Community Exchange Established in Benton

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933
United States Library of Congress's
Prints and Photographs division
digital ID cph.3c17121

The consumer economy ground to a halt, and an ordinary recession became the Great Depression, the defining event of the 1930s. It was the worst economic disaster in American history. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, he established many economic relief programs to help restore the banking system, create jobs, provide affordable housing, and various other forms of relief.

The Federal Emergency Relief Agency or FERA, often called ERA, aimed to alleviate household unemployment by creating new unskilled jobs in local and state governments. FERA provided work for over 20 million people and developed facilities on public lands across the country. Community commodity exchange sites were a result of the agency's work.

The purposes of the community exchanges were explained in a letter by H. M. Gallagher, Louisiana state ERA engineer, “The purpose is to obtain some large ramshackle building, convenient to a railroad spur which may be used to include a canning center, warehouse, store room, shoe shop and other facilities. It stated that other quarters might be desired for live-stock pens and a furniture shop.”

“The plan of operations is to exchange canned goods and articles made at the center for live stock and country produce. It is desired that the police jury and the city share the expense of providing quarters for such a center.”

The following article from the Bossier Banner, Jan. 10, 1935, details the plans for a Bossier Parish community commodity exchange:

“Bossier Parish may be the first in the state to boast of a community exchange, where clients of the ERA may come to exchange whatever surplus they have for products they need. This appointment was made before a meeting of the Police Jury yesterday afternoon, by a representative of the ERA.

“It is understood, from the President’s recent message to Congress, and from other sources, that the ERA shortly plans to swing from a relief organization to one that will more or less pay its way. Those who receive help, in the form of money, seeds or other goods, will be allowed to pay for them in produce, livestock, wood or whatever they may have in the form of surplus.

“The Bossier community exchange will be located in Benton, the site being adjacent to the present Ward Two Highway barn. Most of the land is owned by the Police Jury and the Town of Benton. The remaining land to be used will be leased, free of charge, from local citizens.

“It is understood that the buildings will eventually form a compound, that is, they will be built in a square. The first unit is to be a warehouse, wherein goods may be stored, after being exchanged. A community workshop, where furniture or other articles can be made, a community canning kitchen and possibly other buildings, will, in the long run, be included in the project.

“The Police Jury and Town of Benton are to assit [sic] in the plan by providing the materials to be used in the building. The Police Jury is being held this evening, to work out the details, of what each group will do. The ERA will provide half the materials and all the labor.

Arthur Milton Wallace
Mayor of Benton for 12 years
Margaret W. Jones Collection
 2019.057.056 

“Work on the building is expected to get under way within a very short time. Additional details of the plan will be furnished the Banner’s readers in forthcoming issues.”

Plans for the exchange called for the donation of the use of the necessary land, for a period of five years, by the town. The exchange was built jointly by the Town, Parish, and the ERA, with the latter furnishing half of the materials and all of the labor. A.M. Wallace was mayor of the Village of Benton during that time. The exchange was partially located on lot one of block 39 of the Village for which he secured the lease from the Police Jury for the duration of the program.

By: Amy Robertson

Jobless Find Work at Barksdale Field

Aerial view of construction at Barksdale Field, 1933

On Oct. 5, 1933, the following announcement appeared in the Bossier Banner that the newly established Bossier Parish re-employment office in Bossier City was now open.

“Bossier Parish now has what is in fact a regularly established employment bureau. The office is open in Bossier City and the organization is functioning under the auspices of the National Re-employment Service. The Bossier Parish Committee is comprised of Messrs. R. H. Lee, W. W. Carter and D. E. Burchett, of Benton; Mr. A. J. Dupuy, of Bossier City, and Dr. George Acton, of Plain Dealing. Actively in charge of the office is Mr. O. L. Watkins. His three helpers are: Miss Larry Vance, of Benton; Mr. H. E. Curtis, of Plain Dealing, and Mr. J. R. Hill, of the Adner community.

“All unemployed people who reside in Bossier Parish and who want work may now register at this office. It is stated that there were in excess of 300 registrations at the office yesterday. … Of this number 140 were at once given employment at Barksdale Field, the big government airport near Bossier City. It has been announced that 300 additional laborers can be used at the field by about the 16th to 18th.

“It is understood that the emergency work under way at Barksdale Field is chiefly dirt moving. At present a stretch of the banks of Mack’s Bayou (on the airport grounds) is being given more extended slope, and the continuation of surface drainage work is to be taken up a little later on.

“It is understood the Bossier City office of the National Re-employment Service will be kept open indefinitely.”

The National Re-employment Service mentioned here was the United States Employment Service, established in 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Wagner-Peyser Act into law. This service aimed to improve the quality of service for jobless Americans by developing a coordinated employment assistance system, with federal and state governments working together through state-run employment offices.

The United States Employment Service and local offices, such as the one that opened in Bossier City in 1933, played a vital role during and after the Great Depression, matching the unemployed with available jobs, including many of the government work projects developed by the Work Progress Administration during the 1930s.

In fact, on the same day that the above article ran, another article appeared on the same page announcing that “bids for projects estimated to cost more than $200,000 will be opened at Barksdale Field October 17th and 18th.” One project was for an electrical distribution system and the installation of utilities, and another was for the construction of a bachelor officers’ dormitory and a commanding officers’ residence. There were also plans for community garages for the non commissioned and commissioned officers’ areas and street lights.

The article revealed that “A lump sum of $2,153,075 was alloted [sic] the field recently by the public works administration, including $1,783,461 for new and proposed projects, which will complete the airdrome, in so far as construction is concerned.

