The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, September 11, 1935. HUEY LONG'S SOUTHERN SETTING.

Grey River Argus, 11 September 1935, Page 4

The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, September 11, 1935. HUEY LONG'S SOUTHERN SETTING.

Gaining prominence m foreign as well as American eyes not only by ruthless political methods but by birarre. ultra-moder i and unscrupulous propaganda, Senator Huey Long, the dictator of Louisiana, has met his end in a manner quite in keeping with his hectic public career. He showed his foes no quarter and finally it was one of these by whom he was in gangster fashion “bumped off.” With the murderer, none could sympathise. His target if retaliation were justifiable should have been the Louisiana majority, not the man of their choice, even if the autocracy for which he stood, though meant to be benevolent, had instead become only a political tyranny. In the sphere of social reform and economic right, the slogans, “Every Man a King,” and “Share the Wealth,” may have been paculiarly appropriate unaer the present American con ditions for asserting human equality. Yet Long in practice interpreted them where he had the power, with an absolutism that was entirely “Southern” in the American sense. Long lacked a sense of proportion. He set up to do at a stroke what Roosevelt and other wiser men knew to be a slow process of social regeneration and the result is that Louisiana owes to Long the fact that in. a few years her debt has been in creased several times over. Even if no raction sets in, lhe rate of public expenditure will undoubtedly fall immediately, and in consequence a new alignment of political forces in th e State may be expected. A Democrat from the Democratic South, Senator Long was more vigorous in Congress as an opponent of the President than in any other course, not even excepting currency inflation, which his lavish outlay of public funds doubtless rendered attractive, so it also was for cotton growers whose product had relatively lost so much of its value in the slump. Senator Long undoubtedly possessed the great organising talent, .the magnetic prsonality, the powerful will the sympathy for the poor, and the energy that go to make a leader of men, but what fixed principles were, his? Nobody could go further than bis slogans towards any exact definition. Ide was peculiarly a product both of his State and his age, for whose rise the depression gave the oppor trinity, and to whose impulse the hope of a regeneration in America may yet prove to owe much. On the other hand, there was an 'atmosphere of the. ephemeral also about his career, as if he had to maintain an abnormal state of polities in order to carry on. To what he might have attained is now at best only a pathetic con

jecture, but he was an exponent ■; of the American political practice i which with each change -sees a clean sweep in administration. It is true that, as the Federal constitution vests great discretion and power in the President, so does the Stat c constitution in the Governor, but Long ruled the whole Louisiana roost —making Governors and Parliaments with no scruple about precedent 0 1 ' prescript. His Congressional status resieu on bis .State uifluence, ai.d bis mistake was in . iding rough shod ever opuositAn in Loiii.uasnot in atlempt’ng dictation al \\ .n-liingtou He w:;> a political phen.>*uenoii, »i‘ conet ary type but the masses v Lorn lie befriende I in Louisiana regarde 1 1 ini doubtless as -he man of tl e hour. It was no time to cut short his caree-' f-jr, whatev'l h-s faults, he had grit and lined up against s 'Lie a least of the v ii-‘ of modern capitalistic industrialism which grind the masses down at the behest of usurers. As President Roosevelt implies, he faced problems with a desire to solve them, and deserved a better fate than assassination. It may at this distance be easy to detect the irregularities and even excesses in his -ways but where men knew him best Senator Long ivas a big man.