Fifteen
THE VISION THING

 

 

Occasionally political matters interrupted Huey’s LSU and public relations activities. When James Aswell died, Huey backed John Overton for Aswell’s congressional seat, and Overton won the election in April.¹ Huey had a political discussion with Mayor Walmsley, but no agreement was reached.² Walmsley was frustrated: “[Huey] will be the whole show or none.” Equally harsh, Huey denied a suggested merger with the Ring: “I won’t have it.”³

In April, because of the legislative investigation into dreadful conditions at Angola prison, Huey appointed LSU’s business manager, R. L. “Tighty” Himes, to run it, accepting Clay Dugas’s resignation for reasons of “private business.” Huey had prearranged the private sector job for Dugas.⁴ Huey generally found replacements before any resignation to preempt job seekers (“Oh, I didn’t know you were interested in that job; I’ve already promised it to ———.”).⁵ Huey “directed Mr. Himes to operate the penitentiary 100 per cent on the basis of efficiency. . . . He can fire and hire anybody he chooses, and I will help him [do] it. I have appointed him [because] . . . he guarded every fund and property [of] the university for 33 years. His careful manner . . . has given him the name of ‘Tighty’ on the campus, and that is the kind of a man we need at the penitentiary.”⁶

Under Himes, private companies contracted for prison labor. Non-dangerous inmates were released early. The number of escapes declined because, contrary to the ideas of reformers, prisoners again wore stripes rather than street clothes. Some barbarous practices were eliminated, some services improved, and a few prisoner education and training programs began. Flogging and inadequate training of guards continued. Huey’s supporter Abe Shushan disliked Himes and tried to get him fired, but Huey insulated Himes from politics. After losing money for years, Angola almost became self-sustaining.⁷

In June 1931, with Walmsley’s support, the state Democratic Committee elected Huey to replace Colonel Robert Ewing, who had died.⁸ By July 2, 1931, after four straight days of talks with Walmsley, Huey got the right to name three of the seven state Senate candidates, eight of the seventeen Louisiana House of Representative candidates from the city, and the right to name the statewide Democratic ticket. Huey contended that, because the Old Regulars carried the city against him, they should name most of the representatives and senators unless they were trying to destroy him. Later, Huey found several of the Ring’s candidates objectionable on this ground, and they realized “they had been euchred.”⁹ Huey was a graceless winner, saying the Old Regulars had to give in because their own people would have exterminated them, whereas Walmsley refused to comment because it was too hot to talk politics. Huey also agreed to keep his hands off the mayoral election of 1934.¹⁰

The biggest leverage Huey used was the expected continuation of the previous year’s state financial benefits extended to New Orleans. Huey’s popularity, the positive press he was receiving, and the absence of controversies also contributed to his leverage. Eugene Stanley, the district attorney, had indicted Walmsley for misallocating funds, and that may have helped, although nothing came of it.¹¹ Naming the city’s representatives to the legislature improved Huey’s control of it independent of the Old Regulars. It may have been the single most important negotiation he ever won.¹²

The peace and unity in Louisiana allowed Huey to expand his influence beyond the state. In early August, he intervened behind the scenes on behalf of Mike Conner, a candidate for governor of Mississippi. Robert Brothers and Frank Odom were sent into the state to help Conner develop local organizations, and Huey called Mississippi leaders, urging them to support Conner. Seymour Weiss traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to help Conner’s headquarters operation. Conner’s opponent, Hugh L. White, a wealthy lumberman, attacked Huey. Huey “answered in kind to attacks made and at times made statements about them without waiting for them to attack [him] further.” White led Conner in the primary but lost to him in the runoff election.¹³

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Later in August, Huey extended his influence throughout the South when he intervened to protect cotton farmers, significant because “[m]ore people in the South owed their daily existence to cotton than to any other enterprise.” Large crops, rising costs, and foreign competition diminished profits even during the prosperous 1920s, and the boll weevil infestation drove the costs of raising cotton up and the yield and quality of the cotton down. The Great Depression diminished income from cotton lint and seed, for example, from $1.5 billion to $826 million.¹⁴ In 1931, cotton prices dropped to a new low, about 6.3 cents per pound for middling-grade lint cotton, down from 20 cents in 1930, and 40 cents in 1920. Six cents per pound was below the cost of growing it.¹⁵

Then on August 8, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast a yield of 15.5 million bales for 1931. There were already 8 million bales of surplus cotton on hand. This mere prediction drove cotton option prices down and some cotton-state senators crazy. Many criticized the forecast, and many threatened investigations because of it, but the crop came in at 17 million bales. Brokers “expressed fears the decline might reach 2 cents a pound.” In New Orleans cotton prices closed down 104 to 111 points, “or from $5.29 to $5.55 a bale less.” The anticipated loss was $150,000,000 in cotton and another $100,000,000 to dependent businesses.¹⁶

President Hoover’s federal Farm Board suggested that farmers voluntarily plow up every third row of cotton. This would cost farmers uncompensated time, money, and effort—after plowing and cultivating—and it could not be policed. One writer said that only a “nitwit would destroy every third row of cotton” while people needed clothes.¹⁷

Huey was out of step, temporarily: he was damned if he knew what to do about the problem; the Farm Board proposal was “pretty good.” Most cotton-state governors opposed it. Bilbo wanted to leave every third row in the fields; Murray wanted to prevent one-third from being ginned; and Carleton wanted to provide storage. South Carolina’s Blackwood, however, suggested a prohibition on planting any cotton for a year.¹⁸

Coincidentally, north Louisiana planters proposed this to their congressman, John Sandlin. The surplus would disappear, and prices would rise, they thought, if cotton planting were prohibited for a year. Studying the plan for twenty-four hours, Huey decided to back it and, once he backed it, he backed it all the way. On August 16 he invited cotton-state officials to New Orleans to consider the plan.¹⁹ Huey’s argument: farmers still had this year’s crop, and they should keep it until the results of the meeting were known. A surplus of 15 million bales would exist after this year, so that with a year off there would still be enough cotton for the whole world to use. The “Lord told us to lay off raising these crops one year out of every seven.” The cotton industry was financed through New Orleans, making it a fit site for the meeting.²⁰

