1
Merlin BASCLE Oral History Tape
Tape # 30. Recorded January 20, 1983
[1822 was the start of Terrebonne Parish.]
The parish of Terrebonne was carved out of the Lafourche territory in 1822, so we go back as a parish
until 1822 I wasn’t here then, but I will talk about the history as I know of it. At the time we
were celebrating our 150th anniversary, I think it was, of the parish, I did a little research, to my
best knowledge, some where around 1827 – 1828, sugar was being produced for the first time in
Terrebonne Parish. We understand that the Southdown area was the area that was showing
considerable production. Now there was a Mr. BELANGER down at the Bourg area, which is
now Bourg, was also producing sugar cane and what had happened there, there was a canal, a
hand dug canal, that went from Bayou Terrebonne over to Lake Long, then out through Lake
Fields, which connected Bayou Terrebonne a point about 10 miles below the city of Houma and
they were, it was a means of getting to Bayou Lafourche. Of course, they were able to cross two
lakes, Lake Long and Lake Fields, I am sure they were using small flat bottom boats, in those
areas. This is about the time in the 1830’s, the early 30’s and the canal was named after Mr.
BELANGER. It was called Canal Belanger, and the now town of Bourg was then referred to then
as Canal Belanger. Some of the old timers, who know the history of it, refer to it sometimes as
Canal Belanger. Now then Bourg and this, they make reference to Bourg and Bourg Ville as well
as Canal Belanger and so on. Getting back to sugar, there were producing sugar and that was the
idea of a canal, was to bring the sugar into the Bayou Lafourche area. Going back to that time,
now sugar has been produced in Terrebonne Parish ever since in varying degrees. There were
different reasons for those degrees. Conditions of the time entered into it. Well diseases came
and as well as weather conditions caused the up and the down in the production of sugar. This
happened all the way on through until in the 1939’s, the very early 1930’s during the first term of
President Roosevelt, that we had sugar legislation designed to promote, the sugar industry, in that
it was handled in various ways. In 1934, congress enacted what was called the John Custer bill, it
was named for the sponsors of the bill. That particular act, the government was stabilizing, or
attempted to stabilize the price of sugar, to the point that it would be economically feasible to be
in the sugar business. Prior to that time, prior to the crash of 1929, the economic crash of 1929,
the agriculture of Terrebonne Parish, certainly sugar being the main agriculture commodity, the
agriculture of the area was vested in the hands of the larger plantations, the big plantations. What
would really happen there, is you got to recognize the history of the country too. The fact that in
1917, we went into a shooting war, in Europe. The demand was far increased production because
of at one given time, we had upward of a million and a half to two million men in Europe,
fighting a war. To prove that it was a necessary necessity, was a tremendous thing. Let’s go back
and visualize, if we may, what was going on in the whole of the agriculture spectrum here in the
United States. We were definitely producing on the basis of a family farm. The family sized
farm. This is actually correct, in the prairie settlers that settled the lands was the manner in which
our whole agriculture was set up in the country. This area was no different from any of the other
areas of the country. The big landowners more or less lived off the land and sold off their
surplus, is the way it was. So the type of agriculture that we had was one, remembering that
through that period, the earliest part of the 20th century, was the same as people farming all over
the country, the small land owners who were selling off their surpluses. Here in Terrebonne they
were principally in sugar production. Most of them had the ability to take their raw cane and put
it into raw sugar, right there on the plantation. It was a costly thing for them to do and they did
most of their finances through the banks of New Orleans. With the prices of sugar dropping, at
that period in time, the graph will show that period in time we were having a little difficulty in
production
2
End of Tape # 30 – begin Tape # 31.
The plantation owners were beginning to get into some difficulty as far as production was concerned.
The demand was made in the name of the war effort of World War I, to increase production and
what was going on all through the country, at that particular time, was the fact that prices began
to elevate, because of the demand put upon the commodities, regardless of what the commodity
was, that was being produced, by the government in its war effort. Sugar was no different. The
growers all through the country felt no difference. They began to expand their acreages to be able
to take care of that. In so doing, they made the demand upon their finances that were being
furnished them by the banks primarily in New Orleans. Plantation after plantation later on when
the war came to a halt, and growers, I was a little bitty youngster at that time, but I can recall
when listening to the history of sugar production, and especially when I got involved with the
program, listening to the older people telling me what had actually happened. In analyzing
specific cases, we found ourselves in this particular condition where banking had taken place
where they had borrowed money from banks and were unable to pay off their investment. Why?
