As we all know, the environment in the U.S. is a perfect breeding ground for dangerous, reactionary, buffoons. Huey P. Long, a rival to Roosevelt in the Democratic Party, Louisiana Senator and former Governor, was one of the most effective such politicians. Sender Garlin meets the corrupt and autocratic demagogue whose politics and personality echo today.

‘Kingfish Huey: An Exposé and an Interview’ by Sender Garlin from New Masses. March 26, 1935.

I have not undertaken to persecute the rich, but, on the contrary, I have sought to favor them.

From a speech by Huey P. Long in the United States Senate. (Congressional Record, May 12, 1932, Seventy-second Congress, First Session.)

“WHOO-OO-OOEEE!”

The stillness of the tranquil evening was shattered by an ear-splitting, old-time, Indian war-whoop. “Whoo-oo-ooeee!”

Down Canal Street, in New Orleans, tore a well-knit man in a natty suit, untamed red-brown hair blowing wildly in the wind. A few of his cronies followed on his heels. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Why, that’s Huey.” From lip to lip the question and answer flew.

In a few minutes, a curious, wildly excited crowd was following “the Pied Piper.” Into the empty theatre in which he had scheduled a mass meeting, the mile-runner led the ensnared citizens.

Huey P. Long, now U.S. Senator from Louisiana, begins to deliver his oration.

His feet are planted solidly on the platform. His cadenced sentences rise and fall over the entranced audience. The speaker’s face is pudgy, his cheeks flushed. His bulbous nose is red. There is a deep cleft in his forceful chin. His face appears wilful. He has the voice of a side-show barker, with the gestures of a Hitler.

Concluding a speech full of incisive attacks upon minor evils, vague promises of future Utopia, and interposed with moving biblical allusions and homespun anecdotes in his best “hillbilly” style, Huey Long thunders:

“Then no tear-dimmed eyes of a small child will be lifted to the saddened face of a father or mother unable to give it the necessities required by its soul and body for life; then the powerful will be rebuked in the sight of man for holding that which they cannot consume, but which is craved to sustain humanity; the food of the land will feed, the raiment clothe, and the houses shelter all the people; the powerful will be elated by the well-being of all, rather than through their greed. Then those of us who have pursued that phantom of Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Theodore Roosevelt and Bryan may hear wafted from their lips in Valhalla: EVERY MAN A KING.

The audience, composed of small business men, harassed professionals, state employes of the Long machine and a scattering of workers, rises to its feet in a delirium of applause at this glowing picture of the Promised Land.

What a meteoric rise this demagogue has had!

Only a few months earlier his armed thugs had kidnaped from the Gardner Hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana, an engineer named Sam Irby, formerly connected with Long’s state highway department. He had been rushed about the state by car and plane, manacled to a tree in a marsh, almost devoured by mosquitos, starved, and threatened with assassination. All this, Irby had charged, had been done on the eve of Long’s election to the United States Senate, to prevent him from filing a libel suit against the Kingfish which would have revealed information damaging to Huey’s election prospects.

As a boy Huey was a regular attendant at all religious ceremonies. He read the Scripture from cover to cover. In school, Huey was a debater, declaimer, mile-runner and member of the relay team. Later he became a travelling salesman for a large supply house which had a branch office in New Orleans. He distributed pie plates and cook books and occasionally held baking contests in various cities and towns of Louisiana. It was in this way that he met pretty Rose McConnell, his future wife, who had won a pie-baking contest arranged by Huey in Shreveport.

How shrewd and unscrupulous that salesman Huey had been! He had managed to convince a merchant in the little town of Waynesboro, Mississippi, that he would have no trouble in selling a carload of starch to his customers. Huey obtained the merchant’s order for that amount and left him hopelessly overstocked with that commodity.

This experience was excellent training for his later career as a lawyer. He studied law seven months in Tulane University in New Orleans with the money lent him by his eldest brother, Julius. His money gave out in the spring and Huey couldn’t wait until June to take the bar examinations. He got the Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court to assemble the judges in special session to give him the quiz.

