Summary Overview

By all accounts Huey Long was a spellbinding speaker. No matter the platform—the radio, the Senate floor, or small towns and large cities alike during campaigns—Long was a consummate performer who could adjust the level of his talk to his audience. In rural Louisiana he was a common man, using plain and simple language. On the Senate floor he could be eloquent in tearing apart legislation by his colleagues that either ignored or did not do enough to relieve the economic plight of Americans. Over the radio, he appealed directly to depression-era audiences of millions who were looking for ways out of poverty, joblessness, and the growing influence of corporations and wealthy individuals who, in Long’s view, prevented the “everyman” from becoming a king—that is, master of his own fate, on an equal playing field with every other man. In a 1934 radio address, “Share Our Wealth,” Long sharply criticized Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal and outlined his alternative populist program for redistributing wealth. This speech provides details of his plan and was delivered on radio in January, 1935. It was later printed in the Congressional Record.

Defining Moment

In 1934, when Long first introduced his Share Our Wealth program and 1935, when he delivered this address, US President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and the Democratic Party-led Congress had enacted a number of measures collectively referred to as the First New Deal. These measures generally fell into three broad categories: recovery, relief, and reform. The National Recovery Administration attempted to restore industrial capacity, consumer purchasing levels and jobs. Banking reforms and the Securities Act of 1933 sought to prevent similar economic disasters from happening again. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Rural Electrification Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps aimed to relieve economic suffering.

Despite the unprecedented level of government involvement in the economy and the federal dollars spent, Roosevelt’s critics on the political left did not believe he and his fellow Democrats were doing enough to either undo the damage to the economy or to take the radical steps necessary to ensure economic equality—such as wide-scale redistribution of wealth. The most vocal of these critics was Louisiana Senator Huey Long. On the floor of the Senate, Long would lambaste the administration and conservative Democrats in Congress for their unwillingness to take the steps necessary to solve the nation’s economic woes.

Long’s radical positions and his bold, aggressive manner made him few friends in the Senate, and none of his proposed bills were passed. Among these were the 1933 “Long Plan,” which created a new tax code that would heavily penalize the wealthiest Americans and limit the size of personal fortunes, annual incomes, and inheritances. When these bills went down in defeat, Long turned to the public at large, unveiling his Share Our Wealth program in February, 1934.

Author Biography

Born on August 30, 1893, Huey Pierce Long, Jr., was the seventh of nine children. Although he often spoke of his childhood as one of extreme poverty, in fact he grew up in comfortable, if not affluent, surroundings. A precocious and articulate child, he was also undisciplined and prone to rebel against the requirements of formal education. After desultory work as a traveling salesman, Long entered Tulane University Law School. Although he managed to finish less than a year of coursework, he persuaded state officials to give him a bar exam, which he passed, becoming a lawyer at the age of twenty-one.

Long admitted that for him the law was merely a means to a political career, which he began in 1918 with his election as a state railroad commissioner. A lifelong member of the Democratic Party, he established himself from the beginning as a populist—more specifically, as a crusading underdog who attacked corporations like Standard Oil and establishment politicians who did the bidding of big business. After serving on the Louisiana Public Service Commission and running unsuccessfully for governor in 1924, he won the governorship in 1928 on a platform promising free textbooks for schoolchildren and a massive highway-building program. Long consolidated his power quickly by putting his cronies in state offices and by establishing his own newspaper. His abuse of power led to impeachment proceedings, which he was able to quash by bribing and intimidating state legislators.

Called a dictator, Long retained and enhanced his power by winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1930 but holding his position as governor until 1932; in that election year, his close associate and chosen successor, O.K. Allen, won the governorship. Initially supporting Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 election for president, Long became increasingly disenchanted with Roosevelt’s unwillingness to implement the radical share-the-wealth program that Long advocated in national radio addresses and on the Senate floor. In 1933 he published his autobiography, Every Man a King. With a serious mass following throughout the country, Long might have mounted a vigorous challenge to Roosevelt’s reelection campaign in 1936, but he was assassinated; Long was shot on September 8, 1935, and died two days later. His visionary work My First Days in the White House was published after his death.

Document Analysis

Addressing a nationwide radio audience on January 14, 1935, Long wasted no time in attacking President Roosevelt. In the third year of the Roosevelt administration conditions had grown worse, Long argued. The president could no longer be regarded as the country’s savior, or as Long put it pithily, “It is not Roosevelt or ruin; it is Roosevelt’s ruin.” The nation’s leader had not acted on his promises to redistribute wealth and shorten the working hours of Americans who labored in a land of abundance.

