Oil was discovered in Caddo Parish (Shreveport) in the early 1900s, but technical problems impeded production. By World War I, however, these obstacles had been overcome and Caddo enjoyed a great economic boom, with “feverish trading in leases, land and oil stocks.” Some of the new millionaires, “knowing no other way to the enjoyment of wealth, bought two and three automobiles, all in a high state of red enamel and brass fittings.” Huey represented Banks Oil Company, Bayou Oil Company, and Claiborne Oil Company. He acquired stock in these companies, but his holdings are difficult to value. The biggest was Banks, owned by O. K. Allen and O. B. Thompson. Huey had dreams of great wealth.
A primary oil field was at Pine Island. By 1918, 113 independent operators were producing 25,000 or more barrels of oil per day. Standard Oil, Gulf Refining, and the Texas Company bought and transported to their refineries the oil from the independents through pipelines they owned for $1.55 per barrel.1
At the end of the war in November 1918, the military contracts for oil were cancelled, so the demand for oil dropped. On December 1, 1918, Standard Oil announced that as of December 10 it would no longer purchase Pine Island oil at any price, and Gulf Refining and the Texas Company followed suit. The oil refineries, however, continued to import about seven thousand barrels of oil every day from Mexico by tanker up the Mississippi River.2
The price of Pine Island oil dropped to 50 cents per barrel. The alternatives of the independents were limited. They lacked their own pipelines and refineries. They couldn’t stop the gushing oil. To store the oil that couldn’t be sold, the drillers dug primitive storage pits in the ground. They leaked, causing substantial environmental damage and the risk of fires. Every stream and bayou carried a glistening film of oil. Plowed farm-field furrows filled up with oil from the saturated soil. The cost to Caddo Parish’s economy was over $15 million in the first six months after the embargo.3
The independents organized an association and met with the Standard Oil group at the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, but no agreement was reached. The faces of the Standard Oil group bore “expressions of self-content. About these men there was that undefinable something that betokens freedom from money cares and anxiety. . . . But the faces of the men in the independent group told a different story. Care, and in some cases, desperation, was written in every line.” Huey denounced the big oil companies for the freeze-out, saying they would “never hear the last of it.”4 Facing economic ruin, many independents sold out cheap to Standard Oil, meaning they had taken the risk of drilling a dry hole and then were robbed of profits when they drilled a gusher.
The U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission in 1915 had ruled that interstate oil pipelines were “common carriers,” requiring them to transport between states any company’s oil for standard fees approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission. This prevents freeze-outs or price discrimination for oil shipped between states. In Oklahoma, for example, Standard Oil took all the crude produced in Ohio at more than a dollar a barrel but bought only part of Oklahoma’s production at half that price. To remedy price discrimination within the state, Oklahoma made its intrastate pipelines common carriers, complementing the rules for interstate pipelines established by the Interstate Commerce Commission.5
In Louisiana, intrastate pipelines were only deemed common carriers if they transported oil for “consideration” (money). When Standard Oil bought oil in Louisiana, it piped it for nothing to avoid common carrier regulation.6 In 1915, the Railroad Commission ordered Standard to file its tariffs for the intrastate transportation of oil in its pipelines, but Standard refused because, under the law, it was not a common carrier. The commission backed down.7
Huey asked the independents to testify at a February 1919 meeting of the Railroad Commission. Based on their testimony, he wrote a report that criticized the freeze-out and recommended new legislation: first, that pipelines be required to carry everyone’s oil as a common carrier; second, that they purchase without price discrimination and subject to commission regulation all oil offered to them as a common purchaser; and third, that pipeline-company ownership be separated from the oil companies.8
The proposal required the insight of a good lawyer to diagnose the legislation that was needed and to recognize the power of the commission to conduct a hearing and collect evidence on an issue over which it lacked but wanted jurisdiction. The Oklahoma law provided precedent for Huey’s proposal.
Huey’s political instincts were equally acute. Representing small businessmen against a monopoly aligned him with the underdogs, but they were capitalist underdogs, businessmen who competed in the marketplace for profit. Regulation to protect them was an achievable, practical solution to their difficulty. Having a constitutionally established state commission issue a report based on evidence and recommend new legislation was more credible than having a private citizen or a solitary officeholder do so.