“All workmen will be given employment through the Bossier Parish and Caddo Parish re-employment offices, preference being given first to those workmen who register in Bossier City.”

At that time, jobs through the re-employment office only provided workers with 30 hours per week in an effort to provide more jobs to more people.

What do you want to know about Bossier Parish history? Visit, call, or email the Bossier Parish Library History Center for help with your research. We are at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City, 318-746-7717, history-center@bossierlibrary.org.

By: Amy Robertson

Bossier Parish Library Turns 80

The first Bossier Parish Library building was formerly the Post Office in Benton, La. c. 1950s.
Bossier Parish Library Collection: 0000.001.009.

The earliest record of a public library in Bossier Parish dates back to 1857 when U. S. Congressman Col. John M. Sandidge supplied books to establish a library in Bellevue. It is unknown when this library stopped its operation, but Bossier Parish began to work towards opening a public library system in 1926. These efforts were stalled as the United States went into the Great Depression in the fall of 1929. 

In response to the need for relief, reform, and recovery from the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted the New Deal, a series of programs, public work projects, and financial reforms and regulations. The primary focus of these programs was to provide relief for the unemployed and poor, recover the economy back to normal levels, and reform the financial system to prevent a repeat depression. 

A New Deal agency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939, employed 8.5 million people between 1935 and 1943. One initiative of the WPA was to sponsor nationwide, state-level library demonstration projects to encourage the development of library services to underserved populations and to extend rural service while simultaneously providing temporary work for the unemployed. 

The meeting minutes establishing the first Bossier Parish public library system appeared in the Bossier Banner on July 11, 1939, which stated that the library would be located at the Parish seat in Benton, La. and that the library would be supported at the expense of the entire parish. The first Library Board of control was established in that meeting. The first members of the Bossier Parish Library Board were Bossier Parish Police Jury President J. H. Mercer, H. H. Mahaffey, J.J. Waggoner, W.B. Wilbourn, A.L. Bundy, and D.E. Barnett. 

This announcement did not mention that the library would be open on a demonstration basis with support from the WPA for the first year, and then a vote of the taxpayers would be required to keep it open. The Police Jury appropriated $1250 for the public library demonstration project, the WPA provided several assistant librarians, and the Louisiana Library Commission supplied the books. After a year of the demonstration library in operation, it was decided by a vote of the taxpayers to keep the Bossier Parish Libraries in operation. 

Fourteen months later, the first public library opened its doors to the citizens of Bossier Parish in 1940. The first three branches opened between Sept. 20-23, with the Benton and Haughton branches opening on the 20th, Plain Dealing on the 21st and Bossier City on the 23rd. A bookmobile was put into operation to serve the parish’s more rural areas in addition to these branches. It was discontinued due to mechanical problems Nov. 1967. It was grounded and converted into the first Koran branch from 1968 to 1987.

Bossier Parish Library Bookmobile (1957-1967). Became Koran's first library branch (1968-1987). Bossier Parish Library Collection: 1997.037.004

While Bossier Parish was the second demonstration library started in Louisiana, it does boast many firsts. In 1976, the Bossier Parish Library was the first public library in North Louisiana to establish regular Sunday service hours. It was the first public library system in Louisiana to computerize all branches to access information and eliminate card catalogs (card files used in the 1800s and 1900s to access books manually). The first public library in Louisiana to provide private study rooms for individual and group study activities.

Bossier Parish Library was the first public library in Louisiana to offer a parents’ area in the children’s department, children’s play and activity area, and children’s eye-level picture book shelving and display. The first public library to offer extensive staffing and building wing for parish-wide local history. And, the first public library in Louisiana to provide free full internet access with graphics and hypertext linkage at all branches.

The Bossier Parish Library has proudly provided access to an array of materials, programs, and technologies that inform, educate, and entertain the residents of this great parish for the past eighty years. To learn more about the Bossier Parish Library’s history, visit the History Center at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City.

By: Amy Robertson

W. P. O'Neal, Small Town Boy and a Big Time Financial Story

The O'Neal Store at Bellevue 1900's-1910's

In her latest column for the Bossier Press Tribune, “The Bossier Parish Boy who More than Made Good,” our Director Ann Middleton excerpted the words of a writer for the June 28, 1928 issue of The Bossier Banner who took pleasure in introducing a friend, former playmate and schoolmate named W. P. O’Neal, known to him as “Pierce:”

“Mr. O’Neal was born and reared at old Bellevue, removed with the members of his father’s family from that place to Benton about the time the town became the parish seat and his employment during the days if his youth, when not a student in the home schools, was to clerk in his father’s general merchandise store, both here and in Bellevue.  He left Benton for New Orleans twenty-eight years ago, and we happen to know that he reached that city with only 75 cents in change in his pocket—and fewer changes of underwear in his weather-beaten suitcase.  But he had the determination to succeed—bulldog tenacity—and did.  Being stranded and in a city, among strangers, did not daunt him in the least, as his rapid rise in commercial life reflects.  Recently he was elected president of the Louisiana Bankers’ Association, which is the highest office the bankers of the state can bestow upon any one of their members."

I would add that “Pierce” ‘made good,’ no doubt, but he was also lucky. Mr. W.P. O'Neal was president of the Louisiana Bankers Association for the year 1928-29 in a "bull market." Imagine the year his successor must have had for 1929-1930, the time of the Great Stock Market Crash of (late) 1929. Ironically, the mass of stories like Mr. W.P. O'Neal's, rural Americans emigrating to cities with hopes of a more prosperous life in the rising industrial sector, is often blamed as a significant factor in the crash. While American cities prospered, major migration from rural areas and the resulting neglect of US agriculture created financial hopelessness among American farmers and instability for the US economy.