In 1919, they were shooting for twenty or twenty-one dollars a ton from their cane. This is what
they were telling me was the history. They got less than ten dollars a ton. By the year 1931,
sugar was selling for three dollars and a half a ton for cane. It gives you an idea of what was
really happening to the large plantation type farming that had taken place up until that time. The
banks went into fore closure. The banks found themselves with plenty property out here in
Terrebonne and as a result of that, there was a breaking down that took place. The plantation type
ownership where one family probably owned one or two plantations, to the point where a change
took place beginning in 1927, first of all, the South Coast Corporation came into Terrebonne and
they began to get into the business. Why? Because the were in the celotex business, as I can
understand it. By them buying up the plantations and going into sugar production, guaranteed
them the bagasse that was needed to handle the production of their growing business. South
Coast first moved in this parish, and what did they do? They acquired various and sundry
amounts of fourteen different plantations, originally, that were located in the southern part of the
parish. Below Montegut and the Montegut area, Grand Caillou area and the Dularge area. They
began to farm this as a co-op enterprise, where they took individual farms, individual plantations
and combined it into a co-op structure. In 1931, Southdown was farmed as, later on we knew it to
be, originally it was Reality Operators Incorporated. Reality Operators Incorporated, how it got
its start was through the Canal Bank of New Orleans, who was holding all this paper. People
within the bank system itself, there are some questions from some of the materials that I have, in
my possession, that I read, such as the minutes of the committee meetings in organizing the parish
organization that was required to be organized, to be able to administer to the Johns confidence
act of 1934. The growers had to organize the government to be able to, under an association, to
be able to get this support, and each person was paid based upon his production. So we have this
thing happening to South Coast Land and Southdown lands, we proceed to be later on, when we
were really in our hay day, under the program, as having come from the various and sundry
plantations and farms who lost their places as a direct result of World War I. The fact that they
expanded and there were diseases and pestilence cut into the sugar production. As a result, co-op
structure took the place of the predominance of sugar production. Now the smaller farmers who
were able to survive, continued to raise sugar cane. In 1939, there were 530 cane growers,
actually producing sugar cane in Terrebonne Parish. That is after the consolidation. These large
co-op structures, besides using their land as a co-op production, Southdown primarily found
itself, or Reality Operators, which later got to be Southdown, found it self in the position to lease
out on a tenant basis. At one period in time, Reality Operators had seventeen different tenants.
When we really got into the production of sugar here under the act of 1937, and in 1948 amended,
during that period of time, 37 to 48, after World War II, these tenants formed a tenant system,
was developed and begin to form the basis for agriculture in and the farming of sugar cane, in
3
Terrebonne Parish, outside of the two large co-op structures, which was originally Reality
Operators or Southdown and South Coast. The reason why they stayed in it was because coming
out of war, South Coast made the decision to go with the Terrebonne mill, rather than the
Ashland mill. They dismantled the Ashland mill and concentrated on the Terrebonne mill. Why?
Because of its location, in so far as bayous were concerned and the transportation of the cane and
they used the narrow gage railroad bringing the cane from the Ashland area to the Montegut area.
In the case of Southdown, they chose to maintain Southdown and to develop it also in to a
refinery. Southdown became a refinery and a producer of raw sugar as well as refined sugar, and
continued to produce up through 1977. That was the last year of crops at Southdown.
[What was their brand name?]
Southdown Sugar. In the case of South Coast, they only did the raw sugar here and they brought the raw
sugar over the refinery at Mathews, because when they bought out Terrebonne holdings, they
bought out Lafourche holdings and some St. Mary holdings. Reality Operators bought out
holdings in Terrebonne and in Lafourche and in St. James Parishes. When they went out and
began to get into the co-op structure as a means for producing sugar cane. As we developed in
this thing here, what happened though? The larger plantations, the larger farms, as the farmer got
a little bit older, in Terrebonne, he gradually went into a tenant system, where the land owner, the
person that actually owned the land, and was still farming, for some reason or other, we did not
have as was happening in many other areas, we did not have the sons taking over the operation,
the next generation and so on, like you find in the mid west, especially. In farms as you see today
in the original generations, the founding fathers went out there and cleared the brush and began to
farm. So today, even up to as far as fifteen years ago, there was a definite trend back to the tenant
system in all counts. Then in 1970,
[Did they pay rent?]
No, it was mostly on a share rent where the South Coast being they were the ones that maintained the
greater portion of their operations. South Down’s land was put on a tenant basis. The rental ran
something like one sixth of the share of the crop produced. Because of the very nature of the
crop, the land lord, or the land owner never takes possession of anything, like in the case of, say
cotton, or in the case of some of the grains, where the percentage would be measured out and
actually delivered to the land owner, as rent. In the case of sugar, it was always in terms of
percentage, they had a few cash rentals, but the cash would not be in relation, or tied to the sugar
production. It would be on an acreage basis. You would get so many acres and you would pay
like ten dollars an acre. It was paying so much, for the entire farm, for a stipulated amount of
money. Where the share was involved, was in the proceeds of the crop. The proceeds being from
various sources. Beginning in 1934, and continuing up all the way through 1974, the sugar
program always stood on its own. It was not part of an omnibus farm bill or anything. It distinct
and separate program, on its own. It also fell under the administration of the sugar program. It
formed a basis for payment to the grower, the person. So it was also included in the fractional
share of rent. In the administration of the program, here in Terrebonne, for the forty years, triple
A’s and TMA’s , always deal with pretty much a tenant system, that two people were involved.
The grower, the actual operator of the farm, and the owner of the land. As technology caught up
with the production of sugar, we found ourselves growing in size of farms, where one individual
grew by taking over additional ownership tracts of land, to the point where most of our farming
enemies in Terrebonne, had as many as one producer and seventeen different lands. One guy was
actually farming ownership lands that belonged to seventeen different owners.
[Instead of one owner and seventeen tenants?]
