Page 2
University Daily Kansan Tuesday, May 12. 1964
"...no man wore a crown, " except Huey-
Bv Mike Miller
Louisiana has traditionally been the state of the redneck.
A redneck is a mean poor dirt farmer whose only knowledge of the city and city folk is that he doesn't like them.
He knows that he is fighting to keep himself and his family fed and clothed while the aristocrat of the city is squandering his money on rich foods and expensive clothes.
For more than half a century after the Civil War, the government in Louisiana was run by government from the city. They cooperated with the bankers, the large merchants, the oil and sugar and cotton interests—the affluent benefactors of the status quo.
The redneck is unlearned and not particularly interested in becoming learned.
This was the political setup when the eight child of a redeck in impoverished Winn Parish, Louisiana, was born. The child was named Huey Pierce Long Jr.
And what influence Huey P. Long might have had if he had not been murdered by an angered young doctor when he was 42 years old.
They had no interest in the redneck. The redneck was too dumb to vote.
All he wants to learn is some way to make his fight with life a little less tedious.
And what an influence Huey P. Long was to have, not only on the redneck, but on the people of the United States.
Huey Long grew up working in the soil, a task which he hated. He hated both farm work and conformity. After graduation from high school, he peddled a cooking compound throughout north Louisiana, meeting and making friends of many of the farm folk who were to champion him in the years to come.
He attended Oklahoma University Law School for one term. Then he completed a three-year law course from Tulane University in eight months.
He secured a special examination from the Louisiana Supreme Court and became a lawyer at the age of 21 years.
His first 21 years were marked by toil - manual toil on his father's farm in Winn Parish and mental toil buried in stacks of law books.
The course of his last 21 years was set when he left the Supreme Court examination.
"I come out of that courtroom running for office," he explained.
When he was 24, he won his first political office. He became a commissioner on Louisiana's three-man utilities regulatory board, the Railroad Commission.
As railroad commissioner, Huey P. Long was something uncomfortably new and strange. He damned "bigness" in all its Louisiana manifestations.
During his campaign, he received $500 from an old Winn Parish friend named O. K. Allen. Later, when Long was elected to the United States Senate, O. K. Allen became Long's governor, stooge and general errand boy.
He continued to battle bigness in his speeches. He ran for governor in 1924 and he might have won except that a large rainstorm kept thousands of his redneck backers a way from the polls. Their roads washed away.
For the next four years, he battled the big businesses with his mouth while he allowed them to line his pockets with their money.
In defense of this, he explained that the only way to help the poor people was with money. And the only way to get money was to work with the rich.
American Monarch
In 1928, Huey P. Long became the most indefatigable campaigneer in the demagically fertile South. He swore, he defamed, he accused for as much as 20 hours a day in the language which the rednecks could best understand. He promised the redneck material things — good roads, lower utility rates, free bridges, free school books.
He freely mixed Bible quotations with profanity, but the rednecks understood what he was preaching.
He was elected Governor of Louisiana.
No rain fell that day.
The redneck had come into his own.
"EVERY MAN A KING, BUT no man wears a crown." That's what he told them.
"King" is a euphemism of what Huey P. Long became in Louisiana.
He became a dictator.
By the time Huey Long was murdered in 1935, the lives of Louisians had been vastly changed. Miles and miles of good, paved roads reached out to the most remote farms. Sturdy Long-built bridges crossed the swamp country. The children got their free text books.
Evidence of Long's work still exists. Thirteen charity hospitals treat millions throughout the state. Public schools provide free text books, free lunches, free transportation and even free pencils and erasers.
Although Louisiana's per capita income is fortieth in the nation, its per capita public assistance is third. It leads the nation in old-age assistance and disability assistance and is third in aid to dependent children.
Perverted Robin Hood
Long soon branched out from Louisiana. His "Share the Wealth" solution to the depression of the 1930's became a nation-wide movement. It called for the limiting of all fortunes to $5,000,000; an annual income minimum of $2,500 and a maximum of $1,800,000; a homestead grant of $6,000 for every family; free education from kindergarten through college; bonuses for veterans; old-age pensions and
Long had a simple explanation of where this money came from. He soaked the rich and cut down on the great fortunes.
Everybody, rich and poor, got soaked by taxes. Louisiana taxes everything from auto parking to slot machines (even though they are illegal).
He didn't soak the rich any more than he did the poor.
But the poor folks, the red-necks, didn't care.
The per capita tax ranks fourth in the country.
an abundance of cheap food through governmental purchase and store of surpluses.
