Huey Long: “Share Our Wealth” Address

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 1935 radio address, “Share Our Wealth,” Long sharply criticized Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal and outlined his alternative populist program for redistributing wealth.

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.