Right. It is ironic that we would come up with that same kind of system. I had mentioned about the
seventeen tenants, that Reality Operators originally had out there on it’s plantation, and they had
some of the most unusual names, for some of these areas. For instance back of some of the
plantations on 311, there was an area back there called Savanne Road, as we know Savanne Road
today going to little Bayou Black, just off to the right going from 311 to big Bayou Black, there
4
was an area that was called “Good Chicken”. Now these farmers come in here, the tenants come
in to the County Office and talk in terms of him farming back on “Good Chicken”. I think the
rifle range and so on , was up in that general area, that originally called “Good Chicken”. I can
recall many times in the early days of the program, trying to get out to these peoples farms to
check on their production and the like. Of course we had to watch the weather conditions,
because that was traveling on dirt roads, where you are actually using a field road, without the
Reality Operators of Southdown Sugars, or whatever their name was at the time, was involved in
the front production of the front lands. These back lands in there had been carved out where
people were actually raising families, had homes back in there, and they were producing, maybe
for the production of some thirty or forty acres of land. It had been turned over to them and they
were paying a fractional share of the proceeds of the crop to the operators. We had them down on
Bayou Black, Little Bayou Black, Whiskey Bayou, all these lands were under the ownership of
Realty Operators and later South Down. In their tenant system, these people were farming in
these out lying areas, that they were raising families, they were all a part of the sugar operation in
Terrebonne Parish. This is where the 513 farms that we are talking about. They were tenant
farmers and they financed themselves. They had their own equipment, their own work stock, as
well as furnishing the labor, which was princely family labor, that they were actually using. That
is the system that we knew and appreciated as being the type of farming that went on. As time
developed, in its hay day, we had as much as 25,000 acres of sugar cane being farmed here in
Terrebonne, under the farm program, between the 1934 and the 1974 years, even under the
control program, depended upon the need for the production. We had at the same time, the South
Coast came in here and South Down, or Reality Operators, bough up these plantations, something
else happened here. They discovered oil and gas, down in the southern part of the parish. A
company know as the Texas Company moved in. From that beginning, doing their production in
those grounds below Montegut and into the areas of the bays and below beyond the parish of
Terrebonne. We began to develop our minerals since the early 1930’s, they have begun to be a
pressure against the good farm land. If you will go back and look in the Police Jury records, you
will see that every ward, there were ten wards in the parish, every ward had representatives on the
police jury. By and large all of the rural areas, that is outside of ward 3, those wards were
generally represented on the police jury by farmers. Today, out of the fifteen or sixteen members,
of the police jury, there has been a reshaping of the districts and so on, with the one man, one
vote system, but there isn’t a person on the police jury that knows anything about farming. When
we ask the question “What happened to farming in Terrebonne Parish?” it is quite simple, the
pressures that were put on by the fossil fuels also brought in to the governing bodies, and rightly
so, because they formed the basis, the tax base for the parish. Before, the tax base was vested in
the farms, that were the land owners, that were scattered all through the parish of Terrebonne.
Now we give recognition to the fact that the man that has a wide expanse in the southern part of
the parish, the marsh areas, we had a fur bearing crop there and those lands were contributing and
as time wore on, some of the people from the rural areas, found their way on to the police jury
and the governing body of the parish of Terrebonne, were representative of the people that were
doing the things out there, the fisheries in the program and so on. You will see them enter twined
over the years. Finally it has gotten to the point where the only people, are people that are
directly connected with the industry of, or is analyzed to the production of oil and gas. That
carries a large number of things. The guy who has the boats out there, to be able to service the oil
companies and the guy today that has the air fleet, that is serving the oil industry, too, because it
becomes a framer of things, as far as the government is concerned.
[Now South Down lands have sub divisions on them.]
That is a story in itself. If you want to find out what is happening, say of the large corporations.
[After World War II, when did that confrontation really have it’s affect?]
Right after World War II, definitely, right after World War II is when we really began to mechanize. The
effort before was one of vested in the family type labor. Immediately before World War II, we
5
found our selves getting into a tenant system, because of so many people losing their farms,
during the 1920’s. That was a direct result of the straits they had gotten themselves into. It is
very simple. Let’s go back and see why we had to go the program.
[Is it very much like the boom that was felt last year, and now -?]
That is right. That is exactly what is happening. Let’s look at it. The guy had a forty acre farm and he
was doing fine. Whether there was a wheat farm in the mid west or a grain farm, a corn farm or
hog farm, or whatever it was. The efforts that was being required of him, required him to
produce more, so what did he do? He went out and cleared up land or he bought up other farms
and he increased his producing capacity. When the, and he had to mortgage everything he had to
do that to the bank, so the next step was, in the process, was when the prices began to depress, he
had commitment that he had to meet. He had to make these payments. So instead of reducing his
acreage, whatever it was, two things make up for returns, production and the value of that
production, what he gets on a unit basis. So if he was producing a thousand bushels of corn for
the market, and he was getting two dollars for it, he knew he had a two thousand dollar revenue.
If it fell to fifty cents corn, his commitment to the bank was based on the two thousand dollars, so
what he did was increased his acreage, to produce more corn, which further depressed the price,
and he wound up with twenty-five cents instead of the fifty cents. He got himself caught in. The
same thing was happening with the cane man. He produced for nineteen to twenty dollar cane
and it wound up at three and a half. So he never could do anything about it. Increasing his
production just lowered the price. He found himself in that position. This is what happened. He
never could mechanize. So after World War II, when these farmers were under a control system
and I got to say, it is a lucky thing that there was a farm program. It came out of the great
depression of the early 1930’s. This is a good thing that we had a program, we were able to meet
the crisis that we were facing then, a world wide war. When we stop and realize we did a pretty
good job, because we put some thirteen million men in arms, the whole globe over. They became
the best fed and the best clothed people on the face of the earth. It is true we had some hardships
here, but it was a regulated hardship. Everybody came up with the incentive programs, we
controlled the amount of automobiles, to be produced. We even told people how many pairs of
shoes they could buy in a year’s time. Why, because we were all geared towards the war effort.
