Huey
Pierce Long, the seventh of nine children, was born in Winnfield,
Louisiana, on 30th August, 1893. After leaving school he worked as
a salesman in Texas and Tennessee before enrolling in the Tulane University
Law School in New Orleans in 1914.
He completed the three-year course in eight months and became a lawyer
at the age of 21.
Long
established his law practice in Winnfield. He soon developed a reputation
as a champion of the common people. He later said "my cases in
Court were on the side of the small man - the underdog." He added
"I have never taken a suit against a poor man."
A
member of the Democratic Party, Long
supported S. J. Harper in his campaign against limited employers'
liability. Long also successfully defended Harper, an opponent of
American involvement in the First World War,
after his anti-war activities led to him being charged under the Espionage
Act.
In
1918 Long won election as state railroad commissioner for the northern
district of Louisiana. The following year he supported John
M. Parker, in his successful campaign to become Governor of Louisiana.
However, in 1919 Long began attacking Governor Parker for failing
to increase taxes on Standard Oil.
In
1921 Long became chairman of the Public Services Commission and over
the next couple of years successfully achieves lower telephone, gas
and electric rates, railroad and streetcar fares and a severance tax
on oil.
Long
ran for office as Governor of Louisiana in 1928. Education was the
main theme of his election campaign. As he pointed out, Louisiana's
illiteracy rate of 22 per cent was the highest in the United
States. Long's attacks on the utilities industries and the privileges
of corporations were popular and he won the election by the largest
margin in the state's history (92,941 votes to 3,733).
Once
in power Long condemned the state's ruling hierarchy and attempted
to replace it with his own supporters. In this way he gained control
of the Hospital Board, the Highway Commission, the Levee Board and
the Dock Board. He also forced state employees to distribute his newspaper,
the Louisiana Progress. Long
also attempted to capture the Democratic State Central Committee.
Long's
critics accused him of being a dictator but he did introduce important
reforms. This included the provision of free school textbooks, free
night school courses for adult illiterates and increased expenditure
on the state university.
In
1928, Louisiana only had 331 miles of paved roads. When Long gained
power he launched an infrastructure programme aimed at building 3,000
miles of roads and establishing schools within walking distance of
all the state's white children. To pay for the roads and schools that
were built in Louisiana, Long increased taxes on local corporations.
Long
also attempted to increase revenues by imposing a new tax on the oil
industry. The legislature rejected the measure and attempts were made
to impeach Long. He was accused of misappropriating state funds and
making illegal loans. However, the Senate failed to convict Long by
two votes and afterwards it was claimed he had bribed several senators
in order to get the right result.
In
1930 Long was elected to the Senate. To keep full control of Louisiana
he installed an old friend, Alvin King, the president of the state
senate, to act as governor. In the Senate he was highly critical of
President Herbert Hoover and the way his
government was dealing with the Great
Depression.
In
the summer of 1932 Long took on the Democratic
Party machine when he decided to support Hattie
Caraway, the first women to be elected to Congress, in her bid
to hold her seat in the Senate. Joseph
T. Robinson and other leaders of the party in Arkansas were opposed
to the idea and told her she would not win the party nomination. Caraway
approached Long and he agreed to help her in her campaign and she
defeated her nearest competitor by two to one.
Long
supported the presidential campaign of Franklin
D. Roosevelt. However, after his election, he was highly critical
of some aspects of the New Deal. He
disliked the Emergency
Banking Act because
it did little to help small, local banks. He bitterly attacked the
National
Recovery Act for
the system of wage and price codes it established. He correctly forecasted
that the codes would be written by the leaders of the industries involved
and would result in price-fixing. Long told the Senate: "Every
fault of socialism is found is this bill, without one of its virtues."
Long also claimed that
Roosevelt had done little to redistribute wealth. When Roosevelt refused
to introduce legislation to place ceilings on personal incomes, private
fortunes and inheritances, Long
launched his Share Our Wealth Society.
In February 1934. He told the Senate: "Unless
we provide for redistribution
of wealth in this country, the country is doomed." He added the
nation faced a choice, it could limit large fortunes and provide a
decent standard of life for its citizens, or it could wait for the
inevitable revolution.
Long quoted research that
suggested "2% of the people owned 60% of the wealth". In
one radio broadcast he told the listeners: "God called: 'Come
to my feast.' But what had happened? Rockefeller, Morgan, and their
crowd stepped up and took enough for 120,000,000 people and left only
enough for 5,000,000 for all the other 125,000,000 to eat. And so
many millions must go hungry."
Long's plan involved taxing
all incomes over a million dollars. On the second million the capital
levy tax would be one per cent. On the third, two per cent, on the
fourth, four per cent; and so on. Once a personal fortune exceeded
$8 million, the tax would become 100 per cent. Under his plan, the
government would confiscate all inheritances of more than one million
dollars.
This large fund would then
enable the government to guarantee subsistence for everyone in America.
Each family would receive a basic household estate of $5,000. There
would also be a minimum annual income of $2,000 per year. Other aspects
of his Share Our Wealth Plan involved government support for education,
old-age pensions, benefits for war veterans and public-works projects.
