HUEY LONG SHOT.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 10 September 1935, Page 5

HUEY LONG SHOT.

LOUISIANA'S DICTATOR SERIOUSLY WOUNDED. WOULD-BE ASSASSIN RIDDLED WITH BULLETS. (By Telegraph-Press Assn.-Copyright) -Received Monday, 7.50 p.m. BATON RoUGE (Louisiana), Sept. 8. Senator Huey Long was shot and wounded as lie was passing through the corridor between the State House and the Senate chambers to-night. His assailant, Dr. A. (J. Weiss, a Baton Rouge eye specialist and a member of an anti-Long political family, was shot and killed by Senator Long's bodyguard. Senator Long -was given a blood transfusion late to-night and has a good chance of recovery. He is reported to have been shot in the abdomen, but the bullet passed through his body, thus barring complications. His assailant, who was dressed in a smart white suit, fired a gun at Senator Long as he walked along the corridor alter leaving the House where he was directing legislation in a special session of the Legislature. Senator Long staggered downstairs to the basement, blood flowing from his mouth. His bodyguard immediately mowed down Dr. AVeiss with a sub-machine gun. The bulletriddled body of the attempted assassin was left lying on the floor near Governor Allen's office. The wildest excitement prevailed in the State House which was immediately cleared and Senator Long was rushed to a sanatorium, where Dr. Arthur Vidrine, superintendent of the New Orleans Charity Hospital, -prepared to operate. Only Lieutenant-Governor James Noe, a close personal friend and trusted political adviser, was permitted to accompany Senator Long to the operating room. Late reports state that Senator Long's condition is not yet critical.

GAINS STRENGTH AFTER BLOOD TRANSFUSION. (By Telegraph-Press Assn.--Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m.) BATON ROUGE (Louisiana), September 9. The hospital reported this morning that Senator Huey Long had gamed strength after the blood transfusion and operation. Possible Motive of Attack REVOLVER JAMMED ON SECOND • SHOT Received Monday, Midnight. NEW YORK, Sept. 9. Dr. Weiss was 29 years of age, and was a Tulane University graduate, lie studied medicine abroad. His father, Carl A. Weiss, Senior, was a former president of the Louisiana Medical Association. A possible motive for the attack was that Weiss Junior's father-in-law, Judge B. H. Pavy, is leader of the anti-Long political faction. In fact, one of the Bills Senator Long presented to the Legislature would have redefined the judicial district Judg«) Pavy represented, with a view to adding enough pro-Long voters to defeat the Judge at the next election. Dr. Weiss's wife, the former Yvonne Pavy, is also active in antiLong politics. Although the building was crowded at the time of the shooting only a few actually witnessed it. According to the testimony of the three State police officers who were assigned to guard Huey Long, they were some distance away when Weiss pressed his revolver into Huey's abdomen 1 and shot him. According to them the weapon jammed preventing a second shot, which probably saved Mr Long's life. They immediately started firing at Weiss but denied that they used machine-guns. At the hospital it was found that the bullet had struck no vital organs, and after a blood transfusion the physicians declared Huey had "a good chance of recovery." It is said that Senator Long remained conscious throughout, and witl blood streaming from his mouth he directed the coroner to hold an inquest into Dr. Weiss's death. Fearing disorders a regiment of the National Guard has been ordered to mobilise for the hearing to-morrow. Huey's Fate Foretold "HE IS A PRODUCT OF THE TIMES" A cable message from Washington, seemingly forecasting to-day's news, on August 10 stated: "Mr. Huey P. Long, Louisiana, read into the Senate's rej cords to-day what purported to be a

transcript of a dictaphone* recording of a meeting of ins political enemies. Oii'e was alleged to have proposed that Mr. Long should be ‘shot down on the iloor of the Senate, because I have not the slightest doubt President Roosevelt would pardon anyone who did so." Mr. Long said he could not identify the voices, but a certain member of the House of Representatives, Mr. J. N. Sandlin (Democrat —Louisiana), was among those present. Mr. Sandlin commented that Mr. Long was merely ranting.”

Three days later Mr. Long announced his intention of running as a Democrat for the 1930 Presidential election campaign, stating that he would stand as an Independent should President Roosevelt be renominated. In the previous June Mr. Long seized the centre of the American political stage with one of his most determined filibusters in which he spoke for loi hours. He launched a vigorous attack on President Roosevelt, varying Ins tactics by political wit and even giving a learned dissertation on the art ol cooking as practised in his native State. At the finish he was hardly able to utter anything above a whisper and was so weary that he had to be helped from the chamber. The .N.R.A. legislation which he was holding up was then whipped through. His w;:s the second longest lilibuster in the history of Congress, the honour going to Senator la Follette, who spoke for Hi hours in 1908.

Again, on August 2(i, when Congress was on the eve of adjourning, he staged a stonewall to prevent the passing or the 100,000,000 dollars Third Dehciency llill, the remaining major measure before the chamber. t To dismiss Mr. fluey V. Long as merely a political meteor, tracing a iiery path of its own volition across the political heavens, is to confess an ignorance of the political constellations, said the Christian .Science Monitor in an article on the Louisiana Senator. To regard the meteor itself as the menace without taking into account tne con-" vulsion that threw it oil' to wander briefly through political space is to diagnose wrongly its importance. For to-day we can perceive the fiery paths of other Huey Longs in the political skies above other States.

To understand the appearing of Huey Long it is necessary to study the conditions that made for that appearing. In Louisiana, the starting paint of the Huey Long meteor, there was built up during several decades a counterpart ot New York's Tammany Hall. There arc political observers in the South who object that the parallel is unfair —to Tammany. Orleans Oounty, embracing New Orleans, the only sizable city and containing one-third of the State's voters, held absolute sway over the whole State. Out in the canebrakes were thousands of voters who had no chance to choose their own leaders or raise a voice. They were without organisation. A great many of them did not vote at all. The old system, in the iiands of the bosses of Orleans County, ruled supreme, it was, the dragon of Louisiana, from its lair in New Orleans, holding the whole State in subjection. The history of that machine is a shameful one. Vice and corruption thai put to shame the Tammany HaJl oi Boss Tweed existed openly. That history is written in terms of misery and shame, in the sweat and poverty of the poo; Cajuns, the bare-footed Cajuns who followed the trails that passed for roads, without a decent school system, without the ability to voice the rebellion thai smouldered within them.

Against this background Huey Long is no deep and mysterious phenomenon. He was a product of the times. Huey Long looked into the cane brakes ami saw the thousands of uneast votes, saw the sure and certain way to political power, ho into the canebrakes he plunged upon his self-appointed crusade, his steed a sound truck, his armoury words and worse. He- is a product of the times, his weapons arc of'the times' making. He is spellbinder, a -rabble-rouser who does not hesitate to use the phrase that will turn the political trick.

Recent opposition to Mr. Long has stiffened because of his dictatorial aspirations, his siiare-the-wealth pla;; and his arbitrary limits on profits and income. His critics charge the Louisiana Senator with having instituted a degree of dictatorship, a political cancelling of representative government damage done to democracy and an exploitation of self at the cost of selfgovernment.