Feet to Fire

"Mr. President." "The Senator from Louisiana." The large gilt clock over the Vice President's chair stood at 12:17 p. m. as Huey Pierce Long rose at his front-row desk and took the Senate floor last week. Before the chamber was a resolution to keep the ghost of NRA above ground for another nine months. If the resolution were not passed within four days, even that ghost would disappear and President Roosevelt would be left looking sick and silly. In high good spirits, therefore, Senator Long set out to make the President look sick and silly by talking the NRA resolution to death. He had been out of the headlines for weeks and needed fresh publicity to re-establish his nuisance value with the Administration. If his lone filibuster against NRA should somehow succeed--and perhaps other Senators who hated the President as much as he did would come to his aid--he could stick a Blue Eagle feather in his hat and call it macaroni or a great personal victory over the New Deal. Besides, throngs of visiting Shriners in the galleries made it a fine afternoon for speechmaking. So, making a parliamentary motion to get the floor, the

Senator from Louisiana launched into a speech which was to take its place along with the great orations of obstruction in U. S. history.

A Senator may talk as long as he can. By yielding to co-operative colleagues for long involved questions or side speeches, he can, under the rules, hold the floor almost indefinitely. Thus, two months ago, when he was filibustering against the anti-lynching bill, Alabama's Senator Bankhead effectively tied up Senate proceedings for a whole afternoon without speaking more than 500 words. Last week, however, it soon became apparent that Senator Long was going to get no assistance or relief from other Senators, was in fact going to be held strictly to the rules. He could yield only for a question and if nobody asked him any he would have to keep on talking to hold the floor. The Senate was plainly sick & tired of the Kingfish's tactics and for once was going to hold his feet to the fire he had started in order to burn the Administration.

In the first two hours Senator Long stuck pretty closely to denunciations of NRA and Franklin Roosevelt, after which he blithely announced: "And I'm not half started."

At 2 :30 p. m. he picked up the Congressional manual and declared: "I shall read the Constitution of the United States. Will I offend anyone if I do that? . . . All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States. . . . Are they in Congress today? Are the laws regulating the planting of crops vested in Congress? No!" So Long went on through the Constitution section by section, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase. An hour later, looking up from the nearly empty floor, he beamed:

"The intense interest which is being manifested in my speech here causes me to proceed with almost undue caution, and I feel almost impelled to request Senators to restrain themselves lest they applaud me as I proceed with my lecture on this question. ... I will read a little further. . . ."

At 4 p. m. he looked around the Senate and exclaimed, "Here I am making this speech on these facts, about which the Members of the Senate do not know a thing--95% of them know nothing about them at all, because they have not listened to me. . . ."

The galleries roared. For another hour Huey Long rambled on but obviously he was getting nowhere. No Senator rose to help his filibuster. The Shriners were beginning to go out to dinner. Shortly after 5 o'clock Oklahoma's Senator Thomas made the point of no quorum. While the roll was being called Huey Long slipped out of the Chamber for brief relief. When he came back he asked for an opportunity to retire gracefully: "Mr. President, I am not anxious to proceed too long. If we can get a unanimous-consent agreement to vote by noon tomorrow on the motion I have made I shall have no objection to voting at that time. . . ."

Up popped Alabama's Senator Black to make the Senate's intentions perfectly plain to the leather-lunged Kingfish: "I believe it is the will of the Senate to proceed now and let the Senator from Louisiana continue his speech and complete it, even though it takes until Sunday. . . ."

Seven o'clock came and Huey Long began to twit Senators about dinner engagements, then to tempt them with tall talk about food.

"I have spent a number of evenings acquainting people with how to prepare oysters. I had a bucket of oysters sent to me from Louisiana the other night, and I was asked by a very fine bunch of my friends if I would not drop around with the New Orleans oysters and fry some of them for them in good Louisiana style and way. So, Mr. President, I bought a frying pan about 8 inches deep . . . and I bought a 10-pound bucket of cotton-seed-oil lard. ... I took the oysters, Mr. President, the way they should be taken, and laid them out on a muslin cloth, about twelve of them, and then you pull the cloth over and you dry the oysters. You dry them, you see, first with a muslin cloth, and then you take the oysters, after they have been dried, and you roll them into a meal which is salted. I did not have it salted this night, but it should have been salted.

"Mr. President, you roll these oysters in the dry meal. You do not want to cook the meal or put water in the meal at any time or anything like that. Just salt the meal and roll the oysters in it. Then, let the grease get boiling hot. You want the grease about six inches deep. Then you take the oysters and you place the oysters in the strainer, and you put the strainer in the grease, full depth down to the bottom. Then you fry those oysters in boiling grease until they turn a gold-copper color and rise to the top, and then, you take them out and let them cool just a little bit before you eat them. . . . There is no telling how many lives have been lost by not knowing how to fry oysters, but serving them as an indigestible food. Many times we hear of some man who was supposed to have had an acute attack of indigestion or cerebral hemorrhage or heart failure, and the chances are the only thing that was the matter with him was that he had swallowed some improperly cooked oysters. . . . now I will give my recipe for pot likker. ..."

It did not work. Nevada's McCarran, the only Senator who appeared to wish the filibuster to go on, obliged by demanding another quorum, but this time Huey Long did not dare leave the floor for fear of losing his speech-making prerogative. Besides, the galleries were filling up with a new crowd--Washingtonians who preferred listening to the Kingfish to watching the Shriners parade in the rain. Going to the clerk's desk Long snatched up the official list of Senators.

"Give me the list. I should like to find out if Senators really want to listen to me. The first name on the list is that of the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Adams]. I should like to know if the Senator from Colorado really wants to stay here and listen to me this evening?"

Wisconsin's LaFollette: Mr. President, I make the point of order that the Senator from Louisiana cannot yield except for a question.

Long: I want to find out how popular I am in this body. [Laughter.] I want to know. If it should get back to Louisiana that the Senators are sitting here this evening listening to me, after I had been speaking for seven hours-- Arizona's Ashurst: Is it not true that the Senator's present popularity is about as great as that of a cuckoo clock in a boys' dormitory at 3 o'clock in the morning?

The Vice President: The Chair is not prepared to answer the parliamentary question. Each Senator must answer in his own conscience. . . .

Huey Long quoted from the Bible, tried to look up his quotation in the Book of Hosea, found it was not there. So he expounded some other passages instead. Then he asked how many Senators had read the Schechter case decision. Only Idaho's Borah held up his hand. Thereupon Senator Long proceeded to expound:

"The violation in this case was this: They sent a coop of chickens, I think, from New Jersey to New York. In that coop there were some 'Dominicker' roosters, a Plymouth rock, a buff cochin, white leghorns, and some common chickens that nobody knows by any name except chickens, hillbilly chickens, and various other kinds of chickens. When this coop of chickens got to New York a man opened the coop; the chickens began to flutter around, and he looked into the coop and said to himself, 'I believe I like that pullet right over there, that frying-size pullet. I believe I will take that one.' The man in charge said, 'Hold on there; wait a minute there; before you pull out that pullet hold on a minute; let us get down the NRA rule book and look through it. . . .' The rule book of the code said that a man could not reach into a coop of chickens and take whichever one he wanted. 'Well,' the chicken purchaser said, we will say for the sake of the argument, 'that chicken there has got pin feathers that I do not like,' or, 'I do not want a hen; I want that rooster,' or, 'I do not want a rooster; I want a frying-size chicken,' or, 'I want a yellow-legged chicken; I do not want a buff cochin; I want a white leghorn.' People are funny that way; they think there is some difference in chickens. As a matter of fact, there is not much difference in chickens; chickens are nearly about the same. Take them up and take them down, a chicken is a chicken, and you cannot make anything else out of it. However, this code said the purchaser had to take whatever chicken he found. He would not do that. So he proceeded to get the chicken that he wanted, regardless of the law and the code. He took the chicken home and put it in his pot, made some dumplings-- probably, in violation of the law, being made too big. [Laughter.') So they indicted the poor devil and ordered him sent to the penitentiary because he got out of the coop the kind of a chicken he wanted. He made the dumplings. He fried some dumplings and probably boiled the gizzard, when he should have roasted it. Mr. President, a gizzard is better roasted than boiled. I found that out years ago. . . . Who knows what the Supreme Court held in that case? This is what they held, that a man has the right to any kind of a chicken he wants to eat. . . ."

Towards midnight a significant stir started in the Democratic rear row of the Chamber where first-term Senators are seated. Out in the cloakroom Nebraska's Burke, Pennsylvania's Guffey, New Jersey's Moore, Maryland's Radcliffe, Indiana's Minton and Washington's Schwellenbach, Senate newcomers all, had put their heads together, decided among themselves to make their first important contribution to Senate procedure. Senator Schwellenbach was spokesman:

"Does the Senator from Louisiana realize that those of us who are new Members of the Senate, and who for the last six months have sat back here in the last row and seen every effort on the part of the Congress to do something for the people of this country who are suffering from unemployment blocked and stifled by the Senator from Louisiana, are going to sit in the Senate tonight and tomorrow and all this week and from now on until something is done to stop the Senator from Louisiana from controlling the Senate? I submit that question to the Senator from Louisiana."

Huey Long, badly frazzled, was ready to quit. Democratic oldsters of the Senate were also ready to trade him permission to march out with the honors of the filibuster if he would agree to a vote next day on the NRA resolution. When Senator Harrison went back to the rear-row neophytes and whispered the leadership's scheme, there was a determined shaking of heads. "Hell.no! We're going to stay here until Long drops in his tracks." An hour passed and Senator Schwellenbach asked another question:

"Does the Senator from Louisiana realize that the new Members of the Senate have determined, after five and one-half months, that we are no longer going to permit the Senator from Louisiana to run the Senate, and we are not going to consent to any unanimous-consent agreement so far as the Senator from Louisiana is concerned?"