Some critics pointed out
that all wealth was not in the form of money. Most of America's richest
people had their wealth in land, buildings, stocks and bonds. It would
therefore be very difficult to evaluate and liquidate this wealth.
When this was put to Long he replied: "I am going to have to
call in some great minds to help me."
Leaders of the Communist
Party and Socialist
Party also attacked
Long's plan. Alex Bittelman, a communist in New
York wrote: "Long says he wants to do away with concentration
of wealth without doing away with capitalism. This is humbug. This
is fascist demagogy." Norman
Thomas claimed
that Long's Share
Our Wealth scheme
was insufficient and a dangerous delusion. He added that it was the
"sort of talk that Hitler fed the Germans and in my opinion it
is positively dangerous because it fools the people."
Long admitted that certain
aspects of his scheme was socialistic. He said to a reporter from
The
Nation: "Will you please tell me what sense there
is running on a socialist ticket in America today? What's the use
of being right only to be defeated?" On another occasion he argued:
"We haven't a Communist or Socialist in Louisiana. Huey P. Long
is the greatest enemy that the Communists and Socialists have to deal
with."
Some economists claimed
that if the Share Our Wealth plan was implemented it would bring an
end to the Great
Depression. They
pointed out that one of the major causes of the economic downturn
was the insufficient distribution of purchasing power among the population.
If poor families had their incomes increased they would spend this
extra money on goods being produced by American industry and agriculture
and would therefore stimulate the economy and create more jobs.
Long employed Gerald
L. K. Smith,
a Louisiana preacher, to travel throughout the South to recruit members
for the Share our Wealth Clubs. The campaign was a great success and
by 1935 there was 27,000 clubs with a membership of 4,684,000 and
a mailing list of over 7,500,000.
Attempts were made to smear
Long. One friend wrote that when Long "launched a campaign to
limit the size of fortunes a price was set on his head and thugs were
employed by big business to rub him from the national picture."
Stories began circulating that Long was an alcoholic and to protect
himself he gave up drinking and avoided visiting night clubs.
Long's radical ideas did
appeal to progressives in the Congress and he gained support from
Gerald
Nye, William
Borah,
Henrik Shipstead, Bronson
Cutting, Lynn Frazier, Robert
LaFollette Jr., John Elmer Thomas,
Burton
K. Wheeler and George
Norris.
In
October 1933, he published his autobiography, Every
Man a King. One reviewer described the book as "unbalanced,
vulgar, in many ways ignorant, and quite reckless." Long
also began publishing American Progress.
Financed by political contributions from his organization in Louisiana,
Long mailed it free to his supporters. Normally 300,000 copies were
sold per issue but for special editions 1.5 million were printed.
In
1934 Long convened a special session of the legislature in Louisiana
and pushed through bills that placed electoral machinery in the governor's
hands, outlawing interference by the courts with his use of national
guardsmen, and creating his own secret police.
In
May 1935 Long began having talks with Charles
Coughlin, Francis Townsend, Gerald
L. K. Smith, Milo Reno and Floyd
B. Olson about a joint campaign to take on President Franklin
D. Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential elections. Two months later
Long announced that his police had discovered a plot to kill him.
He now surrounded himself with six armed bodyguards. In August 1935,
Long announced his candidacy for the presidency.
Over
the years, Long had been in constant conflict with Judge Benjamin
Pavy of St. Landry Parish. Unable to unseat Pavy in St. Landry Parish,
Long decided to gain revenge by having two of the judge's daughters
dismissed from their teaching jobs. Long also warned Pavy that if
he continued to oppose him he would say that his family had "coffee
blood". This was based on the story that Pavy's father-in-law,
had a black mistress.
On
8th September, 1935, Pavy's son-in-law, Carl
Weiss was told that rumours were circulating that his wife was
the daughter of a black man. Weiss was furious when he heard the news
and decided to pay Long a visit in the State Capitol Building. Long
was in the governor's office, and so he waited by a marble pillar
in the corridor. When Long left the office with John Fournet and six
bodyguards, Weiss pulled out a .32 automatic and aimed it at Long.
Weiss fired and hit Long in the abdomen. The bodyguards opened fire
and Weiss died on the spot. A bullets fired by one of the bodyguards
ricocheted off the pillar and hit Long in the lower spine.
At
first it was thought that Long was not seriously wounded and an operation
was carried out to repair his wounds. However, the surgeons had failed
to detect that one of the bullets had hit Long's kidney. By the time
this was discovered, Long was to weak to endure another operation
and died on 10th September, 1935. According to his sister, Lucille
Long, his last words were: "Don't let me die, I have got so much
to do." His book, My First Days in the
White House, was published posthumously.
(1)
Huey
Long, Every Man a King
(1933)
Conditions were not very good in the Winnfield community in 1910.
There were nine children in our family. I was sixteen years old. My
parents had been able, with the help the six older children had given,
to send them to college until they were practically finished or graduated.
I saw no opportunity to
attend the Louisiana State University. The scholarship which I had
won did not take into account books and living expenses.
It would have been difficult to secure enough money.
I secured a position travelling
for a large supply house which had a branch office in New Orleans.
My job was to sell its products to the merchants and to advertise
and solicit orders for it from house to house. Along with the work
of soliciting orders from house to house and from merchants, I tacked
up signs, distributed pie plates and cook books and occasionally held
baking contests in various cities and towns.