Now we found all this in place, when the war ended. Satisfactorily as far as we were concerned,
and what did they do then? We could turn our attention to the things that we hadn’t been able to
do for ourselves before. The equipment that was being produced, better tractors went into the
economics producing more, buying fertilizers, things that we weren’t doing before. This
revolution took place right after the war.
[What kept if from being the same problems after World War 11, like after World War I?]
We did not have a program after World War I. There was no given direction, no direction to sugar
production. We would have today, and we were out of a sugar program in 1975, 1976, 1977 and
1978. In 1978 they realized that sugar was at such a low price that something had to be done. By
executive order, there began to be some things. They called upon some materials that some laws
that were on the books, since 1949, and began to protect the sugar industry. When I say sugar
industry, both sugar cane and sugar beets, because we were at the mercy of the foreign countries.
We protected ourselves by the existence of these imports of sugar and so on. It was in 1981
before we were able to get sugar back into a anemones bill. Sugar could never fly in the congress
today and couldn’t then in 1974, on its own, it took forty years for the simple reason that we can
get sugar cheaper, delivered here than what we can produce here in the country. When we do
this, we could also find ourselves like we don’t produce coffee here, and coffee can get to be very
expensive sometimes. You get to be controlled by foreign countries. This is what the argument
is all the time. How do you argue with a congressman from Detroit or a congressman from
Harlem, where the people are using sugar, and when they know they can buy sugar on the world
market for less that ten cents. How do you tell them that we got to develop a program and it is
going to make sure of twenty cents sugar as is the case right now. We can get less than ten cents
6
sugar in this country today, and it won’t cost any more than that. Which would mean then, you
talk about a lead item in the grocery store, but we are, we have a program administered now
though a support, which is a loan to the raw house, in support of his sugar, we pay it and the
grower reaps some of the benefits of it.
[So the extra prices allow them -]
Well it was a control program. The put this on earlier in 1938, but here this guy didn’t even want to give
up twenty-five out of every hundred acres, despite the problems he was having. Look in the
1930’s, it was down to three and a half a ton. At the beginning of the 1930’s. He didn’t even
want to give up his twenty-five, to control his acreage. This was what that group was raising hell
about. They didn’t want to give it up. The whole basic idea was, what would he do with his
land? He was strictly a sugar farmer. So that is the story. You know there was a young lady that
just retired from in this office, and I was reading in the paper, an article, they interview her again.
She was telling them that from her experiences in the program, she had to come to work under the
program, back some thirty-six years ago. When she came in, she came in under a program to use
the prisoners of war, the German prisoners of war, that were located in here. Her first job, when
he farmer applied to the office, that was through the county agent, so we were involved in that.
She switched over to triple A, and finally AMA and so on down the line. She enumerated some
of the things that there was so many sugar farms, there were so many dairies, here in Terrebonne
Parish at the time. I kind of have even forgot about the dairy business, until I began to read the
article, and it reminded me of what had happened to us. We don’t even produce one quart of
milk, in the Parish of Terrebonne. When she was here, they had something like twelve dairies
here in the parish, right after the war. The government made support programs available to the
dairies and so on. It got to –
End of Tape # 31 – begin Tape # 32.
I don’t even know what date this was.
[Who would you go to for later on, when the subdivisions?]
Okay, getting on that, and I guess the best way to look at it, we were moving very slowly in the
development. That is beginning in the 1930’s, with the development of the oil industry, in the
parish, people needed, Houma needed to grow. Naturally they wanted to live in Houma. Houma
needed to grow, so the pressures began to grow outward from Houma. As people got a little more
affluent, they had more money to spend, it wasn’t uncommon for them to go out into country side
and find small tracts of land, five to ten acres of land available to them, and they began to buy up
these lands. It wasn’t coming from the people out in the country, people who wanted to get out of
the city and get out into some country living, because it would appear that in the early days, of the
development of minerals here in the parish of Terrebonne, that most of the people that came in
were from east Texas and from north Louisiana, as several people told me, who are as much
Terrebonne as I am, although I am native Terrebonne. There is one particular guy rose to some
heights in the then Texas Company, and the Texaco and so on. He just got to the point in the
early 1930’s where hell he would get dried eating dried peas. I can remember as a young man
just beginning coming out of school and getting in to the whole thing. I never worked a day in
my life for any oil company, and I am not being projected against the oil, when I talk this way.