Huey was a good lawyer. He has boasted to friends that his first case as a lawyer was one in which he defended a cousin against the charge of stealing a hog. Huey easily convinced the jury that his kin was a victim of a foul frame-up and was entirely innocent of the charge.

Huey received the hog as his fee.

Later Huey became a member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission. He abused the “special interests” in his speeches, but at the same time his income rose from fees received as a corporation lawyer. When the Shreveport Street Railway Company sought to raise streetcar fares from five to six cents, Long pretended violent opposition, making speeches and taking the matter to court. In the end, he consented to an increase. Huey’s violent “opposition,” resulted in a seven-cent instead of a six-cent fare.

By such “violent struggles” against the corporations, and the acquisition of influential friends, Huey managed to build up a political machine which swung him into the governor’s chair. One of his chief supporters was Mr. Robert Maestri, who had made a fortune of the bawdy houses in the notorious New Orleans “red light” district.

After Huey was elected governor, the Old Regulars and the Long gang organized a love feast in the form of a “peace-and-progress” banquet. The business men of the city decided to raise money for a chest of silver to be given to the governor and Mrs. Long. Along came Bob Maestri with a personal check for $1,500. New Orleans business men are practical and very, very tolerant, but they gagged at taking Maestri’s money for such a noble purpose, fearing embarrassment. The check was shipped back to Maestri who smiled, went out and bought a glittering emerald stickpin set with diamonds and this he personally presented to Governor Long. The governor took it gratefully, wore it, and brags about it often.

And then it came to pass that Mr. Robert Maestri became the head of one of the most valuable branches of Louisiana’s government the Conservation Department, with its control over millions in oil lands, furs and standing timber.

Huey’s political opponents did not let him rest for long. The struggle over booty waxed hot, and soon a move was launched to impeach him as governor. The indictment contained nineteen articles of impeachment. The charges included bribery, graft, corruption, misappropriation of state funds, violent abuse of public officials, favoritism, intimidation, and the hiring of assassins.

Huey went into action. He sped around the state in his high-powdered limousine, rounding up his men in the legislature, and by those methods of lubrication so familiar in American politics, Huey killed the impeachment threat. He had “persuaded” fifteen state senators to sign a “round robin” that they would vote against the impeachment regardless of the evidence, thus barring the two-thirds vote required.

“Vindicated,” ambition began to mount in Huey’s proud breast. From local boy in Winn Parish he had risen to Public Service Commissioner and then to the governorship. And three years ago, with the aid of the same methods which had brought him so far, Huey landed feet-first on the floor of the United States Senate at the age of 38.

True, Huey P. Long is now a member of the United States Senate, making a bold bid for national power, but he is no less the dictator of his home state, Louisiana.

Just come back to Shreveport after visiting Negro share-croppers on cotton plantations, I heard the newsboys shouting Huey Long’s name.

Louisiana Special Session

“SPECIAL SESSION CALLED” was the headline in The Shreveport Journal, an afternoon paper. It reported that the session was due to convene that night at 10 o’clock. Shreveport is a six-hour train ride from the capitol at Baton Rouge, and if you were a senator or representative from Caddo Parish (county) where all the cotton and oil comes from, you’d have just time enough to pack your bag and kiss your wife goodbye if you wanted to get to the opening session of the Louisiana legislature in time to be counted for a day’s pay by the state auditor. Nor is the ten-cent-a-mile transportation expense money which the state generously allots to be despised by any Louisiana statesman.

At 5:30 A.M. the next morning, just as dawn was breaking, I arrived at the Heidelberg Hotel in Baton Rouge. Slumping into one of those soft, brown leather chairs they have in those swell hotels in which Communist reporters do not generally register, I took up my position of watchful waiting for the Kingfish. I approached the hotel clerk for information about the habits of the Kingfish. What time did he usually rise? Would he answer the telephone if I called up? How watchful were his famed bodyguards?

At eight o’clock I called United States Senator Huey P. Long and the voice which answered, I later learned, was that of Joe Messina, Huey’s chief bodyguard. “Naw, you can’t see him,” he snarled derisively. “Huey’s busy today.”

Undaunted, I walked to the Capitol and entered the legislature hall. It was empty except for the presence of a tall, red-haired young man in a black derby seated at the press table. “Reporter?” I inquired. “No, representative,” he answered proudly.

“Well, maybe you can help me get hold of Huey.” I had learned that if you say “Senator Long” no one will know whom you’re talking about.

“Maybe I can get you to him,” answered the representative doubtfully. “But I took another newspaperman from New York to see Huey and I sure caught hell for it. It was this fellow Westbrook Pegler. He later wrote some snotty stuff about Huey.”

“You won’t catch hell if you take me to him,” I assured the young man. “I don’t belong to his crowd.”

The young man led me to the room on the tenth floor where the Ways and Means Committee was “considering” bills for the legislature.

I recognized my man at once. He was sitting at the head of a long walnut table “explaining” various bills to the committee members, most of whom showed not the slightest interest in them. In one hour the Kingfish had succeeded in explaining and having voted favorably nearly twenty bills. When time hung heavily on the hands of the bored legislature, Huey waxed witty.

“Talking about this here business about the state insane asylums,” remarked the Kingfish, “I may as well tell you that a relative of mine has taken over the business of running it, and we’ve got quite a surplus. Fact is, the insanity rate is getting mighty low these days what with the decline in the anti-Long movement.”

The legislators guffawed appreciatively. At another point when the Kingfish was at a loss to “explain” one of his bills to Jack Williamson, of St. Charles Parish, youthful opposition leader on the Ways and Means Committee, Huey declared:

“This is a fine bill, a fine bill. George, here [Wallace, assistant Attorney General] tells me it removes some of the clockwork and gives the hands a chance to move.”

By such profound analysis Long prepared his bills for speedy passage in the Legislature.

Along about noon the solons decided on a luncheon recess. Seeing my chance, I approached the Kingfish and remarked, “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time, Senator. How are you?” I didn’t bother to go into details about credentials at the moment.

“Could I talk to you for a few minutes now, Senator? I’m making a study of conditions in Louisiana and I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m very busy right now,” Long countered, turning his back on me politely and addressing himself to the Hon. George Wallace, assistant Attorney General of Louisiana and reputed to be Huey’s “brain-truster.” I stood hesitating for a second, then approached the Kingfish once more.

“You don’t mind if I accompany you down the elevator, do you, Senator?” “Hell, no!” Long continued talking with his Attorney General.

“Quite a building, this capitol, eh, Senator?”

“Few days.”

We passed through the doorway of the committee room into the wide spacious hallway of the capitol. Huey and I were being followed by the watchful Attorney General, several members of the Ways and Means Committee and at least two members of Huey’s omnipresent bodyguards.

We finally landed in the elevator. Ten floors, even in a modern $5,000,000 capitol, are good for a few questions.

“Is the Standard Oil Company the only corporation you’re hostile to, Senator, or do you fight big business all over the state?”

“I’m not hostile to anything. All we’re doing is reducing rates and getting taxes out of them.”

That very evening Huey’s subservient legislature at his bidding-was to revoke the tax on the Standard Oil Company!

“How do you feel about Roosevelt’s program, Senator?”

“I don’t know what his program is. I wish someone would explain it to me.” (Sixth floor).

“Just who is behind this Square Deal outfit?”

“Oh, hell,” Long grimaced, “they got nobody.” (Third floor).

“Is it true that the Standard Oil Company is paying their expenses?”

“They ain’t doing enough work for anybody to make them worth a cent.”

Thus with a wave of the hand the Kingfish brushed away the latest manifestation of opposition to his policies.

The elevator landed on the main floor. Huey made for the governor’s office and I tagged along.

Once inside, Huey threw himself into a luxurious leather chair. I sat down at the table, while the Kingfish’s retinue, including a number of legislators and the Attorney General, waited patiently on the sidelines.

“You’re considered quite a friend of labor in this state, aren’t you, Senator?”

“Aw, hell, yes. Ever since I was Railroad Commissioner way back in 1918, and all along the line I’ve always been 100 percent for labor and labor’s always been 100 percent for me.”

“Senator, some of the union people in New Orleans tell me that men got as low as ten cents an hour on state construction work under your administration. No truth in that, is there?”

“I guess that’s so. But, hell, that didn’t have anything to do with me. That was a question of bidding. Whoever turned in the lowest bid got the contract.”

“But, as a friend of labor, you could have stipulated union scales for all state construction work, could you not, Senator?”

“There’s no such thing as unions on state highways around here,” the Kingfish replied. Our eyes met.

“Senator, from what you hear in Washington, do you think there is any danger of war breaking out?” “Sure is,” replied the Senator, glancing around with evident satisfaction.

“Expect the session to last very long?”

“They’d go in for it if they could. It’s been the method of all condemned and rebuked administrations since the beginning of time.”

“Don’t you think, Senator, that the government should use the money appropriated for war preparations, that is, battleships, etc., to feed the unemployed and their families?”

“Absolutely. I ain’t in favor of this government battleship business a-tall. Of course, I wouldn’t scrap all of ’em, but I would have a better unified airplane study made.” Huey is apparently in favor of a more efficient war machine.

“Your opponents say that Negroes will now vote in Louisiana as a result of your abolition of the poll tax. Is that really so?”

“Not a-tall, sir!” Huey barked. “The poll tax don’t change the status of the n***r one damn bit! All it does is to eliminate the one-dollar poll tax. Of course the n***s are registering in droves, but the Registrar of Voters still has charge of setting the qualifications for all voters.”

Several months previously Huey had got out a leaflet to this effect in order to reassure his lily-white supporters that he had no intention of helping to enfranchise the hundreds of thousands of Negro workers and share-croppers in Louisiana.

Over Huey P. Long’s signature, the leaflet declared:

An underhanded and secret lie is being spread about that this amendment for free poll taxes will let the Negro vote in our elections. That is not true and everybody telling it either does not know the truth or doesn’t want to know the truth. The free poll tax will not affect the status of the Negro at all. Negroes can pay and do pay their poll taxes now, but that doesn’t give them any better chance to vote. It is the registration law and the white primary that keeps the Negro out of our elections.

Shifting the subject, I asked Long if it were true that Harvey Couch, power man and railroad president, was one of his main supporters.

“Those fellows (the opposition) would have it that I shouldn’t speak to Couch, but I speak to them all, and tax ’em.” Long was evidently conscious of the box-office value of the slogan, “tax the rich.”

“What do you think of Upton Sinclair’s ‘Epic’ program, Senator? John Klorer, the editor of your paper, tells me that Sinclair was one of the first to subscribe to it and has said some nice things about your ideas.” “I don’t know much about what he’s aiming for, but I believe it calls for confiscation. I’m not for that, my program is for limiting fortunes above a certain amount.” “What amount, Senator?”

“Oh, if a man has a million dollars, we let him he’p himself to it, but if he has a few millions, why then we put a tax on it.” “Senator, I recall that you once debated Norman Thomas in New York. Just what do you think of the socialist program? It has something in common with your ‘Share-the-Wealth’ plan, hasn’t it?”

“No, we’re about as far apart as the poles. They believe in government ownership. I’m against that; the government’s messing around in business too much as it is.”

“Well, how do you feel about the Communist program for fighting the depression, Senator?”

“Oh, I don’t know much about them.” Our eyes met for the second time. “I do know, though, that they are a-seeking for the government to own everything. We call for the government to keep out of business. Our plan is nothing but limiting property.”

“I’m not entirely clear, Senator. Didn’t I understand you to say that it was the socialists who want the government to own everything?”

“Well, sir, I don’t just catch the difference myself. Some say there is a difference between ’em, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

Huey’s eyes fell on a newspaper clipping on the table. He chuckled. He chuckled. I caught a glimpse of a cartoon portraying him as a crowned dictator.

“I understand that practically all the important newspapers of the state are against you, Senator. Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true, allright, and it’s a damn good thing. We thrive on opposition. Senator Noe, here, will tell you a thing or two about it. Why, up in Monroe and Shreveport our boys had told us that the papers were a-layin’ low and that we’d carry the election only three to one. Hell, I said, that will never do. It ain’t fair for them papers to lay quiet against them bills of ours. Sometimes those sons-of-bitches make like they’re on our side, and we have to get out our handbills to convince them to the contrary. Now, as I was saying, we got out the handbills up in Monroe and Shreveport and after a while the papers started printing front-page attacks against me and m’bills, and the finish was that we carried the election there eight to one instead of three to one.

“Senator, I’ve just visited the cotton country up North. The farmers, especially the poor ones, don’t seem to be getting on very well. What do you think about it?”

“This damn AAA or whatever you call it hasn’t he’ped anybody anywhere, in any way.”

“How would you handle the farmers, Senator?”

“If you’d read my speeches like you said you did, you’d know that my idea is to store up the crops and hold it for a year until we got a good price for it. In the meantime we’d put the farm fellows to work on highway building and such.”

“Well, isn’t that fundamentally the same. thing that Roosevelt is doing; you both seem to be in agreement about the necessity for crop curtailment?” The Kingfish grunted.

“Your program is considered quite radical by the people of Louisiana, isn’t it, Senator?”

“Hell, I don’t give a damn what folks call it or me radical, conservative or reactionary. All I’m advocating is right out of the Bible. It comes straight out of the Scriptures.”

“A little while back, Senator, you stated that you were in favor of organized labor. How, then, do you account for the fact that labor organization is so weak in the state of Louisiana? You have considerable influence in this state; couldn’t you help unionization along a bit?”

“No, sir, I couldn’t do that. I’m for labor, have always been, and labor’s for me. But I couldn’t get messed up in that.”

“Senator, I understand that your legislature defeated the Child Labor Amendment. How did that happen?”

“The rural vote wouldn’t support it. I voted for it in Congress, though,” he hastened to add.

“But couldn’t you swing the rural vote around if you took the stump and spoke for the amendment throughout the state?”

“Well, now, I caint make the rural people do it without I ruin myself to do it, do you understand?”

I walked out of the governor’s office, out of the capitol and into the Louisiana sunshine. At the head of the steps I recognized Joe Messina, Long’s six-foot bodyguard. A few days earlier he had beaten and nearly murdered a diminutive newspaper photographer who had tried to snap a picture of the senator and the utility man Harvey Couch, in the latter’s private railroad car.

Like it or not, Huey Long is a popular figure in the cotton patches and cane brakes of Louisiana, even though he attained and now maintains his power by means of a corrupt political machine, which operates with the aid of graft, intimidation and terrorism. He has encroached on the rights of the local municipalities of Louisiana and has stripped them of virtually all authority so swiftly that he can justly be described as the “Louisiana Hitler.”

Huey Long rules the state like an autocrat: he has built up a dummy legislature, completely subservient to his will; he has placed a puppet in the governor’s chair; he has a powerful and ruthless political machine which has crushed all opposition; he has created a whole series of boards and commissions to control the state’s financial and tax structure, throwing the main burden of taxation on the backs of the poor; he has transferred local police powers to the state.

Senator Long enjoys the support of leading bankers, industrialists and planters. They include Harvey C. Couch, power magnate and president of the Louisiana & Arkansas Railroad and Rudolph Hecht, president of the Hibernia Bank of New Orleans as well as head of the American Bankers Association, controlled by Wall Street financiers. Nor should we get the impression that Long’s financial support is of a purely local character. On the contrary, it leads directly into some of the most influential offices in Wall Street, directly into the Chase National Bank!