At the next commission meeting in March in Baton Rouge, Huey obtained the concurrence of the two other commissioners to his report in executive session (away from the oil-company lobbyists). The commissioner representing the district that included New Orleans, John T. Michel, was a descendant of sugar-plantation owners from Normandy, France. Originally a stenographer for a criminal court, he worked his way up to become a ward leader in the New Orleans Ring. A colorless career politician, “short, dumpy, and inarticulate,” he had nevertheless been elected secretary of state four times.9
The other commissioner was Shelby Taylor, a former mayor of Crowley, who since 1908 had represented the second district and home of Standard Oil. Paunchy and moon-faced, he lacked backbone.10 The commission also had a secretary, Henry Jastremski, who became Huey’s ally, and a legal counsel, Wylie M. Barrow, from the attorney general’s office.
After the release of Huey’s report, Standard Oil lobbyists and their allies attacked the commission. Taylor and Michel, ordinary politicians, retreated. Taylor even tried to retract his concurrence by asking Jastremski to hand over the report so he could “tear it up.”11
But Huey escalated his advocacy. He urged Governor Pleasant to call a special session of the legislature to enact pipeline legislation. Pleasant aspired to a U.S. Senate seat, however, and didn’t want to ruffle feathers.12 Standard Oil pressed its case with newspaper ads explaining that market forces—it claimed it had tried but failed to find new markets for Pine Island crude—were to blame for the difficulties at Pine Island. Huey responded with issue-advocacy ads of his own on May 10 and May 21 in the Shreveport Times. On June 7, Huey spoke at a rally urging support for a special session, arguing that Standard Oil’s freeze-out was designed to destroy and then absorb the independents.13
When Pleasant declined to call a special session, Huey charged Pleasant with being a tool of Standard Oil. In response, Pleasant had a secondary offi-cial, state fire marshal William Campbell, Julius’s political enemy from 1916 and a witness for the bank in the DeLoach case, denounce Huey. Campbell accused Huey of asking the legislature to benefit his personal oil-stock holdings, a “stock jobbing deal,” and challenged Huey to respond at a statewide political rally at the Hot Wells resort the next month. Four gubernatorial candidates were scheduled to speak there on July 4, 1919, in front of a statewide audience. Huey got permission to answer the charges.
Newspapermen from all over the state arrived to evaluate the candidates. Those with no hope of the Ring’s endorsement denounced the Ring. Those with some hope of Ring support discussed other issues. None of their speeches were any good. The crowd was bored. Last on the program was Huey. He walked over to the newsmen right before he ascended the platform and warned them that some of what he was going to say couldn’t be printed.
On the platform, Huey looked awkward and rustic, but he gave a fiery speech. He didn’t have a dime and didn’t care if he had a political future. Governor Pleasant was a “criminal who disgraces the gubernatorial chair.” Campbell, the man who had challenged him, was a “barfly.” Standard Oil was an octopus out to control the state. It consisted of “the nation’s most notorious and leading criminals” who were thrown out of Texas, ousted from Kansas, and forced to terms by the Oklahoma pipeline bill. Pleasant’s crime was refusing to call the legislature into session to enact a pipeline regulation bill. Louisianans interested in “commercial freedom” should oppose Standard Oil just as they would fight a “cattle thief” or a “highway bandit.”
The chairman said Huey’s speech was as hot as the Hot Wells boiling springs. One newspaper announced that Long was a “sensation.” Others said his speech was “vicious.” A common question afterward was “[W]ho the hell is he?”14
Huey wrote his brother Shan that he had now recovered from the initial shock of being “complimented, cartooned and ridiculed.” He followed up his attacks with a big Labor Day speech sponsored by a union. Julius fed anti-Campbell information to the newspapers. Huey privately complained that he was being asked about the gubernatorial race and had denied any ambition for it even though the real reason was his age, his handicap, he said, for the last fifteen years.15
Huey’s oil stocks lost value because of the Pine Island freeze-out, but by how much is difficult to determine. Huey said his seven thousand shares of Claiborne Oil Company stock were worthless after the freeze-out.16 Deutsch and Williams thought that Huey and O. B. Thompson traveled to New York to sell Banks Oil Company for only 10 percent of their investment.17 This is a myth.
The freeze-out only lasted until July 1919. First the Texas Company and then Standard Oil lifted the embargo. Oil prices rose to $0.75 per barrel and then to $1.25 by December 1919. Huey’s advocacy helped force this, or perhaps the big companies had absorbed the independents by this time,18 but the freeze-out afterward caused no additional distress.
The story of Banks Oil Company, moreover, is more complicated than the myth. Huey put most of his time in the second half of 1919 and much of 1920 into the affairs of Banks, complaining to O. K. Allen that he was wasting the best years of his life and neglecting his family to do so.19 But Huey still had dreams of great wealth, infected as he was by an oil-industry propaganda pamphlet: “Riches are today being powered into the laps of men who yesterday had just the bare necessities of life”; the opportunity has “never been equaled in the history of the world.” Huey called this fifteen-page pamphlet a “marvel.”20
In March 1919, after the freeze-out began but before it ended, Huey worked on a plan to change the capitalization of Banks from $80,000 to $1,500,000. A New York firm, H. L. Mandeville, was engaged to sell the additionally issued shares. If it could raise investor money, Banks could build a refinery and drill more wells.21 A prospectus was issued, and rosy financial prospects for the “famous” Pine Island field were outlined. Mandeville asked for more and more information and for Banks to pay dividends to make its shares more attractive. Mandeville dribbled out excuses why it had not hit the big stock sales that Huey was counting on and that he had assured his Louisiana stockholders were coming.22 Banks’s primary shareholders had to loan the company $50,000 to keep it afloat at one point. It weathered a Federal Trade Commission inquiry and newspaper articles wondering whether investing in oil companies was a good idea. Banks counted on a well in Homer. Huey and O. K. Allen gave glowing reports about the drilling progress to Mandeville.23
The Homer well failed.24 The shaft hit plenty of gas, and company offi-cials believed that oil was right below it, but a kerosene lantern caught fire one night, injuring a workman and then water flooded the well for reasons no one could explain. Contemporaneously, Standard Oil, probably by taking over independents, drilled Pine Island gushers. Eventually a trade magazine wrote that it doubted Banks paid dividends from profits but probably only from the sale of its stock.25 This is characteristic of a Ponzi scheme and killed future stock sales.
Unable to pay creditors, Banks then merged with American National Oil Company, getting stock and a promise to pay $650,000 to drill wells in exchange for its real estate and leases. Huey didn’t negotiate this deal but wrote that it was splendid. The acquiring company was financially strong and its chief official, J. L. Payne, wealthy and successful.26
Huey was wrong. The company never spent the money to drill and, when sued, filed for bankruptcy. Creditors began hounding Huey. He developed an “oppressed feeling, which constant door knocks cause.” When he got Payne on the witness stand in a bankruptcy hearing, Payne fought off Huey’s cross-examination and accused Banks of misrepresenting the properties it provided to his company, thus excusing his obligation to pay the $650,000 to drill. Banks had listed a few properties it did not own in the list of assets to be acquired, probably an innocent mistake, and had offered substitute properties when it was discovered. To excuse his company’s obligations, Payne—probably in bad faith—refused to accept them or ask for anything else.
Huey believed that, unlike a Ponzi scheme, the Banks properties were valuable, and he tried to reacquire them, but he couldn’t raise the necessary funds. The “swindler” Payne—as Huey called him—became Huey’s “nemesis,” and he could never “put his finger” on him to rectify the situation. In court, Huey lost a motion to remove Payne and appoint a receiver for Banks. Banks’s stockholders then lost interest in continuing a fight that Huey was unable to win.27
Two gubernatorial candidates survived the pre-campaign maneuverings. Frank P. Stubbs of Monroe had just returned from the war, had lined up support in northern Louisiana, and had won the Ring’s endorsement. Stubbs’s endorsement by the New Orleans Ring was masterminded by its leader, Martin Behrman. Since 1904, Behrman had served as mayor of New Orleans. He was born to a poor Jewish couple who had moved from New York to New Orleans when he was an infant. His father died soon after the move. His mother died when he was twelve. Surviving as a street waif, he worked in grocery stores and went to school at night. When he was twenty-two, he converted to Catholicism, got married, and became a partner in a grocery store. Working his way up the Fifteenth Ward organization, he was cordial and polite, known by his saying, “let’s get togedder.” Behrman worked with all white ethnic groups, primarily Irish and Italians. He disliked silk-stocking, patrician reformers such as John M. Parker. With a few exceptions, the Ring under Behrman favored business interests. The cost of electricity from a regulated electric company was the highest in the country.28
Prostitution flourished in the Storyville area under Ring protection until the federal government closed it down in 1917, after which it spread to the rest of the city, as Behrman predicted: “You can make prostitution illegal, but you can’t make it unpopular.”29 Another gem: “most people remember what you did to them rather than what you did for them.”30
The Ring had made a few decisions that came back to haunt it in 1919. It had refused to back Jared Y. Sanders, a former lieutenant governor, governor, and congressman, each time elected with Ring support, in a recent race for the U.S. Senate. Jilted, Sanders now attacked the Ring. Behrman also had somehow managed to infuriate sitting governor Pleasant, who turned on him and fired thousands of the Ring’s patronage workers. The Ring then splintered. The renegades formed the Orleans Democratic Association. Behrman sensed that much of the population, maybe influenced by veterans returned from World War I, was tired of politics and corruption as usual and was “wild” for reform.
Behrman’s anointed candidate, Frank Stubbs, therefore, drew an opponent in the Democratic primary scheduled for January 1920: none other than John M. Parker. Parker already had support in the sugar parishes from his race in 1916 and in New Orleans from his Good Government League. Much of Parker’s appeal resulted from his opposition to corruption. Parker also advocated, however, a severance tax to fund construction of modern highways and better schools, expansion of the state university, destruction of the New Orleans Ring, bringing natural gas to New Orleans, conservation of natural resources, women’s suffrage, protection of independent oil drillers, and convening a constitutional convention to modernize Louisiana’s constitution.31 He was less specific than Huey, however, in advocating legislation regarding oil pipelines. Parker drew support from the Orleans Democratic Association, J. Y. Sanders, and other groups that splintered from the Ring, many of whom were not reform minded.32
Huey originally decided to sit out the race and break his neck to earn money.33 But at a Labor Day rally in Shreveport, Huey drew from Stubbs an expression of sympathy for independent oil drillers and a pledge of support for an equitable pipeline-regulatory law. Stubbs balked at divorcing the oil companies from ownership of oil pipelines. Huey then wrote Parker asking for his position.34
On September 18, Parker pledged to protect independent oil interests. Huey described a meeting with Parker, who said he sympathized with victims of Standard Oil.35 In public, Huey said he was satisfied with both candidates’ answers, but he backed Parker, because Stubbs was supported by the Ring and Standard Oil.36
Parker’s worst electoral showing four years earlier was in northern Louisiana. If Huey could change that, Parker might be elected, and Huey should be influential with a new administration. Most pundits, however, did not think Stubbs could be defeated.
Campaigning all over northern Louisiana for seventy days and neglecting his law practice,37 Huey promised that Parker would pass a pipeline bill and criticized the New Orleans Ring for vice and corruption. He spoke in venues politicians hadn’t visited in years. He contributed $2,200 to the campaign, a lot of money, considering his income. Julius backed Stubbs, but Huey enticed many of Julius’s leaders to support Parker instead.38 Huey couldn’t deliver the entire north Louisiana vote to Parker. But he delivered a small majority of it, enough for Parker to win the January 1920 primary: 78,868 to 65,685 votes.39
No one thought Huey could help elect Parker. He won so many bets—suits and hats being a common wager—that his “mind was crowded as to a method of disposing them in a legitimate manner.” One man sent him $100 to settle. Another bought him a new suit, now his most expensive one, at a cost of $95.40 What would Huey do with his new clout?
Parker held a conference with five hundred oil-industry representatives and government officeholders in February 1920. The independents asked that all pipelines be declared common carriers and required to operate as common purchasers, and that ownership of oil and pipeline companies be separated. By April, however, the independents had prepared two weaker bills. Both bills were endorsed by Gulf Refining and Texas Company. In a press release written by their press agent, T. O. Harris, the independents denied there was anything radical in their proposals.
Huey wrote to Parker to oppose the independents’ bills, arguing that price discrimination should always be prohibited, and that ownership of pipelines and oil companies should be separated. Huey claimed that Pine Island now was 95 percent controlled by the big oil companies, which explained the weaker legislation (drafted by Texas Company) they proposed.41
The new governor kept his distance. When the independents introduced their bill, however, Huey supported it. If a pipeline carried oil other than the oil of the pipeline’s owner—subject to certain minimums—it would be judged a common carrier, and its rates set by the Railroad Commission. It passed the lower house by two votes. The opponents then asked for a gubernatorial conference.