In the summer of 1911,
I secured employment with a packing company as a regular travelling
salesman with a salary and expense account. For the first time in
my life I felt that I had hit a bed of ease. I was permitted to stop
at the best hotels of the day. My territory covered several states
in the south. According to the lights and standards of my associates,
I had arrived.
(2)
Huey
Long, speech in the Senate (29th April,
1932)
The great and grand dream of America that all men are created free
and equal, endowed with the inalienable right of life and liberty
and the pursuit of happiness - this great dream of America, this great
light, and this great hope - has almost gone out of sight in this
day and time, and everybody knows it; and there is a mere candle flicker
here and yonder to take the place of what the great dream of America
was supposed to be.
The people of this country
have fought and have struggled, trying, by one process and the other,
to bring about the change that would save the American country to
the ideal and purposes of America. They are met with the Democratic
Party at one time and the Republican Party at another time, and both
of them at another time, and nothing can be squeezed through these
party organizations that goes far enough to bring the American people
to a condition where they have such a thing as a livable country.
We swapped the tyrant 3,000 miles away for a handful of financial
slaveowning overlords who make the tyrant of Great Britain seem mild.
Much talk is indulged
in to the effect that the great fortunes of the United States are
sacred, that they have been built up by the honest and individual
initiative, that the funds were honorably acquired by men of genius
far-visioned in thought. The fact that those fortunes have been acquired
and that those who have built them for the financial masters have
become impoverished is a sufficient proof that they have not been
regularly and honorably acquired in this country.
Even if they had been
that would not alter the case. I find that the Morgan and Rockefeller
groups alone held, together, 341 directorships in 112 banks, railroad,
insurance, and other corporations, and one of this group made an after-dinner
speech in which he said that a newspaper report had asserted that
12 men in the United States controlled the business of the Nation,
and in the same speech to this group he said, "And I am one of
the 12 and you the balance, and this statement is correct."
They pass laws under which
people may be put in jail for utterances made
in war times and other times, but you can not stifle or keep from
growing, as poverty and starvation and hunger increase in this country,
the spirit of the American people, if there is going to be any spirit
in America at all.
Unless we provide for the
redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed; there
is going to be no country left here very long. That may sound a little
bit extravagant, but I tell you that we are not going to have this
good little America here long if we do not take to redistribute the
wealth of this country.
(3)
Hermann Deutsch wrote about Huey P. Long and his campaign for Hattie
Caraway in an article he wrote for
the Saturday
Evening Post on 15th October, 1932.
Farmers
drove to town in their own automobiles - and no few
of the cars were this year's models - in such numbers that highways
were congested in every direction. Fifteen minutes after he began
to talk, Huey Long would have these same farmers convinced that they
were starving and would have to boil their old boots and discarded
tires to have something
to feed the babies till the Red Cross brought around a sack of meal
and a bushel of sweet potatoes to tide them over; that Wall Street's
control of the leaders - not the rank and file - of both Democratic
and Republican parties was directly responsible
for this awful condition; that the only road to salvation lay in the
reelection of Hattie W. Caraway to the Senate.
(4)
Huey P. Long, Share Our Wealth pamphlet (1934)
For 20 years I have been
in the battle to provide that, so long as America has, or can produce,
an abundance of the things which make life comfortable and happy,
that none should own so much of the things which he does not need
and cannot use as to deprive the balance of the people of a reasonable
proportion of the necessities and conveniences of life. The whole
line of my political thought has always been that America must face
the time when the whole country would shoulder the obligation which
it owes to every child born on earth - that is, a fair chance to life,
liberty, and happiness.
Here is what I ask the
officers and members and well-wishers of all the Share Our Wealth
Societies to do:
First. If you have a Share
Our Wealth Society in your neighborhood or, if you have not one, organize
one - meet regularly, and let all members, men and women, go to work
as quickly and as hard as they can to get every person in the neighborhood
to become a member and to go out with them to get more members for
the society. If members do not want to go into the society already
organized in their community, let them organize another society. We
must have them as members in the movement,
so that, by having their cooperation, on short notice we can all act
as one person for the one object and purpose of providing that in
the land of plenty there shall be comfort for all. The organized 600
families who control the wealth of America have been able to keep
the 125,000,000 people in bondage because they have never once known
how to effectually strike for their fair demands.
Second. Get a number of
members of the Share Our Wealth Society to immediately go into all
other neighborhoods of your county and into the neighborhoods of the
adjoining counties, so as to get the people in the other communities
and in the other counties to organize more Share Our Wealth Societies
there; that will mean we can soon get about the work of perfecting
a complete, unified organization that will not only hear promises
but will compel the fulfillment of pledges made to the people.
It is impossible for the
United States to preserve itself as a republic or as a democracy when
600 families own more of this Nation's wealth - in fact, twice as
much - as all the balance of the people put together. Ninety-six percent
of our people live below the poverty line, while 4 percent own 87
percent of the wealth. America can have enough for all to live in
comfort and still permit millionaires to own more than they can ever
spend and to have more than they can ever use; but America cannot
allow the multimillionaires and the billionaires, a mere handful of
them, to own everything unless we are willing to inflict starvation
upon 125,000,000 people.
