A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 72)

wetlands and pine in the northern hills, but clear-cutting prevailed and by the turn of the twentieth century Louisiana’s forests largely were denuded of timber. Even after a couple of decades of relative recovery ensued, the depression of 1893 was a dramatic setback, reducing the price of cotton to below the cost of production. While Louisiana largely remained an agrarian state dependent on agricultural production and shipping, industrialization boomed in the major cities of the North, with the corollary conflicts between newly organized capital and newly organized labor. To some extent Louisiana experienced parallel growth and issues but, like much of the South, it pursued a different, more isolated course. The state, however, enjoyed some growth in its infrastructure Louisiana, especially New Orleans. The initial phase of what would prove to be a half-century of labor organizing was manifest in an effort to organize sugar workers, including a major strike that failed in 1886. In 1892, inspired by growing popular criticism of the capitalist class, particularly in the midst of labor unrest that appeared more and more justified, the New York Tribune published a list of 4,047 reputed millionaires. That same year the first general strike in American history took place in New Orleans, in November. More than 25,000 workers went on strike for four days. There were also strikes of switchmen in Buffalo, New York; coal miners in East Tennessee; copper miners in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and steelworkers in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The General Strike of 1892 in New Orleans during these decades, though only one new railroad line was laid, the Mobile & Chattanooga; later an existing Opelousas line was extended to connect with the Union Pacific. On the Mississippi and other rivers, the slow-moving stern and sidewheel steamboats were gradually replaced with tug-propelled barges. In the same year Reconstruction ended and federal troops were withdrawn from the South, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was enacted in major northern cities. In the 1880s the Knights of Labor extended their organizing into 72 CIVIL WAR THROUGH THE NEW CENTURY JOSEPH RUSLING MEEKER (b. 1827, Newark, New Jersey – d. 1887, St. Louis, Missouri) Bayou Plaquemines, 1881 Oil on canvas; 20 x 36 in. Roger H. Ogden Collection generally was considered to have succeeded, significantly due to the cooperation of both black and white workers, but racial polarization eventually sundered the movement two years later as hard times became harder. Nationally, in the Panic of 1893,  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1310 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1310

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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