Unfortunately I think we should have learned a lesson when they cut over the cypress and then it
died. I hope it doesn’t happen. They set the dates, the tie dates in the oil industry. I am
wondering what will happen to some of our schools and to our hospitals and to our public
buildings, if this gets to be a ghost town, as far as oil and gas is concerned. I keep my fingers
crossed that it doesn’t. As these people came in, they began to put the pressure and urban sprawl
began. The developers came in. Because of the very topography of Terrebonne, you have to
visualize Terrebonne, as it being first of all land wise and in the parish of Terrebonne, we are the
largest parish, area wise, in the whole state of Louisiana. Of this large area that we have, only ten
7
percent of that total acreage is suitable for the production of crops. The unfortunate part about it
that some of the land that are in woods, in forestry today could be cleared out, and it has been
done in some cases, and they can build on it. The greater part of our urban sprawl took place
where? Along the ridges that parallels the five major bayous that occupies the parish. Everyone
of these bayous wind down out towards the open waters of the bays and eventually, the Gulf of
Mexico. Those ridges become narrower and narrower as you descend. The pressure that is being
brought to bear is against the prime farm land, and when you have just a small amount, its all of
the acreage in Terrebonne are the usual amount of acreage when you look at other parishes in the
state of Louisiana, you think of elevation, the pressure wouldn’t have been so great. The pressure
was great because we had such a limited entry. We got ourselves even into further problems in
that you can only farm on two to two and one half feet elevation, on the back ends of the ridges,
they fall into the marsh. But, you can’t build a house back there. Far too many of the houses that
were built, subdivisions that were built extend into this area. As a result, we got ourselves, later
on, into a drainage problem, in that when realize that the drainage of this whole parish was one
that would take of, was developed under the old farming operations. Take care of a three inch
rain over twenty-four hour period, because there was so much soil action to start with. If you fill
up this particular swamp, and how many times I have heard that, this particular land when my
daddy use to farm this tract of land. We have forty acres of land here he use to farm, and we
never had water standing on this land. What did they do? They came in and put concrete and
slabs and a roof over sixty percent of it and left the other forty percent of their forty acres of land
out there to be able to work, and the rain hasn’t changed, we are still getting those kinds of rain.
We are getting some out there today and we got some yesterday. The roads are still there, plus
we brought into those subdivisions these modern conveniences that every time you flush the
commode, you dump between five and eight gallons of water into it and you dump the small
ground area they have, super saturated already. Anytime any rain falls it has got to go
somewhere and they have flooding of streets. The demand was being put upon these people here
that, by the way I will re-emphasize they weren’t farmers to start with, and they don’t know what
the heck happened out there, and they don’t understand why it is flooding. They have to go into a
large drain off system, the pumps are used, they keep the other water overflowing the bayous, that
they pump into, and keep trying to get it all down, but at the same time, we cut man made canals,
the Intracoastal Canal, that was meant to be 300 feet wide, that was the amount of right of way
they got with additional right of way on each side available when the corps of engineers came in
here, back there in the early 1930’s cutting the canals in the late 1920’s and they gave circulation
to the water. The we cut the navigation canals straight out to the Gulf, where the South winds
blow up the tides and we have an elevation of water in here all the time, that what they say we
need to do is build a levee, we got to keep this stuff off to the side. Right back of Houma where
peoples say, I did not know you people had a lake right out here between the Couteau and the six
foot canal. It is right outside along U. S. 90, between the St. Louis Canal. You see it out there,
the lake. I got news for you, under the program, since I am with the program, they use to run
livestock back in there. There were people that actually grazed livestock, you could go to the end
of Gouaux Avenue and walk straight on across to the Couteau. Today, you are up to your waist
in water. Now what happened to it? It has been impounded, that is what has happened to it. It
has no place to go, it can’t drain because the coast is higher than it is, and even a levee, the road
there, so we can continue to use the highway. These are the things that have taken place as far as
the use of our land, but it all goes back to what use. We have always had problems with flooding.
The problems of flooding were associated with the Atchafalaya, in 1927 we had a terrific flood,
The hurricane was in 1926, and the flood was in 1927. That is right Or from Bayou Lafourche
where they levied Bayou Lafourche because it was directly connected to the river up a
Donaldsonville, and they control it now, they have regulated it. You can go into many of the
areas bordering the Chacahoula swamp and all, and see where they use to have farming beyond
the area that now we have retrenched ourselves, dug canals, to use the pump out system, and
8
behind those canals are areas that use to be farms, you can see the levees behind them. You can
see the old rows in lands that have been grown up in saplings and trees today. I will take you out
to Bull Run and show you some of those, but I am telling you, out along the Chacahoula Road.
Lands that are owned lie idle today, Cox Plantation back there, and all. You get behind there and
you see the old roads up in there where they have given up the farming. What has happened?
Because the normal drainage of the sloughs, the lower areas, can’t take place anymore, unless we
lift it and put it beyond swell the other areas down to the south of it.
[Who is responsible now, I mean as far as receding farmlands?]
We brought the Gulf to our front door. When you look at aerial photography, that is on file in this office,
the indiscriminate cutting of our marsh areas, to the south of us, cutting that was done by the oil
industry, you ask yourself where in the hell was the leaders? What took place, it looked like the
bottom line, the profit line was the only thing they were thinking about. Unfortunately we had
something to go by, because you can go out in the Donner area and the Chacahoula area see the
exact thing happening, when they raped the parish of Terrebonne as far as the lumber business
was concerned. So we are right back where we started from. I am not hostile, I am just making
an observation, I am making an observation.
[At one time Donner was as big as the city of Houma, and there is nothing there today.]
