LOUISIANA: The Winnfield Frog

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As governor of Louisiana, swaggering, shifty-eyed Earl Kemp Long has hardly been able to spit, scratch or take off his shoes without rousing a disconcerting ghost. During his 3½ months in office the legend of his brother Huey has dominated and overshadowed him almost as thoroughly as the live Kingfish did during the noisy years of the Great Louisiana Hayride.

Huey’s roads, Huey’s bridges, Huey’s schools and Huey’s friends & enemies are everywhere that Earl goes. Earl works in Huey’s 34-story skyscraper capitol and lives in Huey’s governor’s mansion—an imitation White House which the Kingfish erected in Baton Rouge so he would “feel at home” when he became President. Back-parish voters eye Earl beadily to see that he acts “like Huey would have wanted.”

At times it is almost more than Earl can bear. At a press conference held shortly after he was elected governor he cried: “Huey couldn’t have been elected dogcatcher without my help . . .” But these honest outbursts of rage & envy have been infrequent. Earl has aped his brother with the beetle-browed assiduousness of a vaudeville baboon learning to roller-skate; he rubs himself with the legend of Huey’s greatness like a voodoo worshiper using “Fast Dice Oil.”

Old Earl. He has none of Huey’s wild, magnetic appeal. At 53 he is a soft, dumpy man with a mushy voice, a flaccid handshake, a venomous temper and the general bearing of a small-town pool-hall operator. Crowds bother him and he cannot hide a furtive wariness when job seekers approach him. He is a dedicated horseplayer—who makes two dollar bets. But he has the “Long Look” and a shrewd insight into the mind of Louisiana’s tobacco-chewing common man.

He calls himself “Old Earl,” gets up as early as 5:30 in the morning to let visitors wander into the governor’s mansion. He appoints “colonels” with a lavish hand (some 250 to date) and presents lesser fry with penknives—after first exacting a penny so “a friendship won’t be cut.” He enjoys the feel of clean white suits, but he never allows his interest in the finer things to interfere with a certain honest vulgarity. On the day after he was elected governor, he asked friends to his house, spread out a copy of the anti-Long New Orleans Item, and spent the afternoon spitting on it.

Champagne & Talcum. Last week he was genuflecting more vigorously than usual before his brother’s memory. He was doing everything in his power to get Huey’s 29-year-old son Russell elected to the U.S. Senate. He sent his big, tough-looking Lieut. Governor Bill Dodd out on the road to blast Russell’s closest competitor, Judge Robert F. Kennon, who had also had the audacity to oppose Earl for governor last January.

“They tested Judge Kennon when he left the Army,” Dodd bayed at country crossroads. “They tested his feet and said they were no good for running. They tested his blood and said it was 65% champagne and 35% talcum powder. They tested his ears and the doctor said: ‘Judge, your ears are perfect. You can hear an election coming two years off.'”

As Russell himself described it to delighted audiences, the Longs had the judge changing and shifting “like a mosquito dodging through a barrage of Flit.” Russell, the gamblers’ choice, was cocky and confident.

Contemplating all this, the cynical wondered if Earl wasn’t booby-trapping himself. His nephew Russell had been left a priceless heritage: he looked and acted like Huey. The sight of Russell up on the stump “just like his daddy” stirred the faithful as Earl could never stir them; Russell had gotten more applause than Earl at Earl’s own inauguration. Moreover, Russell was smart, personable, well-educated and had a good war record. He was a comer.

Power. But whatever the future held, Earl’s obeisance to the shades of the Kingfish had paid him well. He had used Huey’s tricks, Huey’s share-tbe-wealth philosophy and Huey’s lavishness with political promises for an ironic end—to prove to himself that he was a better man than Huey. And he had squeezed more dictatorial powers from Louisiana’s supine legislature than Huey—or any governor of any U.S. state—had ever held.

Earl has absolute control over more than 40 state boards, departments and commissions. He holds the liquor industry under his thumb by means of a board with vast regulatory powers. He can influence Louisiana’s $204 million oil industry, its $14 million sulphur industry, its $112 million lumber industry through his Conservation Commission.

He controls the Civil Service Commission which had been independent of politics for eight years. He has pulled Louisiana State University—where the bonfire of scandal burst after Huey’s death—back under the governor’s domination.

New Orleans, which is still run by his enemy, Reform Mayor “Chep” Morrison, has already felt his displeasure. By giving the state a bigger share of the city’s income (sales tax, cigarette tax, revenue from horse racing), Earl’s legislature has cut $3,000,000 of New Orleans revenue. It has ordered the city to readopt the aldermanic form of government (which New Orleans abandoned by referendum in 1912), thus robbing the mayor of almost all power.

