Huey Long of Louisiana

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21384, 29 January 1935, Page 10

Huey Long of Louisiana

Politics in America, more than in other countries, gain comic relief from eccentric figures thrown up and usually, later, down—by tlie whims of the voters. Notable among such figures in recent years is Senator Huey P. Long, who went to the Capitol at Baton Rouge as a clown, and now a United States Senator, is more of a dictator within Louisiana than the most critical observer of American State constitutions two years ago would have thought possible. To Washington and New York he is still a clown, though the situation reported in the cable news yesterday, with its possibilities of bloodshed, may cause a revision of national opinion about the dangers

of clowning. Washington remembers best the Senator's outbursts before Senate commissions, and the delight he expressed when he found that he had been omitted from a new edition of the social register. But Senator Long, in spite of the scorn of the right-thinking, clings to office with a tenacity that must be the envy of many a more respected politician. Louisiana, which showed at the November elections that it preferred his "dictatorship" to the democratic government his opponents offered, remembers that it is to hijn that it owes an astonishing improvement in its educational system as well as in its roads, bridges, and public buildings. If voters hear, their senator described as a mountebank, they may answer that his pleading has been praised by two of the most learned of recent members of the American Supreme Court. If it is said that his influence in Louisiana shows a low level of intelligence in that state, and that his power will never extend beyond it, they will mention the growing number, all over the country, of his "share the wealth" clubs on which, it is thought, he hopes to build a machine to carry him to victory in the next Presidential elections. His simple political philosophy, expressed in those clubs, is the basic cause of his success. Some people have too much money, he says, some not enough; and he offers to do something about it. Big corporations, particularly oil companies, are the targets for his pre-election attacks, and for his post-election taxes. So effectively has he concentrated power in his own hands that resistance of any sort seems useless. Only the distribution of Federal funds and patronage in his state remains beyond the control of his machine and that, as much as his Presidential ambitions, probably dictated his recent speeches about the "Roosevelt de- " pression." Ke has fought bitter battles to gain power, he has fought attempts to impeach him, and he is permanently in an election fight of one sort or another. But if he fights with bullets, his calling out of the National Guard, for the second lime, may be the critical mistake of his flambuoyant career. If it is, America will have a chance to think over means of preventing any one man using legal means to gain such power in his state.