Moral Markets: Public Provisioning in New Orleans, 1840–1910

By the turn of the twentieth century, New Orleans had developed one of the most sophisticated food market systems in the world, comprised of one central wholesale market and a set of auxiliary neighborhood markets. This system was also the largest by number in the U.S., meaning that New Orleans had more market houses than any other city. The movement of people and goods through the city’s markets was staggering: the French Market had upwards of 50,000 customers a day.

This tremendous scale of food distribution required an equally tremendous amount of regulation. Municipal inspectors visited food stalls daily to ensure that quality standards were met. Private retailers operating grocery stores in close proximity to the covered markets, on the other hand, were more challenging to regulate and were often a topic of concern in municipal reports and community news outlets. Municipal governments and public market vendors regularly worked to police these private retailers through ordinances and grassroots petitions. This regular communication and negotiation between municipal authorities and vendors left behind a vivid historical record that reveals the primacy of a government-sponsored, moral economy—one that actively supported public provisioning while limiting the spread of private grocery stores. This moral economy was entrenched in the local politics of race and ethnicity, enabling well connected French, German, and Sicilian communities to successfully petition for the construction of a public market in their respective neighborhoods.

Under the auspices of the municipal government, public market vendors in these communities maintained a virtual monopoly over urban food economies at a time when private grocery stores were outcompeting public markets in other American and Atlantic port cities. This monopoly enabled local food cultures to survive well into the twentieth century, suggesting that moral economy-based food systems were competitive with an increasingly homogenized, global one.