Bunches of Lies. Criticism of this program sends Earl into spasms of profane counter-denunciation—particularly when it comes from Louisiana’s anti-Long newspapers. Reporters who can catch him enjoying the luxury of his daily shave at the King Hotel barbershop can occasionally wheedle some news out of him. But he is adept at dodging, and when tracked down is apt to indulge in nothing more informative than a tirade on the evil inherent in the journalistic mind.

A TIME reporter who found him at the mansion early one morning last week came away with a typical Long interview.

“I’ve got nothing to tell your office,” said the governor. “I don’t need their help to run this state . . .”

“But governor . . .”

“I’ve got nothing to tell that bloodsucking bunch of liars . . . they wouldn’t print the truth anyhow . . . Tell them they’re a bunch of bloodsucking liars. Will they print that?”

“I’ll see.”

“Well, tell them they’re a bloodsucking bunch of liars, anyway. Will you do that?”

“All right . . .”

“All they print is a bunch of lies.”

How to Make Friends. To millions of U.S. citizens, the whole phenomenon of Louisiana’s second surrender to one of the Long tribe seems almost unbelievable.

Why, having painfully cleaned out the last vestiges of the Huey Long regime, did Louisiana welcome back a man who promised to “improve on everything Huey did”?

The answer stemmed, in part, from the admitted accomplishments of Huey Long’s regime. To Huey’s “common ordinary man” the Kingfish was a kind of back-parish Robin Hood—the first politician in memory who seemed to want to do something dramatic for him. Huey’s roads, bridges, free schoolbooks and thousands of state jobs might have been delivered for political effect, but they made life more tolerable for thousands of Louisiana’s poor whites.

Furthermore, the Longs belonged in the Louisiana tradition—they were not the first of Louisiana’s swashbuckling politicos. From its earliest days, Louisiana was a country of great riches and grinding poverty; a melting pot where French, Irish, Germans, Spanish and rude Kaintuck rivermen mingled and brawled, and where voodoo, vice and corruption nourished as luxuriantly as sugar cane.

The poor white—the easygoing French Catholic Cajuns of the coast, and the ignorant, bitter-eyed, Bible-quoting Baptist Rednecks of the piny northern hill country—were ignored. And in all the hill country, no poor whites were poorer, more hardbitten, more undernourished and more resentful than those of the parish of Winn. Many a Louisianan said it produced only one crop—dissent.

What Do Rich Folks Care? Winn Parish was the birthplace of the Longs. Their father, Huey P. Long Sr., was luckier than most. He sold land to the rail road near the town of Winnfield and grew prosperous. But he remembered poverty. “There wants to be a revolution,” he would say. “What do rich folks care for the poor man? Their women don’t even comb their own hair.”

Huey never forgot—and did not let Earl forget, either. Earl was two years younger than Huey. He felt superior to Huey, resented him, was fascinated by him, and followed him. Huey, for all his recklessness of mind, his bold eye and wild tongue, was a physical coward. As boys, Earl fought his battles, while Huey ran panic-stricken up the road. But Huey always dominated Earl.

Huey was the first to break away from home. He got a job selling Cottolene, a cottonseed oil shortening, and traveled from farmhouse to farmhouse, telling stories, baking cakes, quoting the Bible, and exhorting housewives to quit using “hog lard and cow butter.” Earl soon bumped off across the countryside after him with a line of shoe polish, stove polish and patent medicine. When Huey decided to study law, Earl followed suit. When Huey got into politics, Earl was at his heels.

Human Hospital. As governor, Huey made Earl attorney for the Orleans Parish inheritance-tax collector—a $15,000 job he had promised to abolish in order to use the money for a tuberculosis hospital. Earl was soon earning his keep. In 1929, the legislature, infuriated by Huey’s browbeating, set out to impeach him. In the midst of the excitement the Kingfish threw himself on a bed and wept. But with Earl’s help, he made secret forays and counterattacks. Huey had two methods of persuasion: cash and threats. On the eve of the impeachment proceedings, 15 state senators announced that they would not vote for impeachment, no matter what the evidence showed.

That saved Huey and made him a national figure. Earl, beaded with the righteous sweat of his endeavors, thought he deserved higher honors. But Huey paid no attention. For one thing, Earl’s wild temper and mode of fighting made him unpopular. During the impeachment proceedings he sank his teeth into one legislator’s throat, and chewed until he was pulled off. Later, one Frank P. Krieger complained that Earl had all but bitten his finger off. Also, Huey seemed to have had doubts about Earl’s political savvy.

