Huey Long: Reflection

Name:______Date:______Huey Long: Reflection Directions: Read over Prof. Michael O’Malley’s essay on Huey Long as well as the excerpt from Long’s “Every Man a King” speech. When you are finished, please answer the questions that follow.

Question 1 What “positive characteristics” about Long and his ambitions does O’Malley mention in his essay? Do you agree or disagree with O’Malley’s assessment of Huey Long? Explain your answer.

Question 2: Compare the overall ideas in Long’s “Every Man a King” speech to the organizations/plans carried out by Roosevelt’s New Deal. If you had to choose between the two, which would you support more? Why?

Question 3: Why do you think that O’Malley (as well as many others) choose to almost “glorify” the life and policies of Huey Long? Thoughts on Huey Long Michael O’Malley, Ph.D

Bill Gates is currently worth roughly six billion dollars. Suppose I were to confiscate four billion of those dollars, leaving him two billion on which he could live quite nicely indeed. I would then take the four billion, and use it to guarantee every single American a free college education. How would you react to such a plan?

Every Man a King Now imagine it's 1932. You have no job and no one, anywhere, is hiring. You're about to lose your home. Your children are always hungry and everyday they grow a little thinner and a little more ragged. You go down to a local charity to wait in a long line for bread. As you wait you read an article in Life magazine about William Randolph Hearst's 240,000 acre ranch and mansion in California.

Hearst's "castle" has 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, 127 acres of gardens, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a movie theater, and the world's largest private zoo. You remember your daughter, that morning, crying because she was hungry.

As you wait in line you also hear a radio: it's tuned to a speech by Louisiana Senator Huey Long:

"How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what's intended for 9/10th of the people to eat? The only way you'll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain't got no business with!"

The radio audience, and the others waiting in the bread line, laugh and applaud. "So in this land of God's abundance we propose," says Long, that "the fortunes of the multimillionaires and billionaires shall be reduced so that no one persons shall own more than a few million dollars." We would say, "All right for your first million dollars, but after you get that rich you will have to start helping the balance of us. $3 or $4 million is enough for any one person and his children and his children's children. Now, by limiting the size of the fortunes and incomes of the big men, we will throw into the government Treasury the money and property from which we will care for the millions of people who have nothing; and with this money we will provide a home and the comforts of home, with such common conveniences as radio and automobile, for every family in America, free of debt."

How would that sound to you? You want to work, but there is no work to be had, and you stand on the edge of starvation while men like William Randolph Hearst have more bathrooms in their houses than you have dollars in the bank.

The Kingfish Huey Long proposed taxing large fortunes and using the resulting money to guarantee every American a home and a minimum income. He was vague about the specifics—sometimes he said he would tax away the fortunes of those with more than 20 million, leaving them 20 million to live on. Sometimes it was 40 million. But the basic thrust was clear: rich men in America, he argued, "have more luxuries than anyone can possibly use." He would leave them still rich, he argued, but not so rich that other men had to starve.

Long came from a comfortable family in a very poor northern Louisiana county. A voracious reader, with a near-photographic memory, he was also ambitious, argumentative, and brash. After working as a traveling salesman, he earned a law degree and set up a practice specializing in attacking and antagonizing elites and the wealthy. He combined a genuine and passionate anti-elitism and a sense of the multiple injustices poverty might foster with a salesman's willingness to stretch the truth.

Elected as a Railroad Commissioner in 1919, he used the position to attack Louisiana's entrenched political machine and build a political network he rewarded with public works projects. As governor, elected in 1928, he followed the same course. He initiated road building projects, built bridges, hospitals, and schools, and more or less dragged what had been a badly backwards state into the 20th century.

His political supporters got jobs and contracts, and were expected to kick some of the state money back to Long. Long's spending massively increased the state's debt, but he argued, rightly as it turned out, that Louisiana could not function as a modern economy unless it paved its mostly dirt roads and built modern school facilities.

Long had a knack for reaching ordinary people—his work as a salesman, and his love of literature, gifted him with vivid speech and a strong writing style. He grasped radio's potential early on, and opponents found it almost impossible to move public opinion against him. He came to be called "the Kingfish" after a popular radio character who assumed a slightly comical dignity.

Early in his life, Long announced that he expected to be president someday, and as a start he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1932. At first he supported the New Deal, but he quickly began attacking FDR as a tool of the rich and a fraud. He announced his candidacy for president in 1934 by forming a national organization, the "Share Our Wealth" society. By 1935, he claimed more than 7.5 million members in 27,000 "Share Our Wealth Clubs" across the country.

As governor, Long used the slogan "Every Man A King, But No One Wears a Crown." For his presidential campaign he wrote a song, Every Man a King and asked Ina Ray Hutton and her All-Girl Orchestra to record it. By then, Roosevelt had come to regard Long as the most dangerous man in America. He might not win the presidency, but he could certainly split the Democratic vote.

Long was assassinated by a political rival in 1935. The Share Our Wealth Society continued for a short time but was partially undermined by FDR's own social activism in the "second new deal." Social security, in particular, established a guaranteed pension fund similar to what Long had argued for.

Every Man a King Speech (1934)

Annotation In this speech, Long sketched out in broad form his redistribution plan. When the Founding Fathers wrote "all Men are created equal," Long said "Did they mean, my friends, to say that all men were created equal and that that meant that any one man was born to inherit $10,000,000,000 and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing?" Primary Source(s) Excerpt Every man a king, so there would be no such thing as a man or woman who did not have the necessities of life, who would not be dependent upon the whims and caprices and ipse dixit of the financial martyrs for a living. What do we propose by this society? We propose to limit the wealth of big men in the country. There is an average of $15,000 in wealth to every family in America. That is right here today.

We do not propose to divide it up equally. We do not propose a division of wealth, but we propose to limit poverty that we will allow to be inflicted upon any man's family. We will not say we are going to try to guarantee any equality, or $15,000 to families. No; but we do say that one third of the average is low enough for any one family to hold, that there should be a guaranty of a family wealth of around $5,000; enough for a home, and automobile, a radio, and the ordinary conveniences, and the opportunity to educate their children; a fair share of the income of this land thereafter to that family so there will be no such thing as merely the select to have those things, and so there will be no such thing as a family living in poverty and distress.

We have to limit fortunes. Our present plan is that we will allow no one man to own more than $50 million. We think that with that limit we will be able to carry out the balance of the program. It may be necessary that we limit it to less than $50 million. It may be necessary, in working out of the plans, that no man's fortune would be more than $10 million or $15 million. But be that as it may, it will still be more than any one man, or any one man and his children and their children, will be able to spend in their lifetimes; and it is not necessary or reasonable to have wealth piled up beyond that point where we cannot prevent poverty among the masses.