Testifying before the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency on December 5, 1933, in connection with the Banking Act of 1933, Senator Glass declared that:

“One of the officials of the Chase National Bank is alleged…to have been in constant communication with the man who made the most vituperative and violent assault on those provisions of the law that were made by anybody. And I have been informed by trustworthy persons, and it is partially sustained by the record itself, that this man, without waiting to vote on the banking bill, boasted that he had practically filibustered it to death, left his place in the chamber, and took the next train out of Washington for New York and for an interview with this official of the Chase National Bank.”

That senator was Mr. Long of Louisiana! The official referred to by Senator Glass, and named in the Senate testimony, was none other than Mr. Charles S. McCain, chairman of the board of directors of the Chase National Bank of New York.

As for Senator Long, the Wall Street rumor at the time was $25,000.

As for Mr. Harvey C. Couch, one of Long’s chief backers, the Senate testimony reveals a clear connection between him and the Chase National Bank of New York. I quote from the record:

MR. PECORA: Mr. McCain, from evidence heretofore presented to this sub-committee it appears that a loan was made by the Chase National Bank to a syndicate the managers of which were Dillon, Read & Co., H.C. Couch, and yourself; that the amount of the loan on January 29, 1930, was $2,975,000. Do you recall the loan in question?

MR. MCCAIN: Was that a loan made to–MR. PECORA: (interposing) That was a loan that was secured principally by shares of the capital stock of the Louisiana & Arkansas Railway Co.

MR. MCCAIN: Yes, sir; I recall the loan.

With such supporters, it is no wonder that Huey P. Long is a bitter enemy of union labor. American Federation of Labor men in Louisiana who are not attached to the Long machine are unrestrained in their private denunciations of the ruthless exploitation on the state projects of which the Kingfish is so proud. Workers on highway construction received as low as ten cents an hour, and the highways, airport and public buildings constructed under the Long regime are monuments to labor peonage.

Huey Long has tantalized the Negroes with the prospect of regaining their right to vote. At the same time his henchmen, in actual practice, have been depriving them of every human right.

Huey Long’s political technique is illustrated by his policy on two measures: the Child Labor Amendment and the Prevailing Wage Clause. Both of these measures he demagogically supported in the senate. Yet, in his own kingdom where his power is supreme, he has prevented their passage.

A recent United Press dispatch reports that Norman Thomas is urging that Huey Long aid the victimized share-croppers of Arkansas. If the Kingfish ever had any inclination to aid the share-croppers or the Negro people generally, he would have found plenty to keep him busy in his own Louisiana kingdom.

Busy he is indeed. But not in relieving the distress of the masses of the state.

Huey Long’s chief visible activity is demagogy. And what a master demagogue he is! His main appeal is primarily to the ruined rural population and to the middle class. He ensnares the impoverished farmers with glowing promises of future wealth, while he corrals the harassed “little man” with bombastic assaults upon “special privileges” and the “big interests.” His “Share-the-Wealth” program is a pretty soap bubble which is economically impossible. Such a thought is furthest from the mind of the Senator from Louisiana.

Huey Long says he thrives on opposition. All of the leading newspapers of Louisiana–eighteen of them–are “opposed” to Long, but their opposition merely serves to advertise him and his “program.” They fear a real exposé of Huey Long for they know that it would expose capitalism as well.

Such a thought is furthest from the minds of the wealthy, open-shop newspaper publishers of Louisiana, and the Wall Street interest which they represent.