Huey gave radio speeches on Will Henderson’s station, and James Thomson of the New Orleans Item wrote favorable stories and editorials. Thomson, a former opponent, saw this along with Huey’s advocacy of flood-control legislation as evidence that he was progressive.²¹

The governors of Arkansas and South Carolina, Georgia commissioner of agriculture Eugene Talmadge, and the legal advisor of Governor Murray of Oklahoma attended. Huey sent an airplane to Austin to bring Texas lieutenant governor Edgar E. Witt. Arkansas senator Caraway telegrammed Huey that he liked the idea but doubted that all the necessary states would support it.²²

At the meeting, Louisiana political foes sat side by side to support the plan. The attendees endorsed it if states that produced 75 percent of the cotton agreed. A competing resolution for acreage reduction was voted down after Huey as chairman announced, “We are going to vote that down.”²³

The 75 percent proviso was directed at Texas, which produced about 33 percent of the cotton in the United States. Texas governor Ross Sterling secretly opposed the plan but declined to attend the meeting, using noncommittal political boilerplate extolling the “great cotton industry.”²⁴ Sterling declined to introduce the first law. It was Huey’s baby, and he should “wash it first.” Huey responded: “All right old boy we are getting ready to . . . wash the baby and dress it. It will be on your desk and yell Da Da before the week’s out.”²⁵

Huey called the legislature into session. To demonstrate bi-factional support, Huey’s opponents introduced the bill. It passed unanimously²⁶ in both houses. Wakened in the governor’s mansion after midnight, Huey signed the bill while wearing a cotton nightshirt in a bed with cotton sheets. After the photographers left, he said, “Now I can take this damn thing off,” and changed into silk pajamas. As a cotton “super patriot,” he ordered cotton stationery for Louisiana’s government. O. K. Allen, Seymour Weiss, and Huey’s son Russell then flew in a chartered plane to present the bill to Sterling in Texas. Chasing Sterling from Austin to Houston, Allen gave him Huey’s baby “all washed, powdered, and wrapped in a cotton dress.”²⁷ Sterling responded that the plan lacked legislative support.²⁸

Huey spoke over the radio nightly, reaching audiences throughout the South. Listeners expressed support and sent donations, which Huey returned. Enough interest developed to force Sterling to call the Texas legislature into session. Sterling stood about six feet tall and weighed 250 pounds. A successful oilman, in 1930 he also owned a Houston newspaper and interests in banks, railroads, and real estate. The farmers had reason to think he might help. When oil prices had declined, the Texas legislature passed oil production controls and Sterling enforced them by declaring martial law. Cotton-dependent businesses in Texas (cotton ginners, banks, railroads) disliked the holiday idea, however. Huey asked Sterling to listen to downtrodden farmers.²⁹

A crowd of twelve thousand Texans descended on the capitol in Austin and invited Huey to speak. Huey wouldn’t let Cyr function as governor, so he sent a radio technician to erect amplifiers and other speaking equipment, including a direct phone line to Louisiana. Huey drove five hours to Shreveport to speak in an auditorium to five hundred people, with his remarks broadcast to the crowd, including Governor Sterling, in Texas. Arriving, Huey shook hands, took off his collar and necktie, and scattered notes about the table. In Texas, Gene Talmadge warmed up the crowd. Huey began at 8 p.m. While he was talking, Huey held a phone to his ear while Seymour Weiss, present with the Texas crowd, reported its reaction.³⁰ Huey was cheered repeatedly. Huey asked those who favored the plan to stand and, when told by phone that they all stood, said: “that’s the spirit. You all stood.” The intimate interplay between Huey and the audience despite the separation of three hundred miles was an “awesome display of intelligence and ability.”³¹

Sterling was now forced into the open. He said the government should not tell farmers what they could plant and grow. Sterling invoked the memories of Texas independence heroes Sam Houston and Stephen Austin to repel the interference of the governor of Louisiana and blamed President Hoover for the difficulties.³² The audience would have none of it. Sterling was booed and hissed. Accusatory shouts and cheers of “Hurrah for Long” and threats to egg him caused him to sit down, “a thoroughly defeated and dejected man.”³³

Huey plunged ahead with his campaign, hindered by his inability to leave the state. North Carolina’s governor wanted foreign nations included.³⁴ Georgia’s governor Russell favored it if Texas would. Mississippi governor Bilbo favored acreage reduction.³⁵ Alabama’s governor was dubious, but other officials favored it. Nightly radio broadcasts during the first week of September earned Huey front-page press notice throughout the South. Mass meetings were scheduled in Arkansas, Georgia, and other states at which overwhelming support was voiced.³⁶ Telegrams and letters, sixteen hundred in all, poured in, two-thirds from outside Louisiana.³⁷

By September 7, Huey thought Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Arkansas would back his plan.³⁸ South Carolina adopted it.³⁹ It all depended on Texas. “We are at the threshold of victory and of relief . . . if Texas does not spoil the whole problem by [passing] a half and half measure, which will be less than no act at all.”⁴⁰

A swarm of lobbyists descended on Austin. Huey charged that they blandished legislators with wine, women, and money. Unlike his accusations against the Louisiana legislature in 1916, these charges neither prompted nor accompanied a turnabout. Texas legislators were outraged. They called Huey a liar, a jackass, a coward, an ignoramus, a buffoon, a meddler, and poor white trash. On September 16, the Texas legislature killed the bill and passed resolutions denouncing Huey.⁴¹ Huey conceded defeat.