The independents agreed to the conference, but Huey published a circular for the legislators charging that Standard Oil was now part of the legislative process of the state and that, regardless of the electoral results, the same old politicians wrote the legislation. His autobiography set forth his frustration: “Those of us, zealous for reform and who had exhausted ourselves in the election, hied back to our work to give attention to our several neglected affairs. The crowd of wiseacres, skilled at flattery and repartee, surrounded our newly elected governor. . . . When the slaves of the campaign had the time to visit him, the element we had expected to oust were needed to introduce us to our late candidate.”42 In private correspondence, Huey said Parker was a weakling who had to be flattered daily. To Julius, he wrote that “politics is the sorriest of all sorry games.”43
On July 2, 1920, the conference was held. As a spectator, Huey remarked that certain independents had sold out. The governor and the big oil companies confronted Huey: did his circular refer to them? Huey replied that something peculiar was going on, but he was not referring to anyone personally. The conference negotiations produced a compromise bill.
The bill passed—not as good as the Oklahoma bill—and broadened the definition of a common carrier pipeline to include those carrying oil for consideration and those that may be legally held to be common carriers from the nature of the business conducted or from the way the business was carried on. Everyone agreed with this compromise except Huey.44
Huey had solid precedent on his side. Having the courts declare a pipeline as a common carrier on a case-by-case basis under the amorphous standards set forth would be slow. The delay and expense of litigation—especially if this took place in the middle of a freeze-out—would inhibit effective relief. Further litigation (initiated by Huey) was required to establish the commission’s right to regulate the pipelines.
From then on, Parker, T. O. Harris, and Standard Oil’s spokesman, Hunter Leake, were Huey’s enemies. Leake issued statements and made speeches “skinning” Huey.45 Parker hired detectives to see if Huey violated the Mann Act (anti-prostitution legislation) 46 on his commission trips.
Huey also fought Parker on the issue of a severance tax on natural resources such as oil, natural gas, lumber, salt, and sulfur. The existing law was poorly drafted, produced little revenue, and was inadequately enforced. Parker called a conference of industry representatives and asked them to agree on a new severance tax of 2.5 or 3.0 percent to raise revenue for the state university and other institutions. They refused. Standard Oil and its allies agreed to accept a rate of 1.0 percent, but no more.
Parker compromised and suggested 2 percent, but no less. He stood firm at this rate over a period of weeks. If the industry leaders refused to agree, Parker promised to propose that rate anyway and take his chances with the legislature.
In a separate meeting, the lumber interests agreed to the 2 percent rate but worried about subsequent increases. Parker pledged not to increase the tax during his term. The lumber agreement broke what had been a solid industry front of opposition. In a separate visit, Standard Oil agreed to the 2 percent rate, and Parker again agreed to prevent later increases. It asked who was going to draft the bill. “Basking in the glow of his success and the company of fellow aristocrats,” Parker “gave a fantastic reply.” He told them they could write the bill.
This stupidity “followed” Parker “like an evil specter for the rest of his administration.” At various times he said he was “joking,” that the state’s lawyers had checked their work, or that he was justified by the need to obtain the additional tax revenue for the state. The “joking” defense was just a lie; Standard Oil wrote the bill as a temporary license tax on industries severing natural resources from the state. The best defense was that he wanted to avoid litigation over the bill, but this was not agreed to, and the oil industry challenged the severance tax in court.
In compromising on 2 percent, Parker misjudged the strength of support for a higher rate. Having faced down the industry in support of his 2 percent rate, he now tried to face down those who wanted a higher rate.47 His honor was at stake. Huey allied with those who asked for a higher rate, but they lost, and the 2 percent rate was enacted.
Because of Parker’s pipeline and severance tax positions, Huey opposed Parker’s call for a constitutional convention. He thought the corporations would dominate it. Huey’s district agreed with him, but the voters in south Louisiana and New Orleans overwhelmed his opposition. Huey’s popularity was growing: he won his own election by 635 votes, carried his district for Parker in the gubernatorial election by 1,500 votes, and obtained a 6,000-vote margin against the constitutional convention.48
In the same month, Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph Company applied to the commission for a 25 percent increase in telephone rates. The company omitted from its application data on its costs and details of a promised expansion and gave its suggested rate schedule to commission counsel Wylie Barrow, not Chairman Taylor. Huey used this harmless breach of etiquette to goad Taylor into opposing the company. At the hearing, Huey and Taylor asked hostile questions of the company’s lawyer, Hunt Chipley, whose cigarette holder and mannerisms connoted an English duke. Why had they bypassed the chairman? Why hadn’t they submitted specific supporting data to justify their request? What was the increase going to cost a subscriber in Winnfield? The hearing adjourned until December for the company to submit supporting data.49
In December 1920, Cumberland provided the data. In the interim, municipalities converged on the commission to protest. Three days of testimony were taken. The commission took the application under advisement. Then New Orleans requested that the case be reopened so that it could present testimony from an expert accountant. Huey skipped the meeting to consider this on February 24, 1921. Statistical testimony was offered. The commission again took the case under advisement.
Just one day after the hearing and two days before the constitutional convention was to convene, Taylor and Michel granted the rate increase. Roused from his sleep at home by a reporter on the Saturday night the decision was issued, Huey charged that he was offered legal work if he would vote for the increase and that Taylor repudiated a promise to him to vote against it. Municipal officials were angry.
Strange and suspicious behavior was manifest. The opinion was issued on Saturday after the hearing concluded on Friday, and therefore was probably written before the hearing took place.50 New Orleans opposed the rate increase, but its faithful ward leader and representative, Michel, voted for it. Huey charged that Michel was a tool of one of the company’s lawyers. Originally, Taylor was hostile to the increase. Why did he change his mind? Huey’s behavior in skipping the meeting is equally strange, however, considering that he usually sought out the scene of action. Did he secretly want the increase granted so he could dissent and dramatize a fight against a big corporate foe?
On behalf of Taylor and Michel, commission counsel Barrow wrote a defensive opinion. It supported the company’s right to a return on its investment of 8 percent, omitted any discussion of Cumberland’s ownership by two larger companies, and exhorted its customers to recall the number of years that Cumberland had operated without a rate increase. In his dissenting opinion, Huey denounced the 8 percent rate, considering the economic circumstances of Cumberland’s 80,000 customers, and emphasized that Cumberland was owned (94 percent) by the Bell Telephone System, which was in turn owned (100 percent) by AT&T. AT&T owned 97 percent of Western Electric Company, which furnished Cumberland with its equipment. Thus, there was an opportunity to manipulate the ostensible costs to Cumberland that underlay its requested return.
Public sentiment forced the commission to consider requests to reopen the case in March. A large crowd attended to protest the increase. At its conclusion, one of the speakers, egged on by Huey’s suggestive comments that he “leave the personalities for later” and that the decision was written “before the testimony closed,” rushed over to Taylor and punched him twice in the face. The man was arrested and jailed. Huey bailed him out upon payment of a small fine. Two weeks later, the commission reopened the case to collect more evidence. Over Huey’s objection, it allowed the approved and increased rates to be collected in the meantime.51
Huey now had three issues—the pipeline controversy, the severance tax, and the telephone-rate case—and a big political event (the constitutional convention) upon which to promote his views. Further cementing his brand as the champion of the people, in January 1921, he had won a lawsuit (later reversed on appeal) holding that the Shreveport ordinance raising streetcar fares to 6 cents from 5 cents was improper. This was front-page news in the Shreveport Journal and the Shreveport Times. The Central Trades and Labor Council congratulated him.52
At the constitutional convention, many delegates wanted to increase the severance tax rate to 3 percent and include that in the constitution, rebating some to the parishes from which the resources were taken. Governor Parker appeared before the taxation committee of the convention and asked its delegates to honor his gentlemen’s agreement with Standard Oil, despite their mandate from their constituents and Parker’s prior promise to exert no influence over the convention.
The debate culminated with a front porch conference. Delegates visited Parker to seek his views on a compromise severance tax provision for the constitution. Parker excused himself to telephone Standard Oil’s treasurer and invited him to join them. After this, Parker addressed the convention. To fulfill his gentlemen’s agreement, he urged that the severance tax be kept at its present level. To avoid hamstringing future legislatures, Parker advocated leaving the rate out of the constitution but, instead, letting future legislatures set the rate. The delegates followed this wise recommendation but set aside some portion of the tax for the parishes.53 Standard Oil escaped having a 3 percent rate assessed against it; the parishes got some portion of the tax dedicated to them; and proponents of the higher rate got the chance to enact an increase at the next legislative session.
The new constitution contained a few desirable features. It renamed the Railroad Commission the “Public Service Commission” and broadened its authority. It empowered the legislature to regulate working conditions for women and authorized juvenile courts. The constitution was long and convoluted, however, and included many features detested by progressives. Effective authorization for an income tax was denied. Bonds to construct highways were forbidden. All highways had to be constructed on a pay-as-you-go basis, funded by taxes on gasoline and truck licenses.54 Former governor Pleasant, a delegate to the convention, refused to sign the document because, he said, it was produced by corrupt corporate forces.55
Governor Parker was still influential, however. Reform candidate Andrew McShane, backed by Parker and the leader of the Orleans Democratic Association, John Sullivan, defeated New Orleans mayor Behrman in 1921. Parker and Sullivan were incongruous allies. Sullivan owned gambling interests and had split from and wanted to supplant the Ring and wield its power. In his obsession to defeat the Ring, Parker used patronage—the spoils system he had pledged to eliminate—to defeat the Ring’s candidate. Huey applauded the victory.56
In his own district, Huey ran the campaign of John Land for the Louisiana Supreme Court. Brother Julius supported Land’s rival. No one thought Land could win on his own, but he was credited with enough brains to engage Huey as his campaign manager. Huey was charged with being the “official mud slinger of the Land campaign” but had to defeat prejudice against Land’s Christian Science religious beliefs. Land’s victory left Huey still undefeated in his district.57
A special session of the legislature convened in September 1921. Proponents of the 3 percent severance tax rate—led by former governor Pleasant—again pressed their position. Governor Parker again relied on his gentlemen’s agreement to oppose it.
Huey issued three circulars (on September 27 and 28, and October 1) to the legislators. They charged that Standard Oil, previously an invisible empire, was now visibly running the Parker administration: Parker let Standard Oil draft the severance tax bill; repudiated his promise to back an oil-pipeline bill; appointed the son of Standard Oil’s lawyer to be superintendent of the state Charity Hospital in New Orleans after pledging that no lobbyists would be maintained at Baton Rouge; and pledged noninterference with the constitutional convention but then intervened to protect Standard Oil. Huey told the newspapers that Shelby Taylor was corruptly influenced to vote in favor of the Cumberland rate increase.58 And he charged that a relative, Wade Long, had offered Huey a bribe.59
In response, legislators denounced Huey, demanded an investigation, and considered impeachment. One state representative suggested that a sanity commission be appointed to examine him. Another wanted to try him for contempt and put him in jail. Only one member exhibited intelligence. He proposed that everyone ignore Huey.
The House began hearings on Huey’s charges. Called to testify, Huey explained that Cumberland’s attorney, James C. Henriques Sr., had promised to throw legal work his way if he voted for the telephone-rate increase. In the presence of Paul Maloney, an Old Regular leader, Taylor had told Huey that he would vote against the rate increase. Henriques and Taylor responded that Huey lied. Huey asked to cross-examine Henriques; the chairman of the committee ruled that he could, but Henriques hustled to his seat, saying he didn’t “even want to talk to such a liar as you are.”60 The committee chairman reversed himself and blocked Huey from asking Henriques any questions. The chairman also declined to call Paul Maloney to the stand—even though he witnessed the conversation of Huey and Taylor and would have either confirmed Huey’s testimony or impeached it—and closed the hearing.61
A Parker ally tried to have the incumbent members of the Railroad Commission removed incident to the creation of the new Public Service Commission. At Huey’s direction, one member rose to suggest that all three commissioners should resign and be made to stand for reelection. Another member said he was authorized to say that Huey would accept this arrangement. An opposition member stumbled into the trap: “But Long’s the only one who would be reelected.” At the end of this farce, the House voted to impeach all three members of the commission but never took any action to remove them.62
Right before those proceedings, Parker one-upped the House. He swore out affidavits charging Huey with criminal libel. If Huey’s charges were true, Parker said, he was unfit to be governor but, if they were false, then Huey should be jailed. The sheriff of Caddo Parish served the writs. Huey traveled to Baton Rouge—far from home, into the domicile of Standard Oil, he complained—to post bond. Borrowing $5,000 from James G. Palmer of Shreveport, and hiring Palmer, Robert R. Reid of south Louisiana, and his brother Julius to represent him, Huey swaggered into Baton Rouge and posted the bond, saying “I figured you boys might be short of ready money down here.” Huey’s third child was born during this crisis, and he named him Palmer Reid Long, after his two attorneys. Palmer wanted to run for governor. Huey implied that he might support him.63
The criminal libel trial was scheduled almost immediately after the House concluded its investigation. Autobiographies rarely provide a fully accurate insight into the personality of their authors. But at the time of this trial, Huey revealed an insight into his personality, something that made him great, first by letter to his lawyers, and then to the public by reprinting it twelve years later.