Feuding Man. Earl broke with Huey, spoke of him publicly as a “big-bellied coward” and set out to oppose him. It was like trying to stop a locomotive by lying across the tracks. In 1932, when Huey went about setting up his puppet governor —one O. K. Allen, a Winnfield sawmill operator who had once lent him $500—Earl ran for lieutenant governor on the opposing ticket, and was soundly licked.

But Earl was a feuding man. The next year, when the U.S. Senate investigated charges of fraud in the Louisiana senatorial primary, Earl hurried to testify against Huey. The brothers faced each other for hours, faces distorted, arms flailing. Earl testified that Huey had told him that a man named Abell (H. C. Abell, New York representative of Electric Bond & Share Co.) had “given him $10,000 and Huey was sort of afraid to use it for fear it was marked.”

“Listen to that,” screamed Huey. “Liar Earl Long!”

“You can’t make a liar out of me,” yelled Earl. “I stood with you as long as I could, but you run wild!”

“That’s a damned lie,” howled Huey.

It was a triumph for Earl—but only a political mosquito bite to the Kingfish. Huey went on about his frenetic business. Earl was all but forgotten.

Porcine Delight. But in 1936, after Huey’s assassination, the Long gang hauled him out, dusted him off and put him back into circulation. He ran for lieutenant governor along with their hand-picked candidate for governor, Dick Leche (rhymes with flesh).

The Leche-Long ticket won, but afterward nobody had time for Earl. The gang rushed to the public trough and swilled up wealth with porcine delight. Leche, a fat and jolly man, built himself a mansion on the exclusive St. Tammany “Gold Coast.” George Caldwell, an even fatter man, who was construction supervisor for the burgeoning L.S.U. campus, built an even better one—its bathroom boasted 14-karat gold fixtures. Not to be outdone, Abe Shushan, president of the New Orleans Levee Board, built a mansion too.

The New Deal—discouraged in Louisiana by Huey—was now admitted and allowed to pour in fresh millions in WPA funds. There were big cars, parties, and champagne for all. Then the bubble blew up. Dr. James Monroe Smith, president of L.S.U., vanished one day with his party-loving wife, Thelma. The Doc had been speculating in millions of bushels of wheat and had invented a unique system of financing. Whenever his broker called for more collateral, he merely ordered the printing of more L.S.U. bonds. He was discovered in Canada, brought home, and clapped into jail.

Cried Governor Leche: “I’m flabbergasted.” He took to his bed and resigned. Earl, the human football, became governor.

Off to Prison. Earl had a dramatic chance to become a hero. But instead of crying out at the thieves who had besmirched Honest Huey’s memory, he said: “Smith is only one man. Jesus Christ picked twelve, and one of ’em was a son-of-a-gun.” Then he just hung on—like a sailor lashed to the mast—while gales of scandal blew around his ears. Leche went to prison. So did Doc Smith, George Caldwell, Abe Shushan, and Huey’s Campaign Treasurer Seymour Weiss. Monte Hart, a favored contractor, blew out his brains.

Eight months later, at the expiration of the gubernatorial term, Earl was out of the statehouse. The reformers, led by an unknown young attorney named “Sad Sam” Jones, were in at last. Sam Jones streamlined the government, set up civil service, and spoke of getting payrolls and industry for the state.

But there wasn’t any free stuff, and there wasn’t much excitement. In 1944, the reformers committed an act of political cowardice. They ran Guitar Player Jimmy Davis for governor. Davis, who wanted to go to Hollywood, was a good candidate but a bad governor. He was just supposed to keep the seat warm until Sam Jones could come back.

Last year Earl—who had been patiently raising cattle in Winn Parish and mending political fences—set boldly out to get the governorship again. He talked an oil millionaire named William C. Feazel into backing him. (After election he sent Feazel to the Senate to fill the late Senator John Overton’s unexpired term, made Feazel’s attorney, Seaborn L. Digby, chairman of the Conservation Commission, which decides how much oil may be pumped from wells.)

Russell to the Rescue. Earl cried that he and Huey had settled their differences before the Kingfish died. At first this was a little embarrassing. One night Earl said: “Of course I disagreed with him sometimes, as a brother does.” A voice from the crowd said: “We didn’t.” But Earl drafted his nephew Russell, and Russell told doubters: “The family is satisfied—I think that should satisfy you.”

As the campaign went on, Earl borrowed leaf after leaf from Huey’s book. He promised the people things they would be “able to see and feel”—veterans’ bonuses, roads, $50-a-month old age pensions. Sad Sam Jones promised too, but Earl was as specific as the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. He made it plain that a vote for Long was an order for material improvement. He abused the newspapers. Like Huey, he recited Invