Louisiana State Rice Milling Company

It’s impossible to discuss Acadia Parish history without mentioning the rice industry, so entwined are the two. Likewise, the story of the rice industry would have enormous gaps in it if the part played by the nation’s largest rice miller

, the Louisiana State Rice Milling Company, and its successor, Riviana Foods, were left out.

The last years of the nineteenth century were the glory days of the rice industry. Growers, millers, warehousemen, buyers and sellers made fortunes all across the prairies of southwestern Louisiana. Those without vision saw no end to the rice boom. But like all economic booms, this one too had an end and it was coming fast.

Across southern Louisiana new rice mills were rising from the prairie soils almost as fast as was the summer grass. There was soon far more milling capacity in the state of Louisiana than there was harvested rice to be milled. This state of affairs could not go on forever; the rice milling industry was heading for a judgment day.

Onto this scene stepped Frank Area Godchaux. Born in Abbeville in 1870, he was the only child of pioneering merchant Gustave Godchaux and his wife, Katherine Area. Gus Godchaux became the vice president of the Abbeville Rice Mill in 1899 and his son soon followed him into the industry. In 1904, Frank Godchaux was the general manager and on the board of directors of the Planters Rice Mill in Abbeville. He was also managing the Mutual Rice Mill in Gueydan by 1908.

A number of rice millers realized that a larger company consisting of many rice mills would operate far more efficiently than numerous independent ones could. They acted in 1911 by chartering the Louisiana State Rice Milling Company. Frank Godchaux served as president and general manager of the company and the list of the board of directors read like a who’s who in the Louisiana rice industry: Abrom Kaplan, Charles S. Morse, William B. Conover, Jac Frankel, J. A. Foster, John Green, J. R. Roller, William Socola, J. W. Myers, W. H. Hunter, Jr., J. A. Sabatier, J. B. Campbell, Jules Dreyfus, W. C. Hall, George Hathaway, Alex Brown and John P. Burgin.

The company went on a buying spree during its first year of business. The following thirty rice mills were absorbed into the system: the Abbeville and Planters (Abbeville), the Jennings and Northern (Jennings), Rayne, Donaldsonville, the Gueydan and Mutual (Gueydan), Lake Arthur, Eunice, Sabatier (Iota), White Swan (Morse), Vidalia, New Iberia, the Jennings and Gulf Coast (Welsh), Conover (Mermentau), Wall (Lake Charles), Eureka (Estherwood), Northern (Roanoke), the Sieward No.1, Sieward No. 2, St. Louis and National Mill A (New Orleans), and the Peoples, Crowley, United States, Brown, Star and Pembroke (Crowley). The company then dismantled ten of these, including the Acadia mills of Brown, Crowley, United States, Conover and Eureka.

While the new company started off well, business turned sour in 1914, when the federal government lowered tariffs on imported rice. Louisiana State closed more mills but still had to go into reorganization in 1916.

World War I raised the price of rice along with other strategic commodities. Louisiana State expanded during this boom time. It purchased mills in Houston, Texas, in Carlisle and Lonoke, Arkansas, and built one in West Sacramento, California. So much wheat flour went to the troops that a demand arose for flour made from broken rice as a substitute. The company constructed a rice flour mill in Crowley, in the old United States Mill building.

The expansion was premature; the 1920’s and 1930’s proved to be hard times for the rice milling industry. The rice flour mill was dismantled as quickly as it was erected when World War I ended sooner than expected and demand dissolved into nothing. By 1933, the company operated only seven mills, those at Lake Charles, Crowley, Abbeville, Jennings and Rayne in Louisiana and at Carlisle and Stuttgart in Arkansas. Still, it was the largest rice miller in the United States, followed by its main competitor, Standard Rice Milling Company, which owned a mill in Crowley. In 1923, the company’s main office was moved to Crowley, but it was transferred again in 1926 to Abbeville.

The company did make some lasting changes during these hard times. Louisiana State began packaging and selling its best rice under name brands still in use today: Water Maid and Mahatma. More importantly, Frank Godchaux, Jr., took the reins of power in 1936 as president of the Louisiana State Rice Milling Company.

Life was better for rice farmers and millers during and after World War II. Demand for the grain increased, but so did federal regulations that sometimes hurt and sometimes helped the industry.

The use of combines to harvest rice changed the way Louisiana State did business. Combined rice has a much higher moisture content than rice left in the field in shocks to dry. This necessitated the construction of huge rice dryers to prepare the rice for milling. The dryers also served as rough rice storage bins since the combines harvested the crop much quicker, causing larger volumes to hit the market in a shorter period of time. To meet this demand, Louisiana State purchased or built dryers in Greenville, Miss., Stuttgart, Ark., and in Eunice, Kaplan, Kinder, Gueydan, Jennings and a very large one in Crowley. Improvements to the mills at Abbeville, Rayne, Lake Charles and Carlisle enabled the closing of the mills in Crowley, Jennings and Stuttgart.

A new generation of Godchaux’s took control of the company in 1964, when Frank III became Louisiana State’s president and his brother, Charles, its vice president.

The company shifted focus from rice to other foods. To become a serious competitor to giant firms like General Foods, Louisiana State merged with River Brands Rice Mills in 1965 to create a new company called Riviana Foods. River Brands brought into this merger rice mills in Eunice, Houston and El Campo, Texas, and Memphis, Tenn.

The two original companies had been similar – rice milling, packaging and marketing – but Riviana was destined to be very different. A year after its birth, the new firm closed down the Carlisle, El Campo and Rayne rice mills, though these sites continued to be used for drying and storage. The Rayne mill was to be the last Acadia Parish rice mill operated by Louisiana State/Riviana. The company then diversified into a wide variety of non-rice enterprises, buying such companies as Pangburn’s Chocolates, Hill Pet Foods, Hebrew National Kosher Foods and Romanoff Caviar.

In 1976, the toothpaste and soap giant, Colgate-Palmolive, also sought diversity and bought Riviana. The marriage lasted for ten years, but it was not a happy one. In 1986, a group of investors, led by the Godchaux family, re-purchased Riviana from Colgate, minus some of its more profitable divisions. In 2004, a Spanish company, Ebro Puleva, bought Riviana and the Godchaux family was ousted from the management for the first time in the rice-milling company’s 94-year history.

The Riviana of today is far different from the Louisiana State Rice Milling Company of 1911. While rice milling – the reason for its creation – is now only a minor part of its overall business, the history of this company deeply affected the history of Acadia Parish, particularly in Rayne and Crowley, where Riviana dryers still operate.

For information on Gene Thibodeaux’s books, “On the Banks of Plaquemine Brûlée; A History of Church Point, Louisiana” and “Rice, Railroads and Frogs; A History of Rayne, Louisiana,” contact Plaquemine Brûlée Press, 528 N. Moss St., Church Point, LA 70525, (337) 684-2134, cajunmart@msn.com.