Huey’s lawyers advised him to play it safe before the trial or to seek some adroit way out. Playing it safe means to keep your mouth shut, because anything you say can and will be used against you. An adroit resolution would entail some face-saving compromise. Huey rejected this advice. The Saturday Evening Post had published an article on Lost Leaders that Huey quoted in his letter to his attorneys:
There is real pathos about a certain class of politicians to be found in every capitol. They are men, public servants, of marked and acknowledged ability, whose inborn talents would have made them first-raters if they could have mustered a little more courage, a little sterner devotion to principle (rather than expediency), a sense of duty a little higher; if they could only lose their heads at the right time and refuse to play it safe; if, in short, they could have brought themselves to pay the price that the truest success exacts even of genius itself. Their status is not that of men who are naturally qualified to lead, but who deprive the world of their best services because they grudge the price that leadership costs.
Huey concluded that it was too late to play it safe; too much depended on standing his ground.64 He stood for the trial.
Judge Harney F. Brunot presided over the six-day trial. Parker testified with a flushed face and in an emotional voice, admitting to his numerous contacts with Standard Oil, that he made an agreement with it, and that its representatives in fact drafted the severance tax statute. Huey testified that he was not trying to save Parker’s personal soul and that he had made a political attack to help the people of the state. Asked to explain how the invisible empire of Standard Oil had become visible, he pointed to Parker’s admissions of his meetings with Standard Oil representatives, his appointment of Standard Oil spokesman Hunter Leake and others connected to Standard Oil to state positions, and their drafting of the tax bill.65
The trial split public opinion and friends of Huey and Parker. Reid reported that sentiment in Baton Rouge was strongly divided. Many who wanted a higher severance tax rate and criticized Parker’s decision to back off the higher rate disliked Huey’s attacks. Some thought Parker was honest but too befuddled to take a principled position. These same men thought Huey was sincere. John Overton, for example, thanked Huey for saying that Parker should have had Overton draft the bill. But he took pains to tell him that Parker had asked him to review the severance tax bill, that he viewed it as admirably drafted, and that he considered the controversy lamentable. Huey was helped because former governor Pleasant, like Huey, complained of Parker’s interference at the behest of Standard Oil. Likewise, many delegates or legislators admitted that they wanted to vote for a higher severance tax rate but felt Parker’s stand was a steamroller, a bitter pill, which constrained them to vote as he wished.66
Before the trial, it was rumored that Judge Brunot would rule against Huey. And he did, finding Huey technically guilty on both counts. Lecturing Huey that he had an impulsive nature given to ill-considered and indiscreet utterances, sentencing was set at thirty days in jail on the first count and a fine of one dollar on the second count. The jail term was suspended. In a grandstand play, Huey refused to pay the fine. So, Palmer paid it. Parker claimed vindication.
Although Huey walked out of court smiling and claiming victory, he was enraged. Huey demanded that his lawyer, Reid, oppose Brunot for the next Supreme Court election the following year. In a restaurant after the verdict, J. Y. Sanders stopped by his table to chat, and Huey was heard to say, “Brunot will never go to the supreme bench.” In fact, Reid defeated Brunot in the next election.
After the trial, Huey issued a press release full of bravado. Corporate control of the state had been exposed. The power of the people would make the corporations accountable. “The fight is just beginning,” he said. A south Louisiana politician told a New Orleans newspaper reporter that an “awful illogic” had infected the people. “They don’t know Huey Long. They never saw him and would not know him if he stepped off the train at our station. But they know him in name and you can’t make them believe he is not their defender.”67
The power of the people caused Parker and Standard Oil to end their gentlemen’s agreement in January 1922. Parker announced that he would recommend a 3 percent severance tax rate in the May legislative session. Huey charged that Parker only agreed to the increase to avoid a recall election.68
Nevertheless, Huey remained a minority on the Public Service Commission. If he stayed in the minority, he could continue to verbally attack the big corporations but could never strike a blow against them or confer a benefit on his constituents. Fate intervened, however, to give him that chance.