Long personalizes the attack on Roosevelt by suggesting that the president prefers the companionship of rich men like John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Long even criticizes himself here, admitting that perhaps he should have known better than to trust Roosevelt to redistribute wealth, given the figures he befriended. As usual, Long presents himself as a simple man who has grown distrustful of the government’s promises. Roosevelt, by implication, becomes the symbol of the politician who talks a good line but fails to deliver what he proposes. It is time, Long says, to begin an immediate program to share the country’s wealth. And the vehicle for this program, he suggests, will be his Share Our Wealth societies. His expressed goal is to establish one hundred thousand societies that will meet and talk and work to ensure that the land produces everything that the nation’s people need.

Long then sets out his seven-point program. The first aim would be to reduce individual fortunes to no more than a few million dollars. After the first million earned, a person would be taxed an increasing percentage of his income; after more than $8 million has been earned, the person’s income would be taxed at 100 percent. Second, no person could inherit more than $1 million a year. Third, the taxes on the rich would be redistributed to every family so that all have “common conveniences,” such as automobiles, radios, and freedom from debt. Fourth, a full-employment economy and a thirty-hour workweek would be instituted. Fifth, the Louisiana education program would be expanded to provide free education to all Americans, a plan that would also entail the employment of one hundred thousand new teachers. Sixth, pension plans would be put in place for those over sixty years of age. The final aspect of Long’s program would be a moratorium on all unpayable debts.

Long believed that such a program could be instituted within two months. He provides few details about how such a massive redistribution of wealth would actually be administered, instead relying on basic language about his intentions, which are to “straighten things out.” The phrase implies, of course, that the country is not governed fairly and that it is in the grip of crooked men. He reinforces this notion by suggesting that the wealth of the country has been “locked in a vise” by a few powerful and wealthy men.

Long emphasizes that he is not against wealth per se—that, in fact, his plan would increase the number of millionaires by redistributing the enormous wealth of the few. No one would really be injured, and millions would benefit from his plan. “The only difference,” he contends in a memorable phrase, “would be that maybe 10,000 people would own a concern instead of 10 people owning it.” As usual, Long uses elementary facts and figures to make his dramatic point that wealth should be held in common. And, as usual, Long invokes the Bible, suggesting that his plan is part of the divine economy: “But, my friends, unless we do share our wealth, unless we limit the size of the big man so as to give something to the little man, we can never have a happy or free people. God said so! He ordered it.”

Near the very end of his address, Long resorts to one of his favorite ploys: presenting his plans as a kind of parable. In this case he presents an image of the country’s wealth as a barbecue that could provide enough for everyone to eat, and yet 90 percent of the food is taken by one man, even though he cannot eat all of it and will have to abandon much of it to rot. This is Long’s analogy for the functioning of a capitalist economy that produces goods in abundance and yet leaves people to starve. In his customary way, he presents the national depression in melodramatic terms, suggesting a sharp dichotomy between those who have all the wealth and those who are starving—the haves and the have-nots.

Finally, Long portrays America as God’s paradise, a land of plenty—indeed, the site of a feast. It is the Rockefellers and their ilk who are despoiling this paradise, and it is now time, Long concludes, to demand that these thieves “put some of it back.” Even more than in his “Every Man a King” address—a phrase Long also uses in this speech—he expresses outrage not only at the wealthy but also at President Roosevelt personally, who is treated as a man who has reneged on his assurances to help the American people. Consequently, Long’s only hope is the people themselves. They must govern themselves when their leaders seem unwilling to do God’s work, which should also be America’s work.

Essential Themes

Long approached populism with religious fervor, claiming no special insight of his own but rather simply maintaining a dogged insistence on following the teachings of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. The latter document was his key authority for attacking the Roosevelt administration and politicians who did not heed what Long viewed as the radical egalitarian programs that should follow from the crucial statement that “all men are created equal.” While Long played on people’s emotions in portraying himself as a simple, plainspoken man, he also could cite facts and figures to buttress his arguments, demonstrating the legal training that enabled him to be a shrewd and relentless opponent of the status quo. These qualities are on full display in the “Share Our Wealth” speech. His plan to level the economic playing field for Americans was radical but reflected the deprivation and discontent that existed in Depression-era America even during the New Deal.

The essence of Long’s plan was to “limit the size of the big man so as to give something to the little man.” He ties this to the future happiness of the United States, suggesting that without radical measures discontent would grow. Better, perhaps, that the rich be slightly less rich than to risk the eruption of revolution, a point he would raise in speeches and debates as he pursued his vision of America.

Bibliography and Additional Reading