Said Huey Long: "I am not so rebellious as my younger and older colleagues in this body. I am not one of the cantankerous, non-yielding kind of fellows. I have always found out that it is best to compromise and harmonize. . . ."

Huey Long was rapidly weakening when the galleries began to fill a third time with drenched Shriners from their parade, with people in evening clothes from night clubs. At 2 o'clock Huey was more amenable.

"Two hours and one-half, and the sun will rise!

"There is hardly anyone in the Senate Chamber. The lights have been turned out in the cloakrooms. All are asleep. You go in the dark room and wake up a Senator to come in and vote out of that kind of an atmosphere, on a close vote like this, and the vote is likely to be decided on human temper. A man is likely to wake up and holler 'No' when he means 'Yes,' or 'Yes' when he means 'No.' It does not give him time to think.

"Mr. President, I wish we would adjourn. . . ."

Throughout the night the press gallery helped him out by sending down suggestions for request numbers--his opinions on Frederick the Great, on the life of Judah P. Benjamin, on his uncle in the saloon. He obliged:

"I'm like my uncle. He was the best man who ever lived. He always was helping somebody else. One time he found out that the young feller who tended bar at the saloon where he got his drinks was going to lose his job because he couldn't mix 'em right. Well, my uncle went down there one morning and put his foot on the brass rail and he said: 'Son, I'm agoing to stay here until you learn how to mix these drinks.'

"He stayed there all that day, teaching that boy and sampling the drinks, and by closing time the fellow knew how to mix 'em. That's the kind of family I come from, and I'm willing to stay here right now and advise the members of this body along good, sound constructive lines"

About 3 o'clock: "If we stay here much longer, Mr. President, it will soon be time for the senior Senator from Texas, Mr. Sheppard, to make his annual speech on Prohibition. . . . Men are yawning; men's eyes are bleary; men's souls are tired; their feet are sore; their heads are heavy; they are needing rest; they are needing sleep; they are needing nourishment; and it is only two days from Saturday, when most of them will want to take a bath. . . ."

To get rest, he asked permission to have the clerk read the Democratic platform, the Lord's Prayer. Like a cheering section, the rear-row Democrats chanted "I object." And the Kingfish had to go along on his own lungs: "I do not like to take up 15 hours' time with the galleries getting empty and nobody to listen to me. The floor is getting thin; very few Senators are here, and I hate to speak to a small crowd like this. . . .

"I am not going to propound a unanimous-consent agreement, but I am going to say a word by way of parliamentary inquiry, that the Senate recess until n o'clock and vote on the question now before the Senate at 12 o'clock. I would be willing--."

Schwellenbach: There will be objection.

Guffey, Minton, Moore, Burke (in chorus): We object. Long: If there should be no objection, we would all be happy, everybody would be happy. ... I should like to get an agreement, if possible. However, there is no chance--no chance of agreement!

McKellar: None whatever.

Long: No chance!

McKellar: None whatever.

Long: That is the toughest thing I ever ran into. No one wants to agree to anything. Some members of the Senate have gotten into a bad humor. . . .

Schwellenbach: I hope the Senator from Louisiana realizes that in order to get any unanimous-consent agreement from the Senate he must, in addition to the leaders who have been referred to, get the consent of the new members of the Senate, taking into consideration the fact that within the last half hour each one of them has gone out and drunk three cups of coffee, which will enable them to stay here for another twelve hours while the Senator from Louisiana speaks.

Long: Mr. President, they have not drunk any coffee. They think they have drunk coffee. That stuff is nothing but slop. If Senators had ever had a cup of coffee down in Louisiana, they would realize that there was no one in Washington who knew how to make coffee. . . .

At 3:50 a. m. Huey Long, a virtual wreck, began to sidle toward the door.

"We need wise and sagacious counsel to see if we cannot harmonize this thing and agree on a vote by tomorrow--not tomorrow, but today. . . . So. Mr. President ... I yield the floor. . . ."

Senators dozing on the cloakroom couches looked up to see Huey Long making a beeline for the men's room, knew his filibuster was over. In 15 1/2 hours he had filled 85 pages of the Congressional Record at a cost of $4,500. While on his feet he had consumed a pound and a half of grapes, half a pound of American cheese, 15 glasses of milk. He had set a record for one-man filibusters second only to the 18-hour and 23-minute performance of the late great Robert Marion LaFollette on the Aldrich-Vreeland currency bill in 1908* And, at the hands of a determined little group of Democratic neophytes, he had lost his last shred of standing with his fellow Senators. ^

*But whereas Long had only two quorum calls to give him rest, LaFollette was assisted by 30 quorum calls that consumed a total of 7 1/2 hours.

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