Long's style combined a first-rate grasp of American mythology and history with an appeal to religion. Americans in Huey Long's day knew their Bible, so his ability to weave into his speeches the message, doctrines, and passages of the Bible appealed to the poor workers who made up the bread and butter of his base of power.

In his "Every Man a King" speech, Long pulled out all the stops. He piles on religious quotations, he lambasts his political enemies, he points out the outrageous level of income inequality in a number of ways and contexts so that it can be made perfectly clear exactly how tear-your-hair-out hopping mad everyone should be about this situation. And who better than Huey Long, the man who has been championing this cause from his earliest political struggles, to lead the charge for reform?

Long spoke with authority, but he made sure to speak his listeners' language. After quoting from the lofty language of the Declaration of Independence, he asks, "Now, what did they mean by that" (8)? After throwing out abstract numbers in the millions and billions, he adds:

Now my friends, if you were off on an island where there were 100 lunches, you could not let one man eat up the hundred lunches, or take the hundred lunches and not let anybody else eat any of them. (43)

He wows them with the big numbers then brings it home. Not everybody earns a billion dollars, but everyone eats lunch. And plenty of them knew what it was like to have to go without it.