Good day Hivers and Book Clubbers,
About time to do some more reviewing. This time, I can't take a picture of a book cover, because it's a book that's out of print. Its title is 'Huey Long' by T. Harry Williams. I had been looking to read something about Long for a while, and on the Internet I saw this book being pointed at as THE authoritative source. The PDF-version is scanned from a 1969-copy. The story proper amounts to 870 pages, so it's quite extensive. I'll try to squeeze it into a somewhat readable length in this review.
A Southern Story
Long's story is almost completely set in Louisiana, where he was born in Winnfield in 1893. His family was quite poor, but this was not exceptional in the rural South. Large swathes of the South were devastated after their loss in the Civil War (1861-1865), and recovery was slow.
Yet Long clearly made something of himself, and this was mostly due to his exceptional social skills and smarts. From his teens onwards, after dropping out of high school, he became a salesman. His natural talent was obvious to those around him. As an aside, it makes sense for a politian to have been a salesman. Somewhat of the same people-skills are involved, though it is an unusual spring-board towards politics.
The most common preparation for American politics, up to this day, is studying the law. And this is what Long did, with a lot of financial help from one of his brothers, who was a doctor. He passed the bar through a somewhat irregular procedure, and opened up a practice for himself.
Here he built his reputation as standing up for the poor man, often against the big companies and industries in the state. Quite often he would not make any money on cases, yet he would pick those cases anyway when other lawyers refused.
Later on, he would mostly get into accident-related law, i.e. trying to get compensation for workers who got serious injuries on the job. This part of the law was relatively new in the 1920s, and Long stepped into this gap.
Entry into politics
Though he liked his job well enough, and had some cases in which he made quite a bit of money, his eyes were always on entering politics. He got elected to the Louisiana Public Service Commission, which dealt with all kinds of infrastructure in the state; from railways to telephone lines to roads, bridges and oilpipes.
It does not sound as a glamorous job, yet Long would make his state-wide name in this occupation. This he did mostly through his attacks on Standard Oil, the largest company in the state and one of the largest in the United States. His attitude was the same as in his days as a lawyer; the poor were suffering under the yoke of the large companies, and politicians weren't doing enough to alleviate this.
Election to the Governorship
When attacking the political class in the state, he would of course often end up attacking the governor of Louisiana. He would succesfully be elected to this position in 1928, at age 35.
This was impressive for several reasons. He was clearly an anti-establishment candidate, with frontal attacks on sitting politicians in Louisiana. Yet he shared the same party membership, because in Louisiane there was only one party: the Democrats.
And Huey Long was far from a usual Southern Democrat. His economic plans, which consisted of massive investments in infrastructure, free school books for children and higher taxes on the large companies, was much farther to the left than others.
He also had to face the demographic divide of Louisiana: Long was from the Protestant north, which was seen as a bit of a handicap. Louisiana had (still has) a substantial French, Catholic population, which probably would not vote for him. On top of that there was New Orleans, the big city of the state, which had a policial machine completely opposed to him.
His election in 1928 broke state conventions; not only did the Protestant north turn out for him, but he did very well in the French parishes (Louisiana counties were called parishes, another legacy of being a French, Catholic colony prior to being bought by the US). This put him over the top.
To the Senate
Long shook the state as governor: he was a bit of a Mafia Boss in his way of ruling the state, and ruling is the correct word. He created a political machine of remarkable efficiency, and streamlined procedures in the state House and Senate to a point in which politicians became mere yes-men.
This might sound negative, and Long was often called either a demagogue or a fascist (especially the last one is quite far-fetched). Yet he used his machine for the good of the people. He built many roads and bridges in a time when Louisiana consisted mostly of dirt roads, he gave free school books to children, and once again took up the fight against Standard Oil and other large institutions.
And yet, he saw that it was not enough, both in terms of the results and in terms of his personal ambition. He got himself elected to the Senate in 1932, unseating a veteran. His campagning style was very innovative: he drove around the state in so-called 'sound trucks', which were basically trucks with massive speakers installed, in which he could get the attention in rural areas by creating massive amounts of noise, and also by using these as speakers during speeches. He would also be one of the first to see the massive potential in Radio.
Opposition to Roosevelt
As a Democrat, he supported Roosevelt's bid for president in 1932, who was of the same Progressive wing of the Democrat party as Long. Yet Long would soon end up in the opposition in the Senate. FDR's New Deal was not going far enough in wealth redistribution, according to Long. His program, aptly titled 'Share Our Wealth', would mean upscaling taxes on wealth and inheritance, and making sure this is given to the poorest in the country.
His popularity was at an all-time high in 1935, not only in his home state, but also countrywide. Long made clear overtures towards running for President, if not as a Democrat, maybe as a third-party candidate, in 1936.
The End
And everyone in politics realized that this bid should be taken seriously. Yet it remains one of the biggest 'what ifs' in American history. Because Long would end up shot and killed in september of 1935. Politicians make many enemies, even though he did not personally know his assassin. The book also abruptly ends at Long's death at age 42.
I've left out a LOT of stuff to condense it into this review. Perhaps it would have been better to pick a somewhat shorter book than this one, though I don't regret it at all. Williams did a lot of interviews with people close to Long, and this is what the book is built on, and what separates it from later books, in which the 1930s become more and more of a non-living memory.
Maybe one day I'll pick up a book on the aftermath someday, because Louisiana politics were changed forever. Many of Long's family members ended up in politics; Huey's political machine didn't die with him.
I'll be doing more reviews in the future, hopefully on books somewhat shorter than this one. I'll see you all in the next one,
-Pieter Nijmeijer
(Top image is from Wikipedia; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/HueyPLongGesture)