Huey’s plan was popular, better than acreage reduction, and bold. Some critics wonder how his plan would have helped the tenant farmer or thought that tenant farmers would have formed groups of roving brigands, but this assumes that no crop at all would be raised if cotton were not. Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia later stated that land suitable to grow tobacco and cotton would grow peanuts.⁴² Substitute crops would have a collateral benefit of diversification. One farmer wrote Huey that tenant farmers would benefit:

I . . . have about 3,000 acres of land leased. . . . On this farm, I have about 340 negroes. At the present price of cotton and seed my negroes cannot pay their debts, not to mention the purchasing of clothes which they are badly in need of. If your plan goes through . . . it will mean a better price for this year’s crop. . . . [E]very family on it will live better than they ever have before. All of them have hogs and cows and chickens. They can raise an acre of Irish potatoes and five acres of sweet potatoes and five acres of peas and as much pumpkins and squash and other vegetables as they can put away.⁴³

Acreage reduction with a continued decline in prices hurt the tenant farmer more.⁴⁴

Other critics said the holiday would open U.S. markets to foreign cotton.⁴⁵ If foreign supplies were the threat, however, then acreage reduction made no sense either. If there were 8 million bales of surplus cotton already and 17 million bales on the way, there was enough stock in the United States to supply consumers for two years without any imports. It is true that the price would not rise as much if imports were offered at a lower price, but considering the supply available, the farmers would work for one year, not two, to supply the demand at whatever the price in the United States ended up being.

The arguments hostile to the plan seem to clothe a more instinctive or reflexive hostility to the government telling property holders what to do. Huey’s justification for the legislation was to exterminate the boll weevil, “Anthonomus grandis, bohemian,” to eradicate cotton root rot, “phymatatrichum omnivorum duggar,” as well as to aid the cotton industry.⁴⁶ Later in the New Deal, legislation provided that portions of crops were to be obtained by the government pursuant to set aside programs without direct compensation in order to reduce supply and maintain prices, a program recently ruled unconstitutional.⁴⁷ Under Huey’s plan, the farmers always owned their crops, and it would be difficult to deny the government’s police power to exterminate hazards to property. The extermination of the boll weevil would have reduced costs to farmers by 25 to 40 percent.⁴⁸

Without Huey’s plan, the price declined to 4.6 cents per pound.⁴⁹ Huey’s stature improved all over the South, except perhaps in Texas, where even a supporter asked Huey to apologize to allay the bitterness from his charges. Huey declined.⁵⁰

In the words of Pete Daniel, Huey’s plan represented a “tantalizing what-might-have-been in Southern history.” It was “the last chance that farmers had to solve the overproduction crisis before the federal government became their landlord.”⁵¹ Huey said that it was “pretty well known that I have suffered almost every reverse that a living human could endure and survive. But . . . I have never been struck to the heart as I have been in the last twenty-four hours when . . . I saw the veil of doom and distress maliciously forced upon the families of two million Southern farmers.” The partial acreage reduction law of Texas was “a mere faked delusion through which they hope to escape the wrath of an afflicted people.”⁵²

The national press noticed,⁵³ but Huey denied national ambitions because no one who advocated wealth redistribution could be nominated by either political party, and therefore he was “nothing” beyond Louisiana.⁵⁴ Humorist Will Rogers wrote that, if Huey’s comments about the Texas legislature were false, they would have laughed it off instead of attacking him. Huey had “the only real cotton idea that’s been suggested.” In Louisiana, some former opponents in the river parishes now saw him as crusading, gutsy, and progressive. Grateful for the Item’s approval, Huey deducted the cost of the Item’s subscription from state employees’ paychecks so they could read the paper every day.⁵⁵

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The man who kept Huey prisoner within Louisiana, Paul Cyr, cramped opportunities for Huey to reach regional and national audiences and prevented him getting sworn in on time with other newly elected senators in January 1932. Huey had to send a representative to a regional flood-control conference in Chicago hosted by Mayor Big Bill Thompson.⁵⁶ In May 1931, Huey couldn’t attend a bridge dedication connecting Louisiana with Mississippi at Vicksburg.⁵⁷

Cyr ruined Huey’s plan to publicize LSU in New York, coincident with a football game between LSU and West Point. The Louisiana Progress announced in August 1931 that three thousand LSU students would travel by special train through St. Louis, Cleveland, Niagara Falls, and New York City, with the band parading in each city. In New York, the students would attend a Broadway play.

Alas, Cyr refused to renounce his right to function as governor if Huey stepped out of the state, despite students who begged him to relent. Instead, Huey’s wife, three children, and Alice Lee Grosjean led the students on a more limited journey. The band was overwhelmed in New York City, and the team lost the game to West Point on November 7, twenty to nothing.⁵⁸

When LSU lost the last game of the season to Tulane, thirty-four to seven, Huey again fired Cohen, this time for good, and searched for a big-name coach.⁵⁹ Meanwhile, Tulane went to the Rose Bowl, where they played a great game but lost to the University of Southern California. They received a hero’s welcome from Huey and other officials upon their return.⁶⁰

When Huey was elected to the Senate in 1930, he sent his certificate of election to Washington. In October 1931, Cyr filed suit claiming that Huey had thereby vacated the governorship. Other anti-Long leaders thought the same thing,⁶¹ and there was no harm in asking a court to decide the question. Before obtaining a court ruling, however, Cyr took the oath of governor and proclaimed that he was governor. Thereafter he failed to perform any duties or to accept a paycheck as lieutenant governor.

Conscious of rumors that Cyr was recruiting an army, when Huey learned of Cyr’s proclamation he panicked. Grabbing a pistol and his favorite reporter, Chick Frampton, Huey drove like a maniac to Baton Rouge, narrowly avoiding several collisions and scaring Frampton. General Fleming summoned the National Guard to protect the capitol, but when Huey arrived he said it wasn’t needed. Instead, the state police added machine guns at the capitol doors.⁶²

The humor of Cyr’s unilateral decision to swear himself in as governor dawned on unemployed bill collector Walter Aldrich. He appeared before a notary public and took the gubernatorial oath. And his idea was contagious. In cities across the state, men appeared before notaries to take the oath. Louisianans merrily greeted each other on the street over the next few days with “Hello Governor.”⁶³

The national press soon discovered this “opera bouffe.”⁶⁴ Their stories prompted men throughout the country to swear themselves in as governor of Louisiana.⁶⁵ Louisianans were amused, but the controversy imperiled the sale of highway bonds. Huey had to cancel the sale of $12 million in bonds on October 29, blaming Cyr.⁶⁶

Beyond seeing the humor of what Cyr had done, Huey considered its legality. Hadn’t Cyr abandoned his position as lieutenant governor? Huey had Alvin O. King, president of the State Senate, sworn in as lieutenant governor because he was next in line for that job. This set off another swearing-in craze, this time for lieutenant governor. A Mr. E. H. Reed asked to take the oath as lieutenant governor because, if the state were to have three governors, each one should have a lieutenant governor.⁶⁷

Huey then countersued Cyr. Cyr had failed to perform any duties as lieutenant governor or collect his pay and had acquiesced from Election Day in 1930 until 1931 in Huey’s retention of the governorship. The U.S. Senate, not the courts, was charged with evaluating the qualifications of its members, and Huey cited historical examples of governors who had delayed taking office as senator.⁶⁸ Arguing the case himself on November 3, Huey won dismissal of Cyr’s suit.⁶⁹ On appeal in December, again argued by Huey, the Louisiana Supreme Court reserved ruling until after the January election.

The last impediment to taking the national stage was thus the January 1932 election. After an agonizing consideration of his options, Huey named O. K. Allen as his gubernatorial candidate and John B. Fournet for lieutenant governor.⁷⁰ Allen was weak in mind and character, dominated by Huey at work and his wife at home. He could not remember names and faces. He was awkward meeting people. At a rally, Allen circulated among the people saying “Hello,” and when he met a younger boy he said in a friendly way, “How’s your father?” The boy said he had died. Allen moved on but somehow in circulating among the crowd came upon the boy again. “How’s your father?” Allen asked. “He’s still dead,” replied the boy.

Allen would do what Huey wanted, however. Huey could go to Washing-ton as a senator without relinquishing his authority in Louisiana. Earl Long later said that a leaf blew in the window of the governor’s office; Allen signed it. Anti-Long Mason Spencer once joked that he had less influence with the administration than Allen.⁷¹ It was unusual but not unprecedented for a U.S. senator to remain leader of a state political organization. The LaFollettes in Wisconsin and the Byrds in Virginia did it.

Earl Long decided that, with Huey on his way to Washington, he could begin an elective office career. Earl asked Huey to support him for lieutenant governor or, alternatively, not to oppose him. Huey refused, telling him he was already criticized for having too many relatives on the payroll and could not afford to have two candidates from Winn Parish. This was not the real reason. The LaFollette brothers, Phil and Bob, dominated Wisconsin politics at the same time, one as governor and one as senator. The real reason for the refusal—understood by both men—was that Earl in Louisiana, not Huey in Washington, would dominate Allen. Huey didn’t trust Earl either, with good reason, if only the example of Earl’s secret opposition to the new capitol is considered.

Overcome by ambition, jealousy, or pride, Earl ran anyway, claiming that Huey’s alliance with the Old Regulars was the reason.⁷² Julius and his sisters backed him: “Brothers and sisters, first aggravated at [Huey’s] failure to support [Earl], later became angry until finally well-defined and displayed articles of the press fanned their anger into flame and then to a madness,” in Huey’s view, such that the “distracted and almost annihilated opposition took heart.”⁷³ One sister later conceded they were “premature” in backing Earl: “We had growing pains.”⁷⁴

The “almost annihilated” opposition had two candidates for governor, however: Dudley J. LeBlanc, still on the Public Service Commission, and George Guion, a New Orleans lawyer. Paul Cyr announced for the office, won the endorsement of Senator Broussard, but then dropped out. In November, the Old Regulars endorsed Huey’s slate, dooming his opponents.

In December, one of Huey’s campaign trips was interrupted by an early morning visit from a group of distressed New Orleans bankers. A bank in Jackson, Mississippi, was about to fail. Mississippi was planning to declare a bank holiday. This would precipitate a run on Louisiana banks. Cursing, Huey asked if “you insane men” had “done anything about this yet?” They hadn’t. Some of the bankers turned to exit. “Oh, no, you ain’t! You crazy men ain’t going nowhere! When a man goes crazy, regardless of how big he is, he’s got to be protected from doing harm to himself and others.” Ordering Joe Messina to stand guard, Huey retreated to his bedroom. Remembering New York City banker Charles McCain, whom he had met during a courtesy call at the governor’s mansion weeks earlier, Huey called him, and McCain called the head of the National Credit Corporation (NCC). Huey asked Seymour Weiss to send up food to the bankers to “help Joe Messina hold up the gold standard.” When the NCC official called, Huey convinced him to rescue the Mississippi banks.

On another occasion, Huey learned that a bank in Lafayette was in trouble. Huey drove all night and sat behind the desk of the bank’s president the next morning. A line of customers had formed, and the first man asked to withdraw $18,000. Huey waved a state check for $265,000 and said he was there first, and the state had priority, but he would leave the state’s money in if the customers would. They did. The bank was saved when other banks helped it. Healthy banks often helped their weaker brethren or took them over⁷⁵—with Huey’s supporters sometimes given an inside track—because, if they didn’t, they feared that Huey’s state bank examiner would close them. Sometimes Huey would send funds to shore up a bank by police escort with sirens blazing.⁷⁶ Louisiana had fewer bank failures than almost any other state in the country.⁷⁷

The theme of Huey’s campaign was to “complete the work.” Allen spoke on their tour, but Huey spoke last and longest and didn’t hesitate to interrupt Allen’s speeches to suggest new themes. Earl and Julius claimed credit for all of Huey’s successes and called him an ungrateful coward. Sister Lucille compared Huey to Judas Iscariot. Huey was the “better brother” by not returning criticism but couldn’t resist a story. Many years ago, at an all-day church picnic, the babies were put under a tree while dinner was served. A violent storm erupted, causing everyone to clear the table and grab their babies. One baby wasn’t claimed, an ugly baby that wouldn’t stop bawling. Huey’s mother felt sorry for it, retrieved it, and adopted it. That was Earl.

LeBlanc was a good speaker in English or French. He lacked a record to run on during his tenure on the Public Service Commission, hampered by Huey’s veto of its appropriations. Although Huey was confident that he could beat LeBlanc for governor, he was a foe that he would later want to defeat as commissioner on the Public Service Commission. LeBlanc had formed a mutual aid society to manage funeral and burial expenses. Huey planted a spy in the company. When a member died, the living members would be assessed a fee, and LeBlanc’s company arranged the burial. Louisiana Progress cartoons disclosed that the burial society interred Black people and that LeBlanc divided the profits with Black partners.⁷⁸ The shrouds were recycled, moreover, horrifying many of his Black members. LeBlanc’s newspaper showed cartoons of Huey distributing free schoolbooks to Black people, pictured in demeaning caricatures.

In Bunkie, the two rivals set up their sound trucks about seventy yards apart, turned up the amplifiers, and for two hours exchanged insults. It was entertaining but not edifying. The most quoted remark from that night was Huey’s: “You pronounce LeBlanc’s name by trying to grunt like a hog and changing your mind when you’re half-way through.”

LeBlanc’s main issue was that he had served in World War I, whereas Huey had not. He attacked Allen Ellender for selling the state penitentiary “inferior” potatoes at “superior” prices. LeBlanc promised state pensions and to rid the state of Huey and his blood-sucking, tax-eating, bribe-giving, and bribe-taking crowd. LeBlanc gave over five hundred speeches during the campaign and nine on the day before the election. Huey responded that LeBlanc had only served a brief time in the Army, did not serve overseas, or even get kicked by a mule or bit by a horsefly.⁷⁹

Candidate Guion, Earl’s running mate, accused Huey’s administration of corruption and promised honest government, but nothing else. The cotton holiday plan, he stressed, was unconstitutional.

On January 19, 1932, Huey’s ticket crushed its opponents, 215,000 votes to just 110,000 for LeBlanc and 54,000 for Guion. Huey’s slate ran better in New Orleans (70.6 percent) than in the rest of the state (51.5 percent). LeBlanc reduced Huey’s margin in French-speaking parishes.

The votes of two parishes illustrate opposite points. St. Bernard Parish voted unanimously, all 3,152 votes, for Huey’s ticket, whereas the census takers had found only 2,510 eligible (that is, white) voters. Huey said some voters were in houseboats deep in the swamps and thus not discovered by census takers, but many were fraudulent. Before the election, the sheriff told Huey that the opposition would get two votes. When the returns arrived, Huey said, “What the hell happened to those two fellows?” The sheriff replied, “They changed their minds at the last minute.”⁸⁰

In Grant Parish, previously a Long stronghold, LeBlanc outpolled Huey’s ticket. Sindler attributed this to the Old Regular alliance,⁸¹ but Hair dug deeper to discover why. In spring 1931, LeBlanc’s brother and a campaign aide, Joe Boudreaux, were beaten up by Robert and O. R. Brothers, working for Huey. The pro-Long judge and sheriff had the LeBlanc partisans jailed. A grand jury, empaneled to indict them, refused. The repudiation of Huey’s ticket, knowing LeBlanc would lose and that their parish might lose state benefits, was courageous, but also belies that election fraud permeated all election results.

Twenty-eight of the House incumbents were defeated, most of them anti-Long. Other anti-Long legislators declined to run. Oilman James Noe defeated a candidate who had voted to impeach Huey. Noe became a Long leader in the state Senate.⁸²

Two days after the election, the Louisiana Supreme Court dismissed Cyr’s suit as moot by a four-to-three vote.⁸³ Huey said he was going to remain as governor, however, because of the pending sale of highway bonds.⁸⁴ Then Huey suddenly left for Washington on January 23, 1932, with his wife, friends, and politicians. As soon as Huey was sworn in as junior U.S. senator from Louisiana, word was relayed to an open phone in Baton Rouge so that Alvin King, now the lieutenant governor, could immediately take the oath as governor. The secretary of state refused Cyr’s subsequent tender of the oath of office because Alvin King’s oath was already on file. Traveling to Baton Rouge, Cyr again took the oath of governor, set up in the Heidelberg hotel, and proclaimed that King was usurping the office and headed a rebel government.⁸⁵

In response, guards were doubled around all state offices and Huey rushed back to New Orleans from Washington, arriving on January 29.⁸⁶ He needed to deal with Cyr, met with bankers about road construction bonds, and said he had to move his family out of the mansion in Baton Rouge.⁸⁷ The bankers were worried about issuing $35,000,000 more bonds while Cyr was contesting the governorship. Huey called the Heidelberg’s owner and had Cyr kicked out.⁸⁸ Cyr moved to a dilapidated hotel and proclaimed that the people should call him there. No one did. Forlorn now, he filed a new lawsuit against Governor King that dragged on until his plea was denied.⁸⁹

The highway bonds were offered for sale. Observers were confident that Huey would find a way to continue the program, given that the “easy sledding” Louisiana experienced during the Great Depression was attributed to the expansive highway program.⁹⁰

On Saturday, January 30, in a lightning-fast sequence of events, Huey scanned a list of residences for sale sent over by a New Orleans politician, selected one, summoned Mrs. Long to join him from Baton Rouge to look at it and, when she approved, had the lawyers draft the purchase paperwork on Sunday, January 31, before he returned to Washington that night. Maestri financed the home, a spacious one on Audubon Boulevard in the upscale Garden District. Rumors were that it was acquired from an unlucky gambler.⁹¹

After ridding himself of Cyr, Huey sped back to Washington, but returned to Louisiana and missed Senate sessions between February 5 and 24. Some have suggested that Huey was homesick. Huey’s wife and Alice Lee Grosjean stayed in Louisiana. Grosjean had expected to accompany him to Washing-ton,⁹² but Huey was told he should not give Washington gossipers a female secretary to discuss.⁹³ Given his travels throughout the South while he was a salesman and his frequent trips to New York as a lawyer, it is doubtful that homesickness caused his return. But some of his activities gave that impression.⁹⁴

He led the LSU band in a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on February 10 and stole the spotlight at a New Orleans charity golf tournament on February 11.⁹⁵ When his partner, the great Walter Hagen, gave him some advice, Huey said don’t you think you better let me play this ball? Hagen doubled over with laughter that spread in a roar through the gallery.⁹⁶ That evening, he “electrified” an LSU banquet at Baton Rouge with an unexpected appearance.⁹⁷ On February 22, he traveled to Oklahoma and regaled an audience of Young Democrats with a twenty-minute speech recounting stories from his semester at the University of Oklahoma.⁹⁸

Huey addressed some serious business during this time, however. He had the state Central Committee elect the delegates to the upcoming Democratic National Convention. The same procedure as in 1928 was used. Some selections were revealed on Friday, February 12,⁹⁹ but forty-eight delegates and alternates, ten presidential electors, and at-large committeemen were chosen on Saturday, February 13. A proposal to hold a convention on June 1 to elect delegates was voted down.¹⁰⁰ Huey controlled the delegation, still uncommitted. Ex-governors J. Y. Sanders Sr., Ruffin Pleasant, and John M. Parker were again omitted. Some of the selected delegates later resigned, asserting that a convention should have been held.¹⁰¹

As Huey lingered in Louisiana, his success there, especially compared to Governor Parker, is worth lingering over. Consider their vision, personalities, knowledge, opposition, and tactics.

Vision. Parker deserves credit for finding a new, more spacious campus for LSU, assuring it a source of revenue from the severance tax, and for raising consciousness about the value of education. But his vision for LSU was a maximum enrollment of three thousand students. Parker’s gravel road construction program exceeded other southern states, but he envisioned only gradual progress—no bonds—and few paved roads were built.

Parker awakened the desire for reform, but Huey had the greater, more politically appealing vision: New Orleans doubling in population and battling to become the number-one U.S. port; LSU becoming one of the best universities in the nation; Louisiana citizens getting educated, transacting business on modern roads, with access to health care. Cheap natural gas and the inexpensive rail and phone service implemented by Huey on the Public Service Commission benefited businesses as well as consumers. A new mansion and capitol were symbols, to be sure, but the hospital, the medical school, the port facilities, a stable banking system, free schoolbooks, and the development of LSU supported business by providing a healthy, trained workforce, extended opportunity to those previously denied it, and enhanced the quality of life.

A critic said the Airline Highway that Huey built between Baton Rouge and New Orleans was “smooth, hard and satisfying to a motorist who has recently jolted over the Virginia mountains, dodged chuck holes in Tennessee and breathed Alabama and Mississippi gravel dust. It is a jewel of a road, urgently contemporary.”¹⁰² Huey had the key insight—missed by Parker and the oligarchy—into the power of bond financing.¹⁰³ The rising power of money killed feudalism in France in the 1400s.¹⁰⁴ Bond financing—and the contracts and contributions derived from it—helped kill political feudalism in Louisiana.

Personalities. Parker reflected some of the problems of progressives in general: they could be elitist and paternalistic, prejudiced against immigrants and ethnic minorities, and humorless. Parker sought to restrict voting and to make government more efficient by eliminating elective positions and concentrating authority.¹⁰⁵ Huey also believed in concentrating power and responsibility, but his humor, inclusiveness, and dislike of class distinctions differentiated him from many progressives. Huey’s New Orleans leaders included Jewish and Italian businessmen, ethnic groups historically ostracized and excluded.¹⁰⁶

Parker couldn’t match Huey’s energy, diligence, or conception of his responsibilities.¹⁰⁷ Acting as the state’s lawyer to save his tax program, for example, while Huey was engaged in other administrative and political activities, shows enormous energy, legal skill, and dedication to victory. The attention to political patronage approached micromanagement. Huey accepted responsibility for rescuing shaky banks.

Knowledge. Despite campaign promises, Parker failed to get a pipeline bill that protected independent oil drillers and failed to bring natural gas into New Orleans. Parker lacked knowledge of the oil and gas industries and may have been blinded by upper-class sympathies. Because of his private-practice legal work and public duties on the Public Service Commission, Huey knew a lot about the oil and gas industries. This might be termed lucky, but Huey’s study of problems has been underappreciated. After his compromise with business leaders in July 1929 until May 1930, most of Huey’s reported activities were routine and most biographers omit them. That he researched the issues of education and medical care during this liminal time is a fair inference.

Opposition. Sindler noted that many of Huey’s opponents made Parker the “symbol of the glory that was pre-Huey Louisiana. There is more irony than accuracy in that view,” however. “Conservative interests that were later to attack Huey Long and to enshrine John Parker fought Parker in his own day on the issues of severance taxation and larger appropriations to state institutions.”¹⁰⁸

In some ways, Huey and Parker had similar reactions to their opponents. Parker increased the severance tax on oil but compromised when opposed. Industrial opposition prevented him from taxing carbon black. After the contest over the severance tax, Parker agreed not to increase it again during the rest of his administration. Huey proposed a higher tax on oil and carbon black and then compromised. When Huey tried to tax Standard Oil, he got impeached. After the impeachment, Huey agreed to enact no further tax increases.

Huey, however, used deficit financing to the extent that the state had never seen before, and those who believed that governments should balance their budgets and reduce their expenditures held these beliefs intensely. The intensity of these beliefs is the only way to reconcile the good intentions of most politicians of the time with their failure to ameliorate the widespread suffering in the Depression. Senator Walsh of Massachusetts, an Al Smith Democrat, said he had “heartfelt sympathy” for those in distress, but federal relief was a “dangerous proposition.” Senator Gore of Oklahoma, a populist who was one of the earliest supporters of Woodrow Wilson, compared relief to free grain offered by despotic Roman emperors, which destroyed the character of the recipients.¹⁰⁹ Senator Logan of Kentucky said if a farmer were broke, no one would advise him to get a loan to tear down his barn and build a new one and hire more people, and yet that is what the relief bills prescribed for the country.¹¹⁰

This thinking can explain the origin of an economic policy mistake, but not the psychological fury of those who objected to the government’s failure to economize and to proposals to relieve distress. Limited government, self-reliance, balanced budgets, and economy were an ingrained, fundamental, unshakable dogma. The questioning of or breach of this dogma was blasphemous.

The idea that increased government spending would help end a Depression was held by only a minority in 1930–32, and Huey was one of them. The debt financing he obtained cushioned the effect of the Depression in Louisiana.

The resource-extraction taxes were fought by the affected industries but caused no apparent damage to their ability to compete. Davis reported that gas prices, for example, were lower in Louisiana than they were in other states. Combining all taxes (state, parish, and municipal) in Louisiana, it had the third lowest tax burden of the twenty-four states that kept records.¹¹¹

To minimize Huey’s achievements, one critic pointed out that other states offered free schoolbooks and constructed roads and public improvements funded with bonds.¹¹² That makes Huey less radical, but not less accomplished. Harry Byrd defeated highway bond programs in Virginia for all time. Governor Floyd Olsen’s free schoolbooks proposal failed in the Minnesota legislature in 1935.¹¹³ When Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson proposed a free schoolbooks law ten years after Huey had done so, the strain of the opposition—which claimed that the law would “socializ[e] the state”—ruined his health.¹¹⁴ Moreover, if this criticism of Huey makes him less radical and more reasonable, then his opponents must be considered proportionately more reactionary and less reasonable.

Tactics. Sindler thinks that “[f]rom Parker’s experiences Huey Long drew lessons which . . . were not without logic. Liberal economic policies could be effected only through a concentration of gubernatorial employment of the same kind of tactics customarily used by professional politicians. If political ruthlessness resulted, it could be excused as a precondition for the defeat of Parker’s foes, the Choctaws and the unenlightened conservative interests.”

Parker tried to destroy the Ring and elected a reform candidate over its opposition but failed to subdue it. Petty factionalism, apathy, blindness to vice and gambling, and the failure to adopt a merit or civil service system allowed the Ring to return. Huey warred with the Ring, too, but allied with it once it supported his program, benefiting from its vote-getting power. The political blunder of allowing Standard Oil to draft the severance tax law and his underestimation of support for a higher severance tax rate lessened Parker’s influence. Parker’s war with the Klan and support of Bouanchaud was part heroic and part quixotic.

Huey recognized that his ability to accomplish his goals resided in the legislature. Probably only Woodrow Wilson collaborated more closely with legislators as governor. Knowing that it was the votes that made the judges and that the judges then made the law, he worked to elect sympathetic judges. In contrast, Parker stayed out of judicial elections.¹¹⁵

Huey’s program benefited a huge majority of the voters. He did not pick Mother Hubbard programs that benefited a few people here and there.¹¹⁶ In his autobiography, Huey listed these accomplishments:

1. (1) Doubling the capacity of two charity hospitals while reducing their death rate and their per capita costs;
2. (2) Founding the LSU medical school and expanding LSU;
3. (3) Increasing primary school enrollment by 20 percent because of the free schoolbooks and educating 100,000 adult illiterates;
4. (4) Obtaining natural gas for New Orleans, noting it was now available throughout the state;
5. (5) Improving the ports of New Orleans and St. Charles and reducing their charges;
6. (6) Preventing bank failures;
7. (7) Building two thousand miles of concrete roads, one thousand miles of asphalt roads, numerous bridges, an airport, and a new state capitol.¹¹⁷

Most of these improvements were visible to and benefited everyone in the state.

The enormity of what he accomplished belies the extremely focused program with which he started. Whether by instinct or lack of education in a broader array of issues, Huey focused on only a few popular initiatives. Huey’s 1928 success gave voters a glimpse of what was possible: natural gas, roads, free schoolbooks; 1929 saw the reaction; in 1930 the reaction continued and then collapsed with Huey’s senatorial victory. The free schoolbooks, natural gas, and the patchwork of roads spread throughout the state, built with the first, small bond program, won public support. Once Huey had whetted the people’s appetite, they expected more from their government. Huey overwhelmed his organized, well-financed opposition in the senatorial race against Senator Ransdell in 1930. This opened the floodgates to Huey’s new ideas for LSU and the new medical school. Huey delivered results despite huge obstacles. Voter participation increased. The elections meant something.

Williams credits Huey with reducing barbarism at Angola prison, and Carleton denies it. The key is that Huey kept the voting majority in mind: no escapes and efficient administration. Huey’s reforms were not meant to appeal to the few prison reformers. But he implemented the majority’s concern for efficiency—civil service as a matter of policy—rather than his own interest in patronage.

The concrete benefits created a class of people loyal to Huey’s faction and a class of people that disliked him. This bi-factionalism (pro-Long vs anti-Long) approximated the two-party system that exists in the United States at large. Creating a class of beneficiaries must be one of the secrets of a successful revolution. Huey’s beneficiaries, a majority of the voters, felt—correctly¹¹⁸—that they had something to lose if he were defeated.

Although more people supported his program than supported him, Huey’s followers were committed to him and unified. No matter what Huey did from then on, he had a huge base of loyal support.

 

Long left home at the age of sixteen to become a traveling salesman, an experience that proved invaluable to his career in politics.

Photograph reprinted with permission from the Long Family.

Rose McConnell met Long at a cake-baking contest that he organized. He then asked her for a date to “prove” that she had actually baked the contest-winning confectionary. They married two years later.

Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame, Winnfield, Louisiana.

J. K. Skipwith, an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, was an eighty-year-old veteran of the Confederate Army. He orchestrated the kidnapping of five white men, two of whom were murdered, causing then-governor John M. Parker of Louisiana to request federal assistance. The newly established FBI provided little help, and local law enforcement was dominated by Klan members. When Skipwith was finally convicted of a minor offense, he was incredulous and asked, “What’s this world coming to?”

Courtesy St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday edition, p. 45, December 31, 1922.

Long lost the 1924 gubernatorial race, in part, because the Ku Klux Klan endorsed one of his opponents. Pictured here is Hiram Evans, the Grand Wizard of the Klan, which was at the peak of its influence in the 1920s. In 1934, when Evans threatened to visit Louisiana, Long said if he did, he would leave with “his toes turned up.” Evans stayed away.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy Stock Photo.

Mayor of Chicago William Hale (“Big Bill”) Thompson visited Louisiana in 1928 to discuss flood control, accompanied by a large band and many other Chicagoans. He made a lasting impression on Long, who had just been elected governor, and Long invited him to his inauguration. He is pictured here, third from left, hat in hand.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This picture of Long and his family was widely circulated after he won the governorship in 1928. It was frequently featured alongside a story referencing his Bible-reading habits or the recipe used by his wife to win the cake-baking contest where the two first met.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

An animated Long speaking to Louisiana legislators.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

At the time of his impeachment, Long was roundly criticized for threatening to disclose that a newspaper editor’s brother was being treated at a state mental hospital.

Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Long with his lawyers at his impeachment trial. By the time the trial started, he felt certain he would be exonerated because he had secured the signatures of enough senators (more than one-third) who pledged they would not remove him from office.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long’s younger brother Earl (right) was invaluable as a liaison to legislators and other local political leaders, especially during the impeachment trial. After Huey’s death, Earl enjoyed a remarkable political career of his own in Louisiana.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long was fond of potlikker, the soup broth left over from cooking greens, and was often pictured eating it or, as seen here, posing with chefs preparing it.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long with Seymour Weiss (second from left), the treasurer of the Long organization.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In his autobiography, Long interspersed about a dozen before-and-after pictures depicting the accomplishments of his administration. Pictured here are three examples. They show both the dramatic progress the state experienced during his tenure as well as Long’s penchant for continuing salesmanship.

Reprinted with permission from the Long Family.

Hattie Caraway was projected to finish sixth in the race for the Arkansas U.S. Senate seat in 1932. In a one-week campaign described as a “circus hitched to a tornado,” Long helped Caraway vanquish her opponents, and she became the first woman elected to a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate. Long and Caraway are pictured here on a ferry.

Huey P. Long Photograph Album (Mss. 4495), Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long speaking in support of Hattie Caraway’s 1932 senate bid in Arkansas. Huey P. Long Photograph Album (Mss. 4495), Louisiana and Lower

Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In 1932, Long helped elect his friend and supporter O. K. Allen (seated to Long’s right) as governor of Louisiana. Thereafter, Long continued to run the state government as the de facto governor. Allen was so subservient to Huey that Earl Long claimed that “a leaf blew into the window of the governor’s office . . . [and] Allen signed it.”

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long addressed the 1932 Democratic National Convention in support of the seating of his state’s delegation, impressing many commentators and famed lawyer Clarence Darrow. Without Long’s support, Franklin Roosevelt would not have been nominated. Here, Long is photographed arriving to the convention.

Reprinted with permission from the Long Family.

In 1933, Long attended a charity event at the Sands Point Club, a ritzy establishment just outside of New York. He was overserved and got socked in the eye in the bathroom after inadvertently urinating on another man. Collier’s magazine commemorated the event with this medal, amusing many but convincing others that the rich had too much spare time and too little common sense. The event marked a severe downturn in Long’s prestige and influence.

YA/BOT/Alamy Stock Photo.

After Long attacked the conservative leadership of the Democratic Party, it questioned the legitimacy of the election of one of his allies in 1932, engaging Samuel Ansell, pictured here (second from right) talking to Long, to lead the U.S. Senate investigation. Long publicly denounced Ansell, who sued him for defamation.

Leon Trice Photographic Negative Collection. Louisiana Secretary of State. Archives Division. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long is pictured here with Mississippi governor Mike Conner (third from left) and two members of the LSU band. In 1934, Long led the band and students to football games in Tennessee and Mississippi, which was witnessed by tremendous crowds. By the end of 1934, he regained much of his popularity.

Underwood Archives, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo.

Over Long’s objections, congress backed Franklin Roosevelt’s reduction of veterans’ benefits. This cartoon was one of many bemoaning the treatment of veterans by the administration.

Reprinted with permission from VFW magazine, July 1933.

Franklin Roosevelt was unpopular with veterans early in the 1930s because he cut their benefits and vetoed payment of the soldiers’ bonus. Here, Long, flanked by his two sons, Palmer Reid (fourth from left) and Russell (third from right), lead a march protesting the veto. Russell became a U.S. senator representing Louisiana in 1948.

Huey P. Long Photograph Album (Mss. 4495), Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long’s speech in Philadelphia attracted an overflow crowd. A worried supporter of Roosevelt who attended wrote the president about Long’s surging popularity: “something must be done.”

LSU Libraries Special Collection, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Long spoke to an enthusiastic Georgia legislature in 1935 before posing for a photograph with the state’s governor, Eugene Talmadge. Talmadge presented him with a pair of red suspenders, a symbol of his support for farmers.

Photograph courtesy Associated Press.

Fred Parker, a former East Baton Rouge deputy sheriff, was implicated in a plot to kill Long and subsequently given a job by the Roosevelt administration to, apparently, intimidate his supposed target.

HUM Images, Universal Images Group Collection, Getty Images.

Long’s assassin, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, lived just several blocks from the state capitol, where the tragedy occurred.