aynsley andras staff writer
Faced with a wartime labor shortage that threatened Louisiana’s sugarcane industry, they turned to prisoners of war to keep the crops, and the economy, growing.
World War II led about 280,000 young men and women from Louisiana to help in the war, leaving a shortage of workers in local industries, says Glenn Falgoust, who researched the Donaldsonville POW camp.
“They [U.S. Military] just left the territory for four years, so these sugarcane plantations were in trouble,” Falgoust says. “No labor. No labor, you can’t produce a crop.”
“They [U.S. Military] just left the territory for four years, so these sugarcane plantations were in trouble. No labor. No labor, you can’t produce a crop.”
With that labor shortage, sugar prices rose. Eventually, the Office of Price Administration set a price ceiling on sugar and implemented rationing, according to Prisoner of War Labor in the Sugar Cane Fields of Lafourche Parish, Louisiana: 1943-1944 by Joseph T. Butler Jr.
With labor in demand, the state decided to employ prisoners in the sugarcane fields. Prisoners worked six days a week starting their day at 4 a.m., says Falgoust.
Prisoners who completed their assigned tasks ahead of time were allowed to return to their respective camps before the end of the work-day, while repeated failure to finish assignments resulted in disciplinary action according to Prisoner of War Labor in the Sugar Cane Fields of Lafourche Parish, Louisiana: 1943-1944.
While the POWs worked in the sugarcane field, they were paid for their labor.
The Sugar Act of 1937 established minimum wages for cane workers providing benefit payments to sugar planters and extended through the end of 1944, according to Prisoner of War Labor in the Sugar Cane Fields of Lafourche Parish, Louisiana: 1943-1944. The War Manpower Commission set the average daily wage for inexperienced free labor at 80 cents, while the maximum a prisoner could earn was $1.20.
The prisoners were paid in canteen scripts, which the prisoners could use to buy items.
“One of the things I found was a copy of a canteen script, which was the money you would use at the canteen paying for things,” says Brian Davis, executive director for the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation.
Falgoust says the prisoners could buy paper, pencils, razor blades, soap, and non-alcoholic lotion with the canteen scripts. They were allowed to bring these things back into the camps.
By placing POWs in Louisiana’s sugarcane fields under regulated conditions, the state was able to maintain a vital industry during a time of global conflict.