O
Huey Long must have believed in his program, at first any way. Nothing but a firm devotion to a cause could make a man drive himself the way Huey did. This devotion of helping the poor became a devotion to getting power for Huey P. Long and depended on the poor to supply this power.
When he became governor of Louisiana, he gained complete control of the state. He fired all those who did not cooperate with him. He made all his appointive officers sign undated letters of resignation before they were hired. He bought enough of the state legislators to insure the passage of his program. He packed the state courts with his judges.
He tore down the old Governor's mansion and built a new one. He used Louisiana State University as his private circus.
Yet the poor folk loved him. His ruthless methods were considered wildly comic or wonderfully efficient.
Many people knew the score.
They didn't care. They were living a better life than they had ever dreamed and didn't particularly care how they got that way.
In elections, he went to the people and told them what they were getting at the measly cost of a little democracy.
"They will tell you that you've got to tear up Longism in this state. All right, my friends, get a bomb and blow up the new state Capitol. Then go out and tear up the concrete roads I've built. Get your spades and your shovels and scrape the gravel off them roads we graveled and let a rain come in on them. That'll put 'em back like they was before I come. Tear down all the new buildings I've built at the university. And when your child starts to school tomorrow, snatch the free textbooks out of his hands. Then my friends, you'll be rid of Longism in this state—and not before," he told them.
U.S. Senator
Huey's programs and tactics were not quite so influential when he reached the U.S. Senate. He quickly found that he was not able to ram-rod his programs through the Senate as he had back in Louisiana.
Although his avowed goal was the Presidency, he spent much of his time as Senator back in Louisiana. His handpicked errand boy, O. K. Allen, realized who was running things and was quite content to kiss babies and accept gifts for the state.
One of his Senate colleagues said, "I don't believe he could get the Lord's Prayer endorsed in this body."
Long never ruled the country. He did, however, design the new Louisiana's Governor's mansion after the White House "so I can get used to living in it."
But Huey P. Long did rule Louisiana. He ruled it with his secret police, his legislators, his courts, his public officials and with the support of his rednecks.
The circumstances surrounding his death were appropriate for Huey Long.
in Louisiana. He had been studying in Vienna when the Nazis grabbed power and had seen how a people could be crushed. Furthermore, his father-in-law, a county judge, was an anti-Long man and Huey's legislature was about to gerrymander him out of office.
Carl Austin Weiss, a small, law abiding doctor had long disagreed with the political setup
Long said, "If he screams, I'll go on the raido and tell 'em he's got nigger blood."
Dr. Carl Weiss tried to take his case somewhere. But where?
To Huey Long's courts?
To Huey Long's legislature?
To Huey Long's legislature?
To Huev Long?
No one knows what passed through the doctor's mind when he stepped from behind a marble pillar in Long's state capitol and fired a bullet into Huey's stomach.
No one will ever know, either. An autopsy discovered 78 bullets in Dr. Weiss's body. Long's body guards had been an instant late, but they had been thorough.
No one will ever know how far Huey P. Long might have gone in the United States, either. He said he was going to be President. The chances for this occurring in 1936 were slight because the depression had taken a slight turn for the better. This cancelled the effect of his solution, the "Share the Wealth" program.
It was suggested, however, that Franklin D. Roosevelt ask Long to run as his vice-president.
There are some things which the people of Louisiana will know for a long time. They will
know they now have a good public assistance program, a fine school system, miles of good roads, and a much easier life than many did in the 1920's.
And they know who to thank for it—Huey P. Long.
But the career of Huey P. Long cannot be measured by the miles of highways or the number of dollars in public assistance.
These things were paramount to thousands of Louisianaans, but the true meaning of Huey P. Long goes much deeper than material things.
The Ends...
His regime was the closest thing to a dictatorship that has existed in the nearly 200 years of American independence. Perhaps the most tragic part of Long's dictatorship was his disregard for the court system. The United States was built on a foundation of justice for all men, not just those who agree with the Governor's political views.
Long freely admitted his usurpation of freedom. He always told his people that the ends justified the means, however. A monthly assistance check is much easier for a 70-year-old man to see than the ideal of freedom.
If Huey Long had not been cut down by the assassin's bullet, it is hard to tell how far his "end justifies the means" theory might have taken him.
We won't know, however, because a frustrated doctor applied Long's reasoning pattern when he sought the end of Huey P. Long's reign.
F
Eig citati awan and anno Clarg gan assoc
"My Friends. We Must Economize On You"
CA
Dailij Hänsan
111 Flint Hall
M
cros
Com
a
n
cuti
day
Founded 1895, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York
22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates:
$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon
during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, Unive-sity
holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence,
Kansas