That is absolutely right. Somewhere in that marsh area, the swamp area over at Chacahoula and the
Donner area, there is a kiln out there, grown up with trees and vines all around, the original kiln,
where they dried their lumber. It is a part of the past. That is a virtual jungle surrounding it. It
was a very intricate part of their program. They were looking at the bottom line all the way
through and when they no longer had any use for the area, they just picked up and left. The
unfortunate part of this whole thing though is the very same area, that they stripped, then became
very productive as far as the mineral productions that later came. So that whole Chacahoula
swamp area is still a viable part of the parish of Terrebonne as it relates to us, the tax base,
because there is a revenue that is being derived from that land, because of its value for its oil
development and gas development is concerned. I have often wondered what is going to happen
to Terrebonne from an agricultural standing, if, and I asked this question at a meeting one day,
has the department, the soil conservation service, at the Washington level and it was a Director
that I asked that question to. Has the Department made any study on the cost of returning all this
urban sprawl, that has taken place, throughout the country, to agriculture when all these houses,
that is sitting on slabs are no longer used for houses? All the light industry that is out there, you
can take any town in city and the country and the same thing has happened. That urban sprawl
went out. What is going to be done, because I think in due time, we will reach that point where
we will not be dependant upon the oil and the gas and like many other things, like the chimney
and the lamp and the kerosene light went out, so will the use of oil go out. We won’t need it
anymore. Scientists will perfect the thing and we won’t be riding in that kind of automobile any
more, that is running on that street today. When that happens, what will we do, will we have
reached the point in time, paralleling that we will get all that we need in the form of substance for
the human body in a pill. That is the thing that will generate the power, instead of driving that, or
will we quit eating as individuals. I don’t think we are going to quit eating. If we maintain the
present eating habits that we have, we had better start thinking about where we are going to
produce it. We have sadly taken over in so many ways.
[I do a lot of business in Montreal and I noticed the stores are so crowded and offices are crowded.
That is absolutely true. There are very few people, I will give you a little story, I don’t know if heard it, I
am cooperating with a lady by the name of Carol MC CABE, who is doing a story on pressures
relating to the urban sprawl in America. Terrebonne was one of the areas given to her at the
Washington level, as being a place where she might want to look into it. I have worked with her,
we got quite a bit of correspondence and lots of conversations going on, to the point where this
year in December, she wrote me and asked that I give her some further information. She has
reached that point in time in the development of this program. She wanted to know just what is
9
happening. I think my answer to her, and her letter to me, could sum up this whole thing, as far
as agriculture in Terrebonne is concerned. It says, this was dated December the third nineteen
eighty-two. She says Dear Mr. BASCLE, by now I suspect you must think the farm lands have
died somewhere along the route, but that is not the case. I have before me answered letters from
you dating back to a year or so, I have been most grateful for the material you sent me and leads
to the success to get this project through. I am now beginning my final revision of the Louisiana
chapter and I want to bring it up to date, therefore I am turning to you again. The most obvious
question and it strikes me as I look back on my old notes, which are on the news stories that have
appeared since the recession struck, is how the cut backs in the petroleum industry have effected
Terrebonne Parish. Is it safe to assume that the housing boom that was taking so much
agricultural land has been abated, somewhat. I have a clipping of a wire service story that tells of
jobless workers who have been camping out in Houma, after going there in search for non
existing jobs and I assume from this that firms are no longer hiring anybody who has two arms
and two legs. I would appreciate your comments on the economic situation and whether this is
having an effect anger there. Another question concerns the return of sugar support, has that had
any effect on the amount of sugar cane people being converted or are people staying in sugar who
might have otherwise have gotten out? I am writing to Bob ODOM for the latest information on
any state moves “to protect agric land from conversion”. From what I read they are getting
concerned at the state level, but that haven’t done anything concrete yet. Yahoo, she is right.
During the last month I have been having a number of interviews with U. S. D. Officials along
steps being taken as the result of the 1981 farm act, and projects them to the policy act as part of
the farm bill. They seem very optimistic at SES, that their program of assisting states and local
governments was to protect pine and unique farm land from conversions will be effective. Do
you have any use of that program in Terrebonne? It is the land evaluation and site effect system
advising government on which land should be saved. We haven’t gotten to that point yet. I was
interested in the episode involving mainly the REED and WINMILLER property and certainly
agreed she was used. That is materials that I sent her, where WINEMILLER used the materials
that appeared in the local paper. He is finally in charge of all this South Coast lands, that slipped
away from us in agriculture. I thought the story was odd, anyway. It had no real point as a new
story and there seemed to have little probing of Mr. WINEMILLER to see what his motives were.
The kind of thing most of us would use for doing too much, rather than too little. She says, how
is Russell BRIEN, he is one of the farmers that I got her into contact with. He was very much
involved in it, so called expansion that they had gotten into. The last cent has been spent on
research and writing, and I think now that nearly done, we have had some interest from good
publishers and I begin to believe the book will finally see the light day. I am finishing up with
Oregon. I know about the state of Oregon, well I have spent some time the last couple of months,
where I found an excellent souse state wide land use pending bill. The farm land has definitely
been saved there. There is no sprawl to speak of. It has the law in use for ten years now and it
sets up definite farming zones. I may also go to Wisconsin before I finish, because every one
says they have a fine agri land protection policy there. I hope all is well and so on down the line.
