Union, Justice, Confidence—If You Can Afford It

Depression-era Louisiana was nothing short of, well, depressing.

The majority of the roads were dirt, seventy-five percent of the population couldn't read, and the political corruption at every single level of state government was staggering. In 1929, the average per capita income was $409 dollars, compared to a national average of $7,166, and that was before the single greatest economic collapse in the history of the world hit. And it hit hard in rural Louisiana.

In a single day, one quarter of all property in the state was put up and sold on auction, and you can bet it wasn't mansions and yachts that were on the auction block.

The reasons behind Louisiana's predicament were pretty straightforward: for decades, government officials kept state revenue for themselves. Money that somehow did manage to get spent was almost exclusively spent in urban areas, of which there were three: Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Shreveport, and including the last is being generous with the term "urban." One major problem was how little money there actually was, due to low taxes on high-earning individuals and corporations.

In short, there was little state income, and what little there was went into the pockets of government officials.

Compounding this problem was a long and noble tradition of cronyism that led to a wildly inefficient and bloated bureaucracy. Politics in Louisiana was dirty, and the lifeblood that kept it so scummy was the use of government jobs as leverage to get votes and political support. So rather than have a civil engineer in charge of building your roads and bridges, elected officials would hand out the position to donors and supporters.

Well, maybe not that position: nobody was actually wasting their time on anything as fundamentally necessary as roads or bridges; that might actually improve the state rather than line pockets. But you get the idea. And even if there was no political gain to be extracted from putting government posts on auction, they'd pass them off onto family and friends so that Uncle Clevy would be in charge of sanitation. Because who cares about clean water anyway?

In sum, Louisiana was in deep kimchi without a shovel in sight. The system of corruption was longstanding, and the powers-that-were went unchallenged.

Along Comes Huey

And then came Huey Long from the backwoods of Winn Parish. He was poor, he was young, he was brilliant, and he was ambitious.

Long went to Shreveport and started practicing law. It was a fairly lucrative business, and the major legal battles of the time were centered on the recently broken-up Standard Oil Company crushing the life out of any local competition. So Huey Long decided to do something about it. He began a crusade that focused on protecting the poor from the rich, the small local business from the massive mega-corp, and all-around being a painful thorn in the side of the status quo.

Long's legal career swiftly morphed into a political one, where he continued his crusade against oppressive utility companies. The small-time politics of local boards and commissions wouldn't satisfy Long for long, so he ran for governor in 1924 and made a respectable showing of himself, coming in a strong third. It was the only election he would ever lose: four years later he ran again and won in one of the biggest gubernatorial landslides in American history.

Long was helped in his election by a natural disaster: a devastating flood in New Orleans in 1927. The well-to-do folks in New Orleans asked the governor to dynamite the levees in order to spare the city. He caved to pressure and did just that, which resulted in massive downstream flooding in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, where 10,000 people were forced from their homes and got little or no financial compensation. Most of those downstream residents were poor (and now homeless), and they were furious with the governor.

Huey Long took notice.

The Kingfish Takes the Reins

Long had always been a man with big ideas, and once he was governor he finally had the power to implement them.

In his term as governor, he accomplished more than perhaps any governor in U.S. history:

• He built over nine thousand miles of roads and one hundred and eleven bridges by 1931.
• He removed the cost of textbooks from schools.
• He opened night classes to improve adult literacy.
• He sent bookmobiles into remote rural areas so children would have access to books.
• He vastly improved the quality and availability of health care.
• He personally oversaw the improvements to LSU (going so far as to draw up some of the football team's plays).
• He reduced the tax burden on the poorest parts of Louisiana.

Not Such a Saint

So how could anybody possibly have disliked the man who dragged his entire state (with much kicking and screaming from the State Senate) into the 20th century?

Here's how: Long accomplished a lot, but he also spent a lot. More than the previous three governors combined. Where did all of this funding come from? Why, the pockets of the wealthy, of course. Taxes on the wealthiest residents and corporations of Louisiana saw significant increases under Long at a time when many weren't so keen to be giving up their hard-earned (and often not-so-hard-earned, or even illicitly accumulated) wealth.

Beyond this, however, was one teeny little problem. Remember all that corruption and cronyism that we talked about earlier? Yeah, Long himself was one of the worst offenders. Defenders of Long argue that he did so out of political necessity, that it was just the way things got done in Louisiana politics.

Even if it was just the cronyism, that might have been okay. But Long raised the act of corruption to a true art form while he was governor: he increased the salaries of all the government positions that he appointed, but then demanded of his appointees that ten percent of said salaries would go to a personal war chest that he used for his own "political expenses."

Long did make some appointments based on merit, but he overwhelmingly maintained the same policies of the Old Regulars when it came to political patronage, and it showed in the state budget. Huey Long built $100 million worth of roads, sure enough. But he spent $150 million to do it.

You can imagine how unpopular this made Long with certain wealthy and powerful segments of Louisiana society. They tried to impeach him in 1929 over a five-cent tax increase on each barrel of oil, as well as numerous charges both trumped up and legitimate. Long dodged this bullet by strong-arming a handful of key members of the State Senate, who signed an affidavit stating they would not vote for impeachment under any conditions.

Every Man a King (as long as Huey Wears the Crown)

Long, already known for being ruthless and power-hungry, cranked this up to eleven. After the collapse of the economy, jobs were at a premium, and the only one hiring was the state. Long controlled every apparatus for employment, and if jobseekers didn't support him, then they simply didn't get a job.

It only got worse: he began attacking his opponents in the State Senate by threatening to fire their friends and family. His cronyism and embezzlement grew to staggering proportions. He forced bills down the State Senate's throat and made them say, "thank you sir, may I have another?"

When one State Senator opposed his plans for a new state capitol building, Long had holes drilled into the roof of the old building over the seat of said State Senator, causing water to pour down on him whenever he took the seat. It was childish, it was petty, it was costly, and it was effective: it was one hundred percent Huey Long.

Long's seizure of total power would come to a head when he ran for Joseph E. Ransdell's seat in the senate (the federal one, that is). Long won the election, but this led to a small problem: he still had 14 months left in his term as governor. This didn't bother Long one bit, and he left the senate seat vacant to maintain his position in Louisiana, quipping that the seat might as well have been vacant anyway if Ransdell was still occupying it.

Long's Lieutenant Governor, Paul N. Cyr, declared that Long was occupying the governor's seat illegally, that he couldn't hold both jobs. It might be strange that Long's alleged second in command would oppose him, but the two had hated each other from the outset of their political alliance, and that hatred had only grown more bitter with each bill passed and dollar spent. Cyr tried to oust Long from the governorship twice in the next 14 months, and Long would just call in the national guard and turn the governor's mansion into his own fortress.

When Long did finally give up the seat after his term as governor, he made sure his longtime ally and lackey Oscar K. Allen would take up the position and become Long's personal muppet.

Mr. Long Goes to Washington

Long's tenure in the senate was unorthodox, to say the least. Most freshman senators obey the unspoken rule of "not seen, not heard." Not Huey Long: he refused to serve on committees in order to maximize the amount of time he spent on the senate floor making speeches. He savaged both the Republicans and Democrats alike, all in his crusade to combat wealth inequality, which he saw as the direst threat facing the nation.

Despite his distinct lack of support in the senate, he used his position effectively. It was in these speeches that Long's Share Our Wealth program started to take shape. He wasn't really addressing the senate: he was addressing their disillusioned and marginalized constituents. People loved his message of wealth redistribution, because there was so little wealth to be had for the average American family. Long received more letters than any other member of the senate during his tenure and was given two offices just to sort through the mail.

In the 1933 presidential election, Long backed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom he hoped would make good on campaign promises of wealth redistribution and financial reform. FDR made token efforts, but his major concerns were less radical than Long would've liked, so he disavowed FDR and added him to his growing list of powerful and well-funded enemies.

He was an enemy Long had underestimated. FDR recognized Long's populist rhetoric as a serious threat to the stability of America. He took immediate steps to limit Long's influence: he removed Long from the process of federal distribution of funds to Louisiana, supported Long's long-time opponent John H. Overton for his seat in the senate, and opened investigations of voter fraud as well as Long's personal finances by the IRS.

Long was outmaneuvered on the federal level, and despite his constant speechifying and bill propositions, he accomplished virtually nothing in his time in the senate beyond getting notoriety on a national scale.

The Kingfish Dethroned

In Louisiana, the Kingfish was still king. He would go onto the State Senate floor and propose legislation without any legal authority to do so. He began to crackdown even harder on the anti-Longists, many of whom began discussing armed revolt. Feel like assassinating Long? Well, get in line.

Most of the talk wasn't serious, just wondering if today was the day somebody was going to shoot the man and be done with it. Long himself feared assassination so much that when he was in Louisiana, he kept armed guards around him at all times.

Amid this political turmoil, Long made his famous "Every Man a King" speech, an outline of the Share Our Wealth program without any sort of details or real plans. It was a masterful description of the philosophy that had carried Long this far. It was also part of Long's budding aspirations for a run at the presidency in 1936. He'd accumulated a huge fortune in his tenure as governor, and he'd amassed a big following through his senate speeches. Unemployment was dropping, but almost one in five Americans was still unemployed.

Wealth inequality was a powerful issue, and Long was the undisputed poster boy of that political movement. Long's detractors saw the lengths he'd go to secure power in a single state: the thought of him running the nation must have scared the pants off 'em.

The speech itself was nothing out of the ordinary for Long; he'd always been a master orator, able to gauge crowds and game their emotions. He used no notes, needed no prompts, and had an incredibly sharp memory for the facts and figures he'd use to support his plan of wealth redistribution. His Every Man a King speech was powerful theater.

Shortly after the speech, Long returned to his home state for good in order to build up to his bid for the presidency the following year. He even published a book, My First Days in the White House, which sold like hotcakes.

Unfortunately, Long would come down with a bad case of "shot to death" before he had the chance to run.

The violent opposition to Long was coming to a boiling point. In response, Long began taking even more drastic measures to secure his own power: he declared martial law, called in the National Guard, banned public gatherings of more than two people, forbade the criticism of public officials, began cramming bills down the legislature's thoroughly sore throats without them even being read.

He gave himself emergency powers to silence freedom of the press and to create new state agencies to carry out his orders. He stripped his enemies of any political power that might have had; his transformation into a dictator was complete.

And then he got shot by the son-in-law of a judge whose career he was trying to ruin.

The Long movement pretty much crumbled. There's some controversy and conspiracy theory over whether or not one of his own bodyguards was involved in the assassination, but most historians agree that it was the work of Dr. Carl Weiss. It happened just one month after Long announced his candidacy for president, and it happened in the halls of the state capitol he'd forced the State Senate to build.

So Julius Caesar.

There are still Longists today in Louisiana, and there's probably not a poor rural Louisianan who would say a bad word about him. But the wealth-redistribution movement on the national scale died off completely. FDR's newly formed National Industrial Recovery Act began injecting life into the economy, and Long's prophesied mob revolt never happened.

Long's ideological descendants are still down in Louisiana, trying to keep his ideas alive. But like many movements, "Longism" couldn't survive its namesake. What would people make of him today? Would he have occupied Wall Street? Become a leader of the 99%? One thing's for sure: there hasn't been a man before or since who could match the intellect, ruthlessness, clownishness, charisma, and oratory power of the Kingfish.