Meeting this superficial opposition is a comparatively simple matter for Senator Long. National hook-ups, accommodatingly provided by the giant broadcasting chains, bring his staccato speech right into the homes of millions. With the Louisiana State University under his pudgy thumb, Huey Long makes a full use of the facilities of its radio station, WDSU, to reach his Louisiana audience. From the state treasury he draws the money to buy and maintain several modern sound-trucks in which he makes whirlwind tours not only in Louisiana but also throughout the South. Those few who are reached neither through the radio nor by means of his sound-trucks are flooded with his countless handbills, written in the same flamboyant style as his speeches are delivered. Since the organization of his “Share-the-Wealth” societies, Long has vastly extended the influence of his monthly paper, The American Progress. The Kingfish now claims for these clubs a membership of more than 200,000.

Long’s most potent weapon, however, is his oratory. He is colloquial, spontaneous, dramatic, humorous in a slapstick way–and his chief staple his chief staple is the Bible:

“I wonder if it would shock the understanding and customs of the Senate if we were to turn back to the laws laid down for man when this earth was created? Read the Book of Leviticus, the 24th, 25th, and 26th chapters. It tells you there how to avoid depressions, how to keep everybody fed, and keep wealth turning over. It even prophesies Al Capone and his gang in those Scriptures.”

The Kingfish seldom troubles to meet hist opponent’s arguments with logic. After he was elected governor, one of his first acts was to tear down the old Executive Mansion and build a new one which cost the state a tidy sum. His opponents seized upon this extravagance as a campaign issue in the next election and pointed out that the mansion had been “good enough” for Long’s predecessors, and should have been good enough for him.

The Kingfish met this barrage on countless platforms with a single anecdote:

“I can see,” he remarked sarcastically, “where that criticism is sound. It reminds me of the old man who kept a boarding house. When one guest complained that the towel was dirty he said: ‘People have been wiping on that towel for a month without complaining; I don’t see what’s the matter with you.'”

Long is a dynamo of energy; he has been known to rise at 4 o’clock in the morning in the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, jump into his Cadillac and speed 110 miles to the capitol at Baton Rouge to confer with some of his henchmen. He has built up a powerful political machine of which he is the sole, unchallenged leader. Egocentric to the nth degree, Huey Long, however, insists on supervising every detail of its operation from top to bottom. When I was seated in Governor Allen’s office in the capitol building interviewing Senator Long, a Senate page boy came to the Kingfish to request a transfer to another department. Long interrupted the interview, and, turning to the boy, bellowed:

“Not at all, young man, not at all. You aren’t even fit to be a page boy and you won’t be very long!” Just what the boy’s fault was I do not know, but it was clear that these words meant dismissal.

Let no one now make the mistake, which many have, of dismissing Huey Long as a mere clown. It is true that he often acts like a buffoon, but this “trait,” although native, is exploited deliberately for the purposes of demagogy.

Huey Long is making a bold bid for national power in the hope of superseding Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States. In order to accomplish this purpose he is parading as a champion of the oppressed masses and is holding out to them the empty promise of sharing the wealth of the nation and ending their poverty.

The struggle now raging between Long and the administration forces is one of method: how best to divert the rising mass discontent. Each one is attacking the other’s demagogy, but fails to expose its essence, namely the preservation of private property rights and the strengthening of the basic structure of capitalism.

Huey P. Long is a menace to every worker, farmer, student, intellectual and professional. Like Hitler he will attempt to solve the crisis at their expense by an attack on living standards and on civil rights. Only the unfolding of the class struggle to resist all such attempts of the Huey Longs and their ilk will block their advance.

The New Masses was the continuation of Workers Monthly which began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Communist Party publication, but drawing in a wide range of contributors and sympathizers. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and The New Masses began. A major left cultural magazine of the late 1920s and early 1940s, the early editors of The New Masses included Hugo Gellert, John F. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, and Joseph Freeman. Writers included William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway. Artists included Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Wanda Gag, William Gropper and Otto Soglow. Over time, the New Masses became narrower politically and the articles more commentary than comment. However, particularly in it first years, New Masses was the epitome of the era’s finest revolutionary cultural and artistic traditions.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v14n13-mar-26-1935-NM.pdf