Rice changed everything

He began his business career when he was 17 years old, clerking in James Webb's general store at Plaquemine Brûlée in Acadia Parish and it appears that he was already developing a head for business.

He and a partner eventually took over Webb's store and ran it until 1884, when Acadia Parish was formed. That's when he and his brother C.C. Duson and some others formed the Southwest Louisiana Land Company and he became its general manager.

According to biographer William Henry Perrin, by 1891 he had bought and sold over 200,000 acres and the business of the land company had "assumed enormous proportions."

That's why people took notice when in May 1902, now rich and getting a bit gray at the temples, he traveled to New York City to promote southwest Louisiana to investors there.

"When my brother and myself first went into the rice business … back in 1884 and 1885," he said in a press interview in New York, "land in our part of the state was selling for $1.25 an acre and there was no demand for it. Our whole country was poor at that time. I was not worth $1,000 myself, but rice has changed everything. Now the same land turned into rice fields is worth from $35 to $65 an acre."

He said that in 1901 some three million bags of rice were harvested from the southwest Louisiana prairies and that although the business was "still in its infancy," he did not know "a single man who has invested [in southwest Louisiana rice land] who has not made a profit."

He said it was "uphill work at first," but it paid off.

"At first we had to ship our rice to mills in New Orleans, but now the little town of Crowley has ten large mills," he said. Also at first "the growers were handicapped for lack of money" and middlemen took "the biggest slice" of the profits when the rice was harvested.

But perseverance paid. The local mills were cutting into shipping costs and eliminating some of the greedy middlemen and "the people of the country [were] beginning to learn that rice is good food." He said that rising costs for competitive crops also helped rice farmers.

"It costs just about the same to raise rice as it does oats or wheat and the yield is often over 20 bags to the acre." At 1902 prices, that translated to more than $850 per acre, he said. According to a government inflation calculator, that would equate to more than $20,000 an acre today.

New York, Duson said, was the first place where southwest Louisiana growers and millers were able to find the investment capital they needed and "the industry is getting on a better basis right along."

He said he was in New York to try to drum up more investment, and promised that it was a risk worth taking. "The profits of some of the companies in the business … are very large. One company made 75 per cent last year," he claimed.

He said his own company "didn't make quite that much" but that he expected it to do so in 1902 "if everything turns out well."

That year didn't turn out that well. The weather didn't cooperate and the Jennings newspaper reported at harvest time that a dry growing season meant yields weren't "what had been expected."

But that was just a hitch for W.W. Duson. At the time of his death In 1929, obituaries reported that in addition to being connected with the creation of Crowley, Eunice, and a number of other southwest Louisiana communities, he had been "engaged in multiple enterprises connected with irrigation and milling of rice," had started a newspaper, was president of the first oil company in Acadia Parish, and was involved in several banks that held his substantial accounts.

 

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You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.