Long Loud Long

"You've got until March 4 to pass this bill. Well, this bill won't go through before March 4. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it."

Beneath its crop of curly reddish hair the round pug-nosed face of Senator Huey Pierce ("Kingfish") Long of Louisiana glared pugnacious defiance across the Senate Chamber at Virginia's famed Carter Glass. The bill that "won't go through before March 4" was Senator Glass's to revamp the Federal Reserve system. Senator Long, opposed to its branch banking features, was out to talk it to death. He waved his arms in mighty circles. He bludgeoned the Senate with loud arrogant words. He drove most of his colleagues from the Chamber in utter disgust. But almost single-handed he did succeed in stalling all important Senate business for a solid week.

Cried he: "The house of Morgan is the undisputed kingfish of the banking situation!" The galleries tittered but Senator Glass, deaf to the long outpourings, did not look up from the book he was reading. Sticking fairly close to his subject the Louisianian rambled on and on and on.

(Meanwhile, nothing could be done about balancing the Federal budget now running into debt at the rate of $5,000,000 per day.)

On the second day of his filibuster Senator Long appeared on the floor in a loose wing collar which gave his Adam's apple greater leeway. To waste time and get a rest, he sent a document to the clerk's desk to be read aloud but Senator Glass, determined to wear out his adversary, objected. Senator Long read it himself, slowly, lingering over each word. "Am I going too fast?" he impishly asked. The Senate was practically empty as he expatiated about decentralizing wealth, remonetizing silver, taxing capital.

(Meanwhile, nothing could be done about saving $1,000,000,000 in Federal expenses as promised by Franklin Roosevelt's party during the campaign.)

By the end of the third day Senator Long's voice was a hoarse whisper. Much of his bluster had gone. From old yellow copies of the Congressional Record he read musty and long-disproved attacks on the personal integrity of Eugene Meyer, whom he called the "Kingfish of the Federal Reserve." Croaked Senator Long: "What he won't do ain't in the books! Yet we hunt boys with a pint of whiskey on the hip. What's the use of keeping Capone in Atlanta? What's the use of hunting Insull in Greece?" At 5 p. m., worn to a frazzle, he fairly begged: "It's time someone should move a recess." Montana's Wheeler obliged, but the motion was lost. During a brief pause in the filibuster the First Deficiency bill was slipped through.

(But meanwhile, nothing could be done about ten other appropriation bills.)

The fourth day of the filibuster belonged to tall, white-haired Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma who sees almost eye to eye with "Kingfish" Long. For six hours he talked quietly, calmly, for currency inflation while Democrats scurried about with plans to clap cloture on such long-winded insurgency. When party leaders tried to get Senator Long to surrender, he waved his arms and shouted: "There ain't going to be no compromise. We've got this fight won and we ain't going to quit." A Senate cloakroom quip: "This is the short session of the House and the Long session of the Senate."

(Meanwhile, nothing could be done about beer.)

Senator Long resumed verbal operations the fifth day but gave way long enough for the Senate to take up President Hoover's veto of Philippine Independence legislation (see p. 16). No state had a larger stake in this measure than cane-growing Louisiana; yet its "Kingfish" Senator was ready to junk it, along with every other bill on the calendar, in his vehemence to block Senator Glass's bank measure.

(Meanwhile, nothing could be done about mortgage-ridden farmers already in open revolt against foreclosures in the Mid-West.)

The sixth day began with Senator Long, refreshed by the weekend, still loudly and resolutely holding the floor against all comers. At his persistent bellowings his Democratic colleagues were reduced to a frenzy of legislative despair. To shut him up required two-thirds vote and more than a third of the Senate is either against the Glass Bill or for currency inflation. Senator Long realized that his oratorical rampage might be the last of its kind because the 20th Amendment, now ratified by 21 of the necessary 36 States, will soon end short sessions in which alone filibusters can be successful.

When he had been assured that there were enough Senate votes on hand to override the President's veto of the Philippine Independence Bill, he unexpectedly subsided, at least long enough to allow that measure to come to a vote.

Ostensibly Senator Long's filibuster was against the Glass bill because he feared it would permit big city banks, through branches, to gobble up little country banks. As a matter of practical politics his real purpose was to reduce the current session to a legislative nullity, thus forcing President Roosevelt to call a special one early next spring. At such a session Senator Long believes that he and his economic ideas will be on top of the Senate pile. With blunt truth he shouted to his Democratic colleagues: "This is a contest between the Conservatives and the Liberals and I want that fact understood." Senator Thomas put the issue thus: "The remedy for the distress in this country is reflation--and if not reflation, then revolution."

A rough, crude, unbridled force, Huey Long is more than a windy showman of the Tom Heflin breed who bows to party control. He is persistent. He is quick-witted. He is unscrupulous. For a year he has been in open revolt against the Robinson-Glass-Harrison leadership of his party. He envisages himself as the captain of the next Senate, with a radical economic program to put through. He is for President Roosevelt only so long as President Roosevelt is for him. His tactics last week drove a big wedge deep into his party and left President Roosevelt the tough job of choosing, after March 4, between the conservative Robinson-Glass oligarchy in the Senate or the rampant Long-Wheeler-Thomas faction.

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