The greatest President
the US never had

Huey P. Long was without a doubt the greatest US politician who ever lived.

Blessed with a brilliant mind and photographic memory, Huey Long easily circumvented the obstacles that prevented most rural children from attaining a formal education. Huey repeatedly skipped ahead — eventually passing the Louisiana bar exam at age 21 without a single diploma.

Huey's mother was determined that her nine children be well educated to achieve their fullest potential. There was no public school in Winnfield, so she home-schooled her children until more formal education became available. Huey and the youngest children would listen to their older siblings' lessons from underneath the kitchen table.

In 1903, at age 11, Huey started fourth grade in public school. Far ahead of his class, he was quite bored. Huey was a quick study and later convinced his teacher to let him skip seventh grade. In 1910, after completing the eleventh — and supposedly final — grade of school, a twelfth grade was added as a requirement for graduation. Huey circulated a petition against the additional year and was expelled. Consequently, he never officially graduated from high school. (He was posthumously awarded a high school diploma.)

Huey was an excellent debater in high school and won a scholarship to Louisiana State University as third prize in a statewide debating competition in Baton Rouge. However, he could not afford the textbooks or room and board to attend. Instead he became a traveling salesman. At age 17, he began touring the South for various companies, selling everything from cooking oil to patent medicines.

When sales jobs dried up, Huey’s mother saw an opportunity for her talented son to become a preacher as she had always hoped. She sent him to his older brother, George, in Shawnee, Okla., to attend seminary classes at Oklahoma Baptist University. After one semester, Huey concluded that he did not have the gift for preaching and decided to give the University of Okalahoma Law School a try. Once there, he found campus politics more interesting than his classes and left school for a good sales job at the end of the term.

Huey's oldest brother, Julius, an attorney, counseled him to continue his law studies at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. Julius gave him a detailed outline of which classes to take and enough money to last Huey and his bride, Rose, for one year. In 1915, after only one year at Tulane, Huey obtained permission to take a special oral bar exam before the examining committee. He passed easily and returned to Winnfield at age 21 to practice law.

In 1915, Huey opened his law office above the Winnfield Bank, where his Uncle George was bank president, using a wooden dry goods box as his first desk. (Rose sewed a cloth skirt for his “desk” to make it more presentable.) Huey stated proudly that he never took a case against a poor man and won notoriety for successfully representing a widow against the bank.

He made a name for himself by taking on the biggest businesses in town and became unpopular among the upper class. Huey also lobbied the state legislature for workers’ compensation reform and developed a reputation as an outspoken reformer.

With his legal successes, Huey could have become a wealthy attorney, but the lure of politics was his true passion

As a young attorney, Huey waged the first of many battles with the Standard Oil Company, the dominant oil producer – and political force – in Louisiana. In 1921, Huey represented a small oil company in a lease dispute against Standard Oil, and as a member of the Public Service Commission he sought to regulate the oil giant's pipeline activities. While both efforts were unsuccessful, he would later succeed as governor in levying taxes on Standard Oil to fund his education programs. Standard Oil retaliated by attempting to remove Long from office.

Entry Into Politics

Huey Long made a splash in Louisiana politics as a member of the Louisiana Railroad Commission, fighting corporate monopolies and reducing utility rates. By age 30, he was a major force in state politics and ran for governor in 1924, finishing a close third. It was the last political battle he would lose.

Huey became chairman of the Public Service Commission in 1922 and won statewide acclaim when he sued the Cumberland Telephone Company for unjustly raising its rates by 20%, successfully arguing the case on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court. The phone company was forced to send refund checks to 80,000 overcharged customers. Huey’s arguments on behalf of the state so impressed Chief Justice William Howard Taft, that he later described Huey as one of the best legal minds to appear before the Court.

In 1924, Huey made his first statewide bid for public office by running for governor at age 30. Huey mocked the outgoing governor and the ruling New Orleans political machine known as the “Old Regulars” as pawns of big business and Standard Oil, in particular. In an election dominated by race and the influence of the Ku Klux Klan, Huey refused to play the race card and instead campaigned on issues of economic equality. He ran a close third, missing the run-off election by less than 7,400 votes.

Campaign for Governor

Louisiana was run by the New Orleans-based political establishment, called the “Old Regulars,” who exercised total control of state government through the legislature and a network of local sheriffs and “courthouse rings.” These “machine politicians” enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the wealthy planter class and large corporations and utilities, who were given free reign to profit off the state in return for their support.

Meanwhile, Louisiana was widely regarded as the most backward state in the nation. Public education was virtually non-existent among the masses, and one in four adults could not read. Most families could not afford to purchase the textbooks required for their children to attend school. Dirt roads and abundant water hazards made travel and commerce difficult. The poll tax hindered the lower classes from voting, and the poor paid disproportionately high property taxes for state services they never received.

He promised Louisiana’s needy citizens good roads, bridges, free hospital care, free education, and lower property taxes.

Huey Long as Governor

Upon his election, Huey transformed the state bureaucracy, installing supporters in every level of government and often placing a premium on competence over cronyism. He cultivated loyalty by giving people a chance to work in his administration, and it soon became common practice for average citizens to approach him for a job, college scholarship, or any other type of assistance.