My answer to her was something like this. I apologized for the delay in giving her the response
to questions raised in your letter of December third, aside from the problems arising in the office
where additional time, I went to the hospital with some special problems I had. On the economy,
you are correct in that the lack of activity in the oil patch did effect the economy of the general
area. Housing starts along with construction of industries pretty much came to a stand still. The
area you and I traveled in around Houma suddenly dried up in activity. Oil field equipment, rigs,
rolling stock, much in evidence when you were here, became sitting inventory in industrial yards.
Oil activity was of course, that spoke of the number of drilling rigs, that were in operation,
changed due to the number being stacked sitting idle. Lay offs in the area reached serious
proportions during the third and fourth quarter of last year, 1982. Only now in 1983 does it
appear a bit of a turn around might take place. The rapid expansion of urban development all but
10
came to a halt. Only those subdivisions already underway, before 1982 continued some
development, at a much reduced pace. School people tell me that the exodus of students from the
schools, through out the parish, points to the fact that many of those who settled here during
recent years have now pulled up roots and moved on. Many to return to places of birth, on the
rural farms of Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas and on up into the states of the mid-west. One
thing sure, the absence of out of state car licenses is most notable. To one, such as I, who could
not get over the number found in 1981 and the first quarter of 1982. This is true if you were
around here, but you don’t see them anymore. Did they all change to Louisiana? Hell no, they
were just down here and they are gone. When they lose young kids in schools, and these country
schools are gone now. Sugar legislation, bring sugar under the legislature passed in 1981, has
established prices which sugar cane farmers receive beginning in 1981 production and continuing
in 1982. The crop just completed in Louisiana should settle out at about twenty-one to twentythree dollars a ton. That figure, growers can live with. Only three mills remain, however and
there is little likely of acreage expansion. With the price increase will keep a few farmers from
going out, had the rise not occurred. That was in answer to what she was trying to get. What I
am saying here is that everybody recognizes that something is happening. That we are so slow to
do something about it. I don’t know just what is going to happen, about the cane, I mean.
[I have a few questions how did it come about, unlike any other farm industry that I know of, the mill pays
the farmer. The mill pays the cost to transport the cane from the field to the mill?]
The only commodity is that of the sugar cane. I think it is an outgrowth of the fact that in the sugar mills,
just about every large producer, we go back to the original colonization of the area, the whole
sugar mill, the vastness of the plantation system. They all had pretty much their own mill. When
it became uneconomical, it became a question of saving mills, where one plantation system
combined with the other. A system was developed at that time, I will keep the mill, I will pay for
hauling the cane, to my mill. You got some mills that are still offering this, some have fallen into
corporate structured enterprise, some are being operated as co-operative system. What ever it
was, it was an outgrowth of that. The only saleable thing was sugar, when it is the raw sugar
stage. The transportation of raw cane is a horrendous process. I bet you the sugar industry would
have died a long time ago, had it not continued a program, that was the result of the consolidation
in the system that took place, way back there when there were plantation operations. I think you
understand what I am trying to say. The grower cannot pay for the hauling to the mill. It is fast
getting to a point though, where the mill, it becomes too costly to the mill and the mill, and this
another reason why you have seen certain things happen. An example, there is no sugar cane
being produced down off of Bayou Dularge. Why? They are kind of isolated down there. There
is only one way of getting out. One road coming up, you have got to come up that one road. And
then they have a bridge system that is atrocious. It is very hard to climb the high bridge and then
they have to come through town. If they go around the other way and they cross over the bridge
at Prospect Street, then another high bridge. It got to be a point where it was more economical to
just get out. Nobody wanted to haul the cane, from down that way. The farmer did not want to
bear the cost of it. These people who were in the cane business down there were pretty much
forced out of the cane business by the fact that when South Down closed, the only other mill
available to them was in Raceland or all the way to Thibodaux. They had to make a decision,
because both mills, both area mills was saying that’s too long a haul.
End Tape # 32 – begin Tape # 33.
[Why does the mill continue this process, that they started in the early days?]
In the mid 30’s the government recognized, under the programs we administrated through the farm
program, from the sugar act of 1948, amended all the way through 1974. Those 40 years of
programs, the program was ultra social, when we first got in to it, the government told the guy,
you can have so many acres, the original said you could have so many tons per man, if he could
11
produce more than that, he had trouble deciding if 10 acres was enough to make the quota in tons,
whether it would take 12 acres, that was just a 20% lee way, he could operate there, so it was
socialistic so far as that was concerned. The other phase of it was, that if you were going to get in
to the program, you got to pay your labor, a certain rate. Socialistic again, he was being told how
he had to pay his laborers. The milling operations was necessary. The mill was told, if you are
going to produce administration cane, you can only qualify for the payment under the act, if the
cane you purchase from other growers, is paid at a fair price. That fair price had added to it, the
hauling charges. If you absorbed the hauling charges, the year before, you had to absorb it the
following year. It was a continuation for forty years, of that kind of socialistic --, the only part of
it that was dropped, was the earlier years where they told the farmer, how many acres of cane that
you can have, a percentage of that total acreage will have to be in conserving crops. We are
going to tell you what those crops are. They can be planted in the summer or winter. That was
dropped in 1948. From then on, as amended, they did not require the farmer to meet that
conservation needs. All the other things, the fair price, the mill had to pay. You can say, not all
mills had administration cane. True, but there was competition early in the program between
mills for sugar cane production, so if he did not absorb the cost of hauling, the next mill who was
going to get the sugar act payments, absorbed it. So it was perpetrated throughout the whole
history, the thing just endured through the whole thing. It is reaching a point now, where
growers, I had three growers sitting around here, not too long ago, in a committee meeting, who
said, you know if Raceland shuts down, I don’t know if I can send cane to Lafourche Sugars, up
there at Leighton, they say I am too far from them, and they will pay up to $1.25 a ton to haul it
and whatever else the cost, I will have to bear it. So the economics of the whole thing is going to
take hold, and you can see, the wayside this thing is going to drop.