Here is the whole sum and
substance of the share-our-wealth movement:
1. Every family to be
furnished by the Government a homestead allowance, free of debt, of
not less than one-third the average family wealth of the country,
which means, at the lowest, that every family shall have the reasonable
comforts of life up to a value of from $5,000 to $6,000. No person
to have a fortune of more than 100 to 300 times the average family
fortune, which means that the limit to fortunes is between $1,500,000
and $5,000,000, with annual capital-levy, taxes imposed on all above
$1,000,000.
2. The yearly income of
every family shall be not less than one-third of the average family
Income, which means that, according to the estimates of the statisticians
of the United States Government and Wall Street, no family's annual
income would be less than from $2,000 to $2,500. No yearly income
shall be allowed to any person larger than from 100 to 300 times the
size of the average family income, which means; that no person would
be allowed to earn in any year more than from $600,000 to $1,800,000,
all to be subject to present income-tax laws.
3. To limit or regulate
the hours of work to such an extent as to prevent overproduction;
the most modern and efficient machinery would be encouraged, so that
as much would be produced as possible so as to satisfy all demands
of the people, but to also allow the maximum time to the
workers for recreation, convenience, education, and luxuries of life.
4. An old-age pension
to the persons of 60.
5. To balance agricultural
production with what can be consumed according to the laws of God,
which includes the preserving and storage of surplus commodities to
be paid for and held by the Government for the emergencies when such
are needed. Please bear in mind, however, that when the people of
America have had money to buy things they needed, we have never had
a surplus of any commodity. This plan of God does not call for destroying
any of the things raised to eat or wear, nor does it countenance wholesale
destruction of hogs, cattle, or milk.
6. To pay the veterans
of our wars what we owe them and to care for their disabled.
7. Education and training
for all children to be equal in opportunity in all schools, colleges,
universities, and other institutions for training in the professions
and vocations of life; to be regulated on the capacity of children
to learn, and not on the ability of parents to pay the costs. Training
for life's work to be as much universal and thorough for all walks
in life as has been the training in the arts of killing.
8. The raising of revenue
and taxes for the support of this program to
come from the reduction of swollen fortunes from the top, as well
as for the support of public works to give employment whenever there
may be any slackening necessary in private enterprise.
(5)
Gerald L. K. Smith, New
Republic (13th February, 1935)
Huey Long
is the greatest headline writer I have ever seen. His circulars
attract, bite, sting and convince. It is difficult to imagine what
would happen in America if every human being were to read one Huey
Long circular on the same day. As a mass-meeting speaker, his equal
has never been known in America. His knowledge of national' and international
affairs, as well as local affairs, is uncanny. He seems to be equally
at home with all subjects, such as shipping, railroads, banking, Biblical
literature, psychology, merchandising, utilities, sports. Oriental
affairs, international treaties. South American affairs, world history,
the Constitution of the United States, the Napoleonic Code, construction,
higher education, flood control, cotton, lumber, sugar, rice, alphabetical
relief agencies. Besides this, I am convinced that he is the greatest
political strategist alive. Huey Long is a superman. I actually believe
that he can do as much in one day as any ten men I know. He abstains
from alcohol, he uses no tobacco; he is strong, youthful and enthusiastic.
Hostile communities and individuals move toward him like an avalanche
once they see him and hear him speak. His greatest recommendation
is that we who know him best, love him most.
(6)
Raymond Gram Swing, The
Nation (January, 1935)
He is not a fascist, with
a philosophy of the state and its function in expressing the individual.
He is plain dictator. He rules, and opponents had better stay out
of his way. He punishes all who thwart him with grim, relentless,
efficient vengeance.
But to say this does not
make him wholly intelligible. One does not understand the problem
of Huey Long or measure the menace he represents to American democracy
until one admits that he has done a vast amount of good for Louisiana.
He has this to justify all that is corrupt and peremptory in his methods.
Taken all in all, I do not know any man who has accomplished so much
that I approve of in one state in four years, at the same time that
he has done so much that I dislike. It is a thoroughly perplexing,
paradoxical record.
If he were to die today,
and the fear and hatred of him died too, and an honest group of politicians
came into control of Louisiana, they would find a great deal to thank
Huey Long for. He has reshaped the organism of an archaic state government,
centralized it, made it easy to operate efficiently. Most important
of all, he has shifted the weight of taxation
from the poor, who were crippled under it, to the shoulders that can
bear it.
Huey Long is the best stump
speaker in America. He is the best political radio speaker, better
even than President Roosevelt. Give him time on the air and let him
have a week to campaign in each state, and he can sweep the country.
He is one of the most persuasive men living." This is the opinion
not of a Long supporter, but of one of the key men in the fight against
the Kingfish in Louisiana. The North, he said, is misled into dismissing
him as a clown, and has no conception of Huey's talents and of his
almost invincible mass appeal. Mrs. Hattie Caraway of Arkansas can
testify to his powers, for when she entered the primary asking to
succeed her late husband in the United States Senate, she was generally
expected to run last among five candidates and to poll not more than
2, 000 votes. The four men against her were experienced and able.
