Methodist church … was a blaze of light and prayer meeting was in progress. In the Masonic hall the Knights of Honor were holding forth. At the old Dupy [sic] corner on the open lot
Lucky George had a big crowd with his free show, and further down the street Jas. L. Washington, the child prodigy was entertaining a large audience in the Baptist church. A number of the stores were open and the saloons were in full blast. Safe from observation, the crap shooter and the stud poker gambler plied their vocation and show us that as we assume the bustle of a city its wickedness comes close behind.”
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.<>i>