[Can you run down historically the different things that have come to pass?]
Well, you have sugar was the predominate crop. With the advent of the pressures that we said, when we
lost the front lands in so many areas, that has been the production of soy beans, the majority of
the acreage in Terrebonne Parish, that is farmed, is used for the production of those two crops.
Today there are more acres in soy beans, than there are in sugar cane. In the earlier days, before
the real dry cane, there was quite a bit of production of String Beans, fresh beans, to the point
where they rode every night of the bean season, carloads of beans, packed in ice, that were
headed primarily to the Chicago market. That was a big production all through the whole time.
They had thousands of acres, in those days, especially in the area of the Couteau, Bayou Blue
area, the Bayou Little Caillou area and the Pointe-aux-Chene areas, the lower areas of the Parish.
The smaller farms, they were concentrated. Then we had a large Irish potato acreage, that was
produced. In a normal season five to seven thousand acres of Irish potatoes. In the early part of
the program here, where they actually had, under the Roosevelt early years, they had commercial
vegetables allocations, they had Irish potato allocation, where they actually began to control, it
was called every farm had a general base of items for the farm. In 1939, we had all these
sugarcane farms, 513 actually producing sugarcane. We probably had a thousand different farms
that were actually operating, some may have had only five acres of land, but they were producing
on those five acres, crops, spring crops, vegetable crops, cabbage, corn, potatoes and beans. It
was a big business, commercial vegetables, primarily string beans, green beans, Irish potatoes,
especially prior to our getting in to World War II. We were beginning to bring all these boys in,
and it looks like everybody in the army peeled two sacks of potatoes every morning. You are
familiar with that old story there? KP. Duty. Well, the demand was there. It was about that time
that, prior to that time, the Easter Lily program became very affective, in here and were being
grown in the southern part of the Parish, primarily to offset the loss of the Japanese market. The
greater part, the preponderance of production, we used here in America, was coming from Japan.
This is what the whole World War II, was about. Japan was the adversary of this whole business,
so we began to produce this, in the later part of the thirties. We were beginning to show some
signs of disruption, with the Japanese government, so it did become, but it was short lived. It
12
died out right after the war. We had black rot of the bulbs, they called it. It was a disease that set
in them and we were unable to produce the bulbs properly. Have you ever seen this? In here, it
is sealed, I participated in the earl development of, scenes of the Easter Lilies of that time. What
was the date on here ---. But anyway I have some slides that showed ---. I have a few slides that
really showed the Easter Lily fields. Another thing I did not touch upon, we have not a large beef
cattle production, here. We have pretty healthy sized farms that are producing beef cattle. The
beef cattle production has always been a part of the production of Terrebonne Parish, since the
day the first settlers got here. Where they raised their own beef and so on. We have, for a long
time, open range, where the cow had more right on the road than the automobile. Finally we
pulled our horns back, to the point, where, I think not too long ago, that action on the part of the
Police Jury, made it so that you and I driving our cars down the highway, proceeded the right of
the man who had the cow. However there are many of people who paid for wrecks with their
automobiles and killed a horse or a cow, that got out, from behind that fence. The man in the car
was responsible. It has been not much more than a few years, that isn’t the case anymore. I
would say, that what I have enumerated, sugar, the advent of soybeans, of course, corn was
always a big crop, every plantation had to produce so many acres of corn. When we had the
dairies, these people were raising corn, for their animals. When the dairies went by the wayside,
we mechanized our farms, so went the corn. Today, very few people --, now we have gravitated
to the position, where a guy says, I am a farmer, and all he has out there, tractors, combines, cane
farmers, the harvesters. He doesn’t have the first cow, he doesn’t have the first chicken on the
farm and he doesn’t own the land. That is the system, that we have gotten into. We have gotten
into that system because we got crowded out, to a large degree. Urban sprawl makes it possible
for people to locate out in the open, but didn’t want the neighbors to have, as a matter of fact,
Autin Packing Company ran into all kinds of problems, with their slaughter house, because
people moved next door to it. Now when he put the slaughter house out there, Autin Packing
Company, had their place right down town here. They did their slaughtering out of town, people
came and built, they sub-divided the farms, they had little farms there. People built around it and
they didn’t like the stench, they didn’t want it, and they raised enough hell, until, they brought
them to court and everything else and finally it got to be too much of a hassle. It is easier to buy
that meat from elsewhere, let somebody else do the slaughtering. I think they just went back into
canning sausages, here lately, on a miniature scale.
[The local farmer lost the sales?]
The local farmer is using places in Lafourche, in Thibodaux and in Raceland, the auction barns, where
they bring their live stock to now. So that is the story on that.
[You no longer do this?]
No I am part in insurance. The reason I kept all this stuff is that I keep saying when I do decide to hang it
up, sit down one of these days and really do some writing, here is a paper I prepared way back, I
don’t know when --End of recording