But Huey took his sound van into Arkansas for one week, and though
he could not get into every county, he made a circular tour during
which he spoke six times a day. Instead of 2,000 votes Mrs. Caraway
won a majority over
the combined opposition in the first primary, tantamount to
election in a Democratic state. An analysis of the vote showed that
the districts where
Huey did not appear virtually ignored her, while those which
he toured gave her a landslide.
When his hour strikes,
Huey will attack the rest of America with the same vehemence. That
probably will be during the campaign of 1936. His platform will be
the capital levy, strangely enough his exclusive possession as a political
theme. He will speak more violently than Father Coughlin against the
money interests of Wall Street and against the evil of large fortunes.
He will pose as a misunderstood man, and to most listeners he will
give their first information of what he has accomplished in Louisiana.
He will be direct, picturesque, and amusing, a relief after the attenuated
vagueness of most of the national speaking today. He will promise
a nest egg of $5,000 for every deserving family in America, this to
be the minimum of poverty in his brave new world. He rashly will undertake
to put all the employables to work in a few months. He will assail
President Roosevelt with a passion which may at first offend listeners,
but in the end he might stir up opposition of a bitterness the President
has not tasted in his life. Obviously, he cannot succeed while the
country still has hopes of the success of the New Deal and trusts
the President. Huey's chances depend on those sands of hope and trust
running out. He is no menace if the President produces reform and
recovery. But if in two years, even six, misery and fear are not abated
in America the field is free to the same kind of promise-mongers who
swept away Democratic leaders in Italy and Germany. Huey believes
Roosevelt can be
beaten as early as 1936, but he is prepared to agitate for another
four years. In 1940
he will still be a young man of forty-six.
Huey Long publishes his
own newspaper, but in Louisiana he depends still more on a remarkable
system of circulars. His card catalogue of local addresses is the
most complete of any political machine in the world. It holds the
name of every Long man in every community in the state, and tells
just how many circulars this man will undertake personally to distribute
to neighbors. Huey's secretary maintains a pretentious multigraph
office, and it can run off the circulars and address envelopes to
each worker in a single evening. Huey then mobilizes all the motor
vehicles of the state highway department and the highway police. The
circulars can leave New Orleans at night and be in virtually every
household in the state by morning.
One may say that remarkable
as that may be, it will work only in Louisiana and cannot be done
throughout the United States. But in a way it can. By November the
"Share Our Wealth" campaign had recruited 3,687,'641 members
throughout the country in eight months. (The population of Louisiana
is only 2,000,000.) Every member belongs to a society, and Huey has
the addresses of those who organized it. To them can go circulars
enough for all members. The "Share Our Wealth" organization
is first of all a glorified mailing list, already one of the largest
in the land, but certain to grow much larger once the Long campaign
gets under way. It is the nucleus of a nation-wide political machine.
And though the movement is naively simple, its very simplicity is
one secret of its success. Anyone can form a society. Its members
pay no dues. They send an address to Huey and he supplies them with
his literature, including
a copy of his autobiography. He urges societies to meet and discuss
the redistribution of wealth and the rest of his platform. He promises
to furnish answers and arguments needed to silence critics.
I doubt whether Huey and
the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith realize that property as such cannot
be redistributed. How, for instance, divide a factory or a railroad
among families? Value lies in use, and if the scheme were to be realized,
all property would have to be nationalized, and the income from use
distributed. The income from $5,000 would not be much for each family,
not more than $200 or $300, certainly not enough to make true the
dream of a home free of debt, a motor car, an electric refrigerator,
and a college education for all the children, which is Huey's way
of picturing his millennium. And if property is to be nationalized,
why not share it equally? Why give the poor only a third, and decree
the scramble for the other two-thirds in the name of capitalism? If
Huey were to ask himself this question, he probably would answer that
since both he and America believe in capitalism, he must advocate
it. But probably he has not thought the platform through. He conceived
of it early one morning, summoned his secretary, and had the organization
worked out before noon of the same day. It isn't meant to be specific.
It is only to convey to the unhappy people that he believes in a new
social order in which the minimum of poverty is drastically raised,
the rich somehow to foot the bill through a capital levy. It may be
as simple as a box of kindergarten blocks, but could he win mass votes,
or organize nearly
four million people in eight months, by distributing a primer of economics?
(7)
Huey P. Long, radio broadcast (14th January, 1935)
God invited us all to come
and eat and drink all we wanted. He smiled on our land and we grew
crops of plenty to eat and wear. He showed us in the earth the iron
and other things to make everything we wanted. He unfolded to us the
secrets of science so that our work might be easy. God called: "Come
to my feast." But what had happened? Rockefeller, Morgan, and
their crowd stepped up and took enough for 120,000,000 people and
left only enough for 5,000,000 for all the other 125,000,000 to eat.
And so many millions must go hungry and without these good things
God gave us unless we call on them to put some of it back.
(8)
Roy
Wilkins interviewed Huey P. Long
for The
Crisis in February,
1935.
"How about lynching.
Senator? About the Costigan-Wagner bill in congress and that lynching
down there yesterday in Franklinton..."