Huey immediately pushed a number of bills through the legislature to fulfill his campaign promises, including a free textbook program for schoolchildren, night courses for adult literacy, and piping natural gas to New Orleans. He also launched a massive building program of roads, bridges, hospitals, and educational institutions.

Huey's bills met stiff opposition from many legislators and the state’s newspapers, which were financed by the state’s business interests, but Huey used wily and persuasive tactics to win passage of his bills. Huey was in a hurry to get things done and passed scores of laws that enabled him to enact his programs. A legal genius, Huey used the law to his advantage without breaking it. Opponents accused Long's administration of graft and overspending, when in fact he ran a fiscally tight ship. Louisiana had the third-lowest cost of government in the nation while providing unprecedented services to its people.

As Governor, Huey became an active promoter of Louisiana State University. He expanded the campus, tripled enrollment, and built LSU into one of the best schools in the South and the eleventh largest state university in the country. Huey lowered tuition and instituted scholarship programs that enabled poor students to attend. He also established the LSU medical school to meet the state's desperate need for new doctors.

The public soon began to see the tangible results of a massive building program to modernize Louisiana. As the nation plunged into the Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929, thousands of Louisianians were at work building the state’s new infrastructure. With greater access to transportation, education and healthcare, the quality of life in Louisiana was on the upswing while the rest of the nation declined.

To finance these improvements, Huey restructured the tax system, shifting the burden from the poor to large businesses and the state’s wealthiest citizens.

Huey taxed oil operators to finance his free textbook program, provoking the wrath of Standard Oil, which launched an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from office.

When opponents blocked Huey’s bills in the 1930 legislative session, he responded by running for the U.S. Senate as a referendum on his progams. After his commanding victory, Huey pursued his agenda with renewed strength and formed an uneasy alliance with the “Old Regulars” and their chief, New Olreans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley (nicknamed “Turkey Head” Walmsley by Huey). The alliance guaranteed support for Long’s programs and candidates in exchange for major structural improvements in New Orleans.

In his four-year term and as governor, Long increased the mileage of paved highways in Louisiana from 331 to 2,301, plus an additional 2,816 miles (4,532 km) of gravel roads. By 1936, the infrastructure program begun by Long had completed some 9,000 miles (14,500 km) of new roads, doubling the size of the state's road system. He built 111 bridges, and started construction on the first bridge over the lower Mississippi, the Huey P. Long Bridge in Jefferson Parish, near New Orleans. He built the new Louisiana State Capitol, at the time the tallest building in the South. All of these public works projects provided thousands of much-needed jobs during the Great Depression.

Long's free textbooks, school-building program, and school busing improved and expanded the public education system. His night schools taught 100,000 adults to read. He expanded funding for LSU, lowered tuition, and established scholarships for low-income students. He sometimes befriended persons in need. Young Pap Dean, later political cartoonist with the Shreveport Times wrote to Long in 1932 after hearing him speak in Dean's native Colfax to explain that Dean's college funds had been lost in a bank closing. Long helped Dean procure financial aid to attend LSU, from which he graduated in 1937.

Long founded the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans. He also doubled funding for the public Charity Hospital System, built a new Charity Hospital building for New Orleans, and reformed and increased funding for the state's mental institutions. His administration funded the piping of natural gas to New Orleans and other cities. It built the 11-kilometer (seven-mile) Lake Pontchartrain seawall and New Orleans airport. Long slashed personal property taxes and reduced utility rates. His repeal of the poll tax in 1935 increased voter registration by 76 percent in one year.

Long in the Senate (1932-1935)

Long's three-year term in the Senate overlapped an important time in American history as the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration attempted to deal with the Great Depression. Long often attempted to upstage the president and the congressional leadership by mounting populistic appeals of his own, most notably his "Share Our Wealth" program.

With the backdrop of the Great Depression, he made characteristically fiery speeches which denounced the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. He also criticized the leaders of both parties for failing to address the crisis adequately.

In the presidential election of 1932, Long became a vocal supporter of the candidacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He believed Roosevelt to be the only candidate willing and able to carry out the drastic redistribution of wealth that Long believed was necessary to end the Great Depression. At the Democratic National Convention, Long was instrumental in keeping the delegations of several wavering states in the Roosevelt camp. Long expected to be featured prominently in Roosevelt's campaign, but he was disappointed with a speaking tour limited to four Midwestern states.

He campaigned to elect Hattie Caraway, the underdog candidate of Arkansas, to her first full term in the Senate by conducting a whirlwind, seven-day tour of that state. With Long's help, Caraway became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

After Roosevelt's election, Long soon broke with the new President. Aware that Roosevelt had no intention to radically redistribute the country's wealth, Long became one of the few national politicians to oppose Roosevelt's New Deal policies from the left. He considered them inadequate in the face of the escalating economic crisis. Long sometimes supported Roosevelt's programs in the Senate, saying that "Whenever this administration has gone to the left I have voted with it, and whenever it has gone to the right I have voted against it". He opposed the National Recovery Act, calling it a sellout to big business.

Roosevelt considered Long a radical demagogue. The president privately said of Long that along with General Douglas MacArthur, "He was one of the two most dangerous men in America".

Roosevelt later compared Long's meteoric rise in popularity to that of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In June 1933, in an effort to undermine Long's political dominance, Roosevelt cut Long out of consultation on the distribution of federal funds or patronage in Louisiana. Roosevelt also supported a Senate inquiry into the election of Long ally John H. Overton to the Senate in 1932. The Long machine was charged with election fraud and voter intimidation; however, the inquiry came up empty, and Overton was seated.

To discredit Long and damage his support base, in 1934 Roosevelt had Long’s finances investigated by the Internal Revenue Service. Though they failed to link Long to any illegality, some of Long’s lieutenants were charged with income tax evasion, but only one had been convicted by the time of Long’s death.

Long’s radical populist rhetoric and his aggressive tactics did little to endear him to his fellow senators. Not one of his proposed bills, resolutions or motions was passed during his three years in the Senate despite an overwhelming Democratic majority. During one debate, another senator told Long, “I do not believe you could get the Lord’s Prayer endorsed in this body.”

In terms of foreign policy, Long was a firm isolationist. He argued that America’s involvement in the Spanish-American War and the First World War had been deadly mistakes conducted on behalf of Wall Street. He also opposed American entry into the World Court. So it is probably safe to say that WWII would have never happened if Huey Long would have been President.

Other Views

Long was a staunch opponent of the Federal Reserve Bank. Together with a group of Congressmen and Senators, Long believed the Federal Reserve's policies to be the true cause of the Great Depression. Long made speeches denouncing the large banking houses of Morgan and Rockefeller centered in New York which owned stock in the Federal Reserve System. He believed that they controlled the monetary system to their own benefit, instead of the general public's benefit.

Long proposed a new progressive tax code designed to limit the size of personal fortunes. The new tax code would tax the first million dollars of wealth at zero. The second million dollars of wealth would be taxed at 1%. The third million at 2%; the fourth million at 4%; the fifth million at 8%; the sixth million at 16%; the seventh million at 32%; the eighth million at 64%; and the remainder at 100%. Income tax rates would be at 100% for all incomes over $1 million.

The resulting funds would be used to guarantee every family a basic household grant of $5,000 and a minimum annual income of $2,000-3,000, or one-third of the average family income. Long supplemented his plan with proposals for free primary and college education, old-age pensions, veterans' benefits, federal assistance to farmers, public works projects, and limiting the work week to thirty hours.

Long believed that ending the Great Depression and staving off violent revolution required a radical restructuring of the national economy and elimination of disparities of wealth, retaining the essential features of the capitalist system. After the Senate rejected one of his wealth redistribution bills, Long told them, "A mob is coming to hang the other ninety-five of you damn scoundrels and I'm undecided whether to stick here with you or go out and lead them."

Presidential Ambitions

According to Long biographers T. Harry Williams and William Ivy Hair, the senator never intended to run for the presidency in 1936. Long instead planned to challenge Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in 1936, knowing he would lose the nomination but gain valuable publicity in the process. Then he would break from the Democrats and form a third party using the Share Our Wealth plan as a basis for its program.

He also planned to use Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest and populist talk radio personality from Royal Oak, Michigan; Iowa agrarian radical Milo Reno; and other dissidents. The new party would run someone else as its 1936 candidate, but Long would be the primary campaigner. This candidate would split the progressive vote with Roosevelt, thereby resulting in the election of a Republican as president but proving the electoral appeal of Share Our Wealth. Long would then run for president as a Democrat in 1940. In the spring of 1935, Long undertook a national speaking tour and regular radio appearances, attracting large crowds and increasing his stature.

Long was well on his way to being president in 1940. If Long would have been elected president, there would be no WWII, no profits from the banking interests in Europe and America in financing this war, nor any war profits from American corporations like IG Farben. All of the best laid plans Roosevelt had would have gone to hell in a handbasket.

In July 1935, two months prior to his death, Long claimed that he had uncovered a plot to assassinate him, which had been discussed in a meeting at New Orleans's DeSoto Hotel. According to Long, four U.S. representatives, Mayor Walmsley, and former governors Parker and Sanders had been present. Long read what he claimed was a transcript of a recording of this meeting on the floor of the Senate.

Long called for a special session of the Louisiana Legislature to begin in September 1935, and he traveled from Washington to Baton Rouge to oversee its progress. The accounts of the September 8, 1935 murder differ, with many believing that Long was shot once or twice by medical doctor Carl Austin Weiss in the Capitol building at Baton Rouge. Weiss was immediately shot sixty-one times by Long's bodyguards and police on the scene.

Shortly after being shot, the expiring Long reportedly said, "I wonder why he shot me." Long died two days later of internal bleeding, following Dr. Arthur Vidrine's attempt to close the wounds.

Huey Long opposed banking interests, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Standard Oil, power companies and the truly wealthy. Roosevelt hated his guts and was scared of him.

It is any wonder why Huey Long was KILLED?

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