How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #4
Now, ladies and gentlemen, if I may proceed to give you some other words that I think you can understand—I am not going to belabor you by quoting tonight—I am going to tell you what the wise men of all ages and all times, down even to the present day, have all said: that you must keep the wealth of the country scattered, and you must limit the amount that any one man can own. You cannot let any man own $300,000,000,000 or $400,000,000,000. If you do, one man can own all of the wealth that the United States has in it. (40-42)
Long's argument hinges on this idea that allowing massive concentrations of wealth in a tiny portion of the population is unjust and unsustainable. Long was convinced this would result in economic collapse because the masses, tired of being hungry and shut out from opportunity, would storm the castle and institute a socialist government. For an added bonus, we get the insistence that Long won't make us suffer through any more quotations; we should just take his word for it.
Quote #5
So, we have in America today, my friends, a condition by which about 10 men dominate the means of activity in at least 85 percent of the activities that you own. […] They own the banks, they own the steel mills, they own the railroads, they own the bonds, they own the mortgages, they own the stores, and they have chained the country from one end to the other until there is not any kind of business that a small, independent man could go into today and make a living […]. (47)
Long drives home the fact that this inequality is totally baked in to the current system. This sets up his argument that desperate times call for radical measures. And coincidentally, he's got a few ideas to put out there. You can just see that he's gonna come after those rich guys.
Of course, just because some men are obscenely rich doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else has to remain poor. Long knew that the concentrated wealth was just a symptom of an unfair system designed to rewarded greed, insane consumption, and profit over the welfare of workers and families. Redistributing some of the wealth would just be the beginning of reform. Laws would have to change, and greed would have to be punished, not rewarded.
Quote #6
God told you what the trouble was. The philosophers told you what the trouble was; and when you have a country where one man owns more than 100,000 people, or a million people, and when you have a country where there are four men, as in America, that have got more control over things than all the 120,000,000 people together, you know what the trouble is. (115-116)
Long sums up his trifecta of religion, patriotism, and personal gain. Basically he's saying that anyone with half a brain can see that he's right.