He ducked the Costigan-Wagner
bill, but of course, everyone knows he is against it. He cut me off
on the Franklinton lynching and hastened in with his "pat"
explanation:
"You mean down in
Washington parish (county)? Oh, that? That one slipped up on us. Too
bad, but those slips will happen. You know while I was governor there
were no lynchings and since this man (Governor Allen) has been in
he hasn't had any. (There have been 7 lynchings in Louisiana in the
last two years.) This one slipped up. I can't do nothing about it.
No sir. Can't do the dead nigra no good. Why, if I tried to go after
those lynchers it might cause a hundred more niggers to be killed.
You wouldn't want that,
would you?"
"But you control
Louisiana," I persisted, "you could..."
"Yeah, but it's not
that simple. I told you there are some things even Huey
Long can't get away with. We'll just have to watch out for the next
one. Anyway that nigger was guilty of coldblooded murder."
"But your own supreme
court had just granted him a new trial."
"Sure we got a law
which allows a reversal on technical points. This nigger
got hold of a smart lawyer somewhere and proved a technicality. He
was guilty as hell. But we'll catch the next lynching."
My guess is that Huey
is a hard, ambitious, practical politician. He is far shrewder than
he is given credit for being. My further guess is that he wouldn't
hesitate to throw Negroes to the wolves if it became necessary; neither
would he hesitate to carry them along if the good they did him was
greater than the harm. He will walk a tight rope and go along
as far as he can. He told New York newspapermen he welcomed Negroes
in the share-the-wealth clubs in the North where they could vote,
but down South? Down South they can't vote: they are no good to him.
So he lets them strictly alone. After all, Huey comes first.
Anyway, menace or benefactor,
he is the most colorful character I have interviewed in the twelve
years I've been in the business.
(9)
Hodding Carter, The American Mercury (April, 1949)
In the spring of 1932
I turned from reporting to start a small daily newspaper in Hammond,
Louisiana. By then, Huey Long was immovably established as Louisiana's
junior Senator in Washington and Louisiana's Kingfish at home. From
the first issue of our newspaper I editorially criticized his tightening
grip upon the state and the corruption which accompanied it. The initial
reaction of his district lieutenants was a fairly mild annoyance.
Ours was a puny, insecure newspaper. Doubtless it would welcome help.
A man whom I had known since childhood, a friend
of my family, came to me with the suggestion that I get right. Surely
I needed better equipment for my newspaper, and better equipment could
be procured for the friends of the administration. There were constitutional
amendments to be printed, political advertising, security permanence.
Just get right.
Later the approach was
to change. I still have the threatening, unsigned letters. Get out
of town, you lying bastard, if you know what's good for you. Intermittently,
for four years, I received threats by letter and telephone, and twice
in person. I carried a pistol, I kept it in my desk during the day
and by my bed at night.
(10)
James
Farley ran Franklin D. Roosevelt's
presidential campaigns in 1932 and 1936. He wrote about the dangers
posed by Huey P. Long in Behind the Ballots (1938)
I've always made an effort
not to let personal bias warp my political judgment.
We kept a careful eye on what Huey and his political allies,
both in office and out of office, were attempting to do. Anxious not
to be caught napping and desiring an accurate picture of conditions,
the Democratic National
Committee conducted a secret poll on a national
scale during this period to find out if Huey's sales talks for his
"share the wealth"
program were attracting many customers. The result of that poll, which
was kept secret and shown only to a very few people, was surprising
in many ways. It indicated that, running on a third-party ticket.
Long would be able to poll between 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 votes for
the Presidency. The poll demonstrated also that Huey was doing fairly
well at making himself a national figure. His probable support was
not confined to Louisiana and nearby states. On the contrary, he had
about as much following in the North as in the South, and he had as
strong an appeal in the industrial centers as he did in the rural
areas. Even the rock-ribbed Republican state of Maine, where the voters
were steeped in conservatism, was ready to contribute to Long's total
vote in about the same percentage as other states.
While we realized that
polls are often inaccurate and that conditions could change perceptibly
before the election actually took place, the size of the Long vote
made him a formidable factor. He was head and shoulders stronger than
any of the other "Messiahs" who were also gazing wistfully
at the White House and wondering what chance they would have to arrive
there as the result of a popular uprising. It was easy to conceive
a situation whereby Long, by polling more than 3,000,000 votes, might
have the balance of power in the 1936 election. For example, the poll
indicated that he would command upward of 100,000 votes in New York
State, a pivotal state in any national election; and a vote of that
size could easily mean the difference between victory or defeat for
the Democratic or Republican candidate. Take that number of votes
away from either major candidate, and they would come mostly from
our side, and the result might spell disaster.
(11)
Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (1939)
I spent many hours talking
with Huey Long in the three years before his death. When we talked
about politics, public policies, and life generally, he cast off the
manner of a demagogue as an actor wipes off greasepaint. There could
be no question about his extraordinary mental - or, if you will, intellectual
- capacity. I have never known a mind that moved with more clarity,
decisiveness, and force. He was no backwoods
buffoon, although when the occasion seemed to offer profit by such
a role he could outrant a Heflin or a Bilbo. But the state of Louisiana
reveals ample evidence of his immense contributions to the happiness
and welfare of its people. As his power in that state grew to be secure
and absolute, the virus of success took hold. There can be no doubt
of his purposes: first, the complete consolidation of his power in
Louisiana; second, his use of his forum in the Senate to grasp national
attention; and, finally,
to direct a campaign of national "education" through the
states toward a Presidential nomination for himself at some future
time.
(12)
John
T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (1944)
After a tempestuous career
as governor of Louisiana, Long was elected to the Senate and, before
he took his seat, played a decisive role at a critical moment in the
nomination of Roosevelt. Fearing neither God nor man nor the devil,
he was not intimidated by the White House or the Senate. At his first
meeting with Roosevelt in the White House, he stood over the President
with his hat on and emphasized his points with an occasional finger
poked into the executive chest. He found very quickly that he could
move as brusquely around the Senate floor as he had the lobbies of
the state legislature. He strode about the Capitol followed by his
bodyguards. He ranted on the Senate floor. He made a fifteenhour
oneman filibustering speech. He made up his mind very soon that
the New Deal was a lot of claptrap and proceeded to preach his own
gospel of the abundant life.
He cried out: "Distribute
our wealth it's all there in God's book. Follow the Lord."
This was the prelude to his SharetheWealth crusade. Huey
proclaimed "Every man a King" with Huey as the Kingfish.
He made it plain he was no Communist despoiler. He assured Rockefeller
he was not going to take all his millions. He would not take a single
luxury from the economic royalists. They would retain their "fish
ponds, their estates and their horses for riding to the hounds."
When he began, he had no
plan at all. He just had a slogan and worked up from there. But by
1934 he was ready to launch the movement with Gerald L. K. Smith,
a former Shreveport preacher, at its head. The program was simple.
No income would exceed a million dollars. Everybody would have a minimum
income of $2500. The money would be provided by a capital levy which
would remove the surplus millions from the rich which revealed
that Huey really did not know any more about economics than the President
did. There would, of course, be oldage pensions for all, free
education right through college for all, an electric refrigerator
and an automobile for every family. The government would buy up all
the agricultural surpluses against the day of shortages. As a matter
of course, there would be short working hours for everyone, and bonuses
for veterans. All surplus property would be turned over to the government
so that a fellow who needed a bed would get one from the fellow who
owned more than one.
Some editors who supported
Roosevelt said Huey's plan was "like the weird dream of a plantation
darky." It is not clear why Huey broke with Roosevelt. It is
probably because it was impossible for him to endure the role of second
fiddle to any man and he had come to see wider horizons for his own
strange talents. Visitors to the Capitol were more eager to have the
guides point out Huey Long than any other exhibit in the building.
He was aware of the immense notoriety he had achieved and he believed
he saw a condition approaching in which he could repeat upon the national
scene the amazing performance he had given in Louisiana.
Roosevelt went to work
in Louisiana on the rebel Kingfish. He poured money into the hands
of Huey's enemies to disburse to Huey's loyal Cajuns. And there came
a moment when Huey seemed to be on his way to the doghouse. But he
was an incorrigible figure of unconquerable energy. When Roosevelt
sought to buy with federal funds the Louisiana electorate and ring,
Huey struck back with a series of breathtaking blows that brought
the state under his thumb almost as completely as Hitler's Reich under
the heel of the Fuehrer. First of all, he stopped federal funds from
entering Louisiana. He forced the legislature to pass a law forbidding
any state of local board or official from incurring any debt or receiving
any federal funds without consent of a central state board. And this
board Huey set up and dominated. He cut short an estimated flood of
$30,000,000 in PWA projects. Then he provided, through state operations
and borrowing, a succession of public works, roads, bridges, schools,
hospitals, farm projects and relief measures. The money was spent
to boost Huey instead of Roosevelt. The people were taught to thank
and extol Huey rather than Roosevelt for all these goods.
He gave the people tax
exemptions, ended the poll tax, cut automobile taxes, put heavier
taxes on utilities and corporations. He took over the police department
of New Orleans from the City Ring, threw out their police commissioners.
He was followed around by troops. He gathered into his hands through
his personally owned governor absolute control over every state and
parish office. He got control of education and the teachers. He took
over the State University and added its football team and its hundredpiece
band to the noisy and glittering hippodrome in which he exploited
himself. He possessed the entire apparatus of government in Louisiana
the schools, the treasury, the public buildings and the men
and women in the buildings. He owned most of the courts, and had a
secret police of his own. He ran the elections, counted the votes
and held in his hands the power of life and death over most of the
enterprise in the state.
(13)
John Fournet witnessed the shooting of Huey Long. He was interviewed
about the incident in a television documentary, Huey Long,
that was made in 1985.
As he emerged there, all
of a sudden, I saw a strange look in his face and at the same time
I had a Panama hat in my left hand - and I saw a little gun go right
close to me, within a foot or two, a black gun, automatic, and about
simultaneously one of the so-called bodyguards, young fellow by the
name of Murphy Roden, grabbed the gun and it went off simultaneously,
because it hit Huey on the right side - so went along here and through
the small of the back,
you see, downward.
After a while, after they
had a coroner's inquest and the man was found riddled with 59 bullets
in his body, they came and knocked on the door (at the hospital) and
I said: "You can't come in" and he said: "I just want
to tell Huey who shot
him". And Huey, loud as ever: "Let him in" - he had
a big, strong voice - and of course I had to let him in. He told him
a young doctor by the name of Carl Weiss had shot him. "Well,"
he says. "What does he want to shoot me for?"
(14)
A Louisiana journalist was in the Senate building when Huey Long was
shot. He was interviewed about the incident in a documentary, Brother,
Can You Spare A Dime?, that was made in 1975.
Twenty
years of newspaper experience failed to prepare me for the tragedy
I witnessed Sunday
night. I was coming out of Governor Allen's office when I heard a
shot. Outside in the hall I saw Senator Long stagger away, grasping
his side with his right hand. Half a dozen members of the senator's
guard joined the shooting and the man who had shot Senator
Long pitched forward dead from 30 or 40 bullets. The hallway was filled
with smoke. Senator Long meanwhile walked down the hall, descended
the stairway, was aided into an automobile and taken to the nearby
Lady of the Lakes sanatorium where he died 30 hours later.
(15)
Huey P. Long, obituary, New
York Times (11th September, 1935)
Of Huey Long personally
it is no longer necessary to speak except with charity. His motives,
his character, have passed beyond human judgment. People will long
talk of his picturesque career and extraordinary individual qualities.
He carried daring to the point of audacity. He did not hesitate to
flaunt his great personal vainglory in public. This he would probably
have defended both as a form of self-confidence, and a means of impressing
the public. He had a knack of always getting into the picture, and
often bursting out of its frame. There would be no end if one were
to try to enumerate all his traits, so distinct and so full of color.
He succeeded in establishing a legend about himself - a legend of
invincibility - which it will be hard to dissipate.
It is to Senator Long
as a public man, rather than as a dashing personality, that the thoughts
of Americans should chiefly turn as his tragic death extinguishe the
envy. What he did and what he promised to do are full of political
instruction and also of warning. In his own State of Louisiana he
showed how it is possible to destroy self-government while maintaining
its ostensible and legal form. He made himself an unquestioned dictator,
though a State Legislature was still elected by a nominally free people,
as was also a Governor, who was, however, nothing but a dummy for
Huey Long. In reality. Senator Long set up a Fascist government in
Louisiana. It was disguised, but only thinly. There was no outward
appearance of a revolution, no march of Black Shirts upon Baton Rouge,
but the effectual result was to lodge all the power of the State in
the hands of one man.
If Fascism ever comes
in the United States it will come in something like that way. No one
will set himself up as an avowed dictator, but if he can succeed in
dictating everything, the name does not matter. Laws and Constitutions
guaranteeing liberty and individual rights may remain on the statute
books, but the life will have gone out of them. Institutions may be
designated as before, but they will have become only empty shells.
We thus have an indication of the points at which American vigilance
must be eternal if it desires to withstand the subtle inroads of the
Fascist spirit. There is no need to be on the watch for a revolutionary
leader to rise up and call upon his followers to march on Washington.
No such sinister figure is likely to appear. The danger is, as Senator
Long demonstrated in Louisiana, that freedom may be done away with
in the name of efficiency and a strong paternal government.
Senator Long's career
is also a reminder that material for the agitator and the demagogue
is always ample in this country. He found it and played upon it skillfully,
first of all in what may be called the lower levels of society in
Louisiana. Afterward, when he began to swell with national ambition,
and cast about for a fetching cry, he found it, or thought he did,
in his vague formulas, never worked out, about the "distribution
of wealth." For a time he seemed in this way to be about to fascinate
and capture a great multitude of followers, or at least endorsers,
mainly in the cities of this country. There is reason to believe that
his hold upon them was relaxing before his assassination. Many observers
thought that he had already passed the peak of his national influence.
Be that as it may, the moral of his remarkable adventure in politics
remains the same. It is that in the United States we have to re-educate
each generation in the fundamentals of self government and in the
principles of sound finance. And we must have leaders able to defend
the faith that is in them. When such masses of people are all too
ready to run after a professed miracle-worker, it is essential that
we have trained minds to confront the ignorant, to show to the credulous
the error of their ways, and to keep alive and fresh the true tradition
of democracy in which this country was cradled and brought to maturity.
(16)
Senator William Langer of North Dakota,
speech (1941)
I doubt whether any other
man was so conscious of the plight of the underprivileged or knew
better the ruthlessness of those in control. And it was because Huey
Long knew how to fight, knew how to fight fire with fire, knew how
to combat ruthlessness with ruthlessness, force with force, and because
he had the courage to battle unceasingly for what he conceived to
be right that he became an inspiration for so many in their own fight
for a square deal, and the object of such relentless persecution on
the part of his enemies.
The fight he waged was
such a desperate one that even in death he has not been immune from
attack. So we find that 5 years after his body had been lowered into
the grave - that grave which will forever be a shrine for those who
love decency, honor, and justice - attempts are still being made to
besmirch his character.
This is not fooling the
farmer, the worker, the small businessman; it is not fooling the child
who can read today because of the free textbooks that Huey Long obtained;
it is not fooling the citizen who can vote today because Huey Long
abolished poll taxes.
These people know from
Huey Long's life that, as they fight for the better things, there
will always be the inspiration that fighting with them in spirit will
be that tearless, dauntless, unmatchable champion of the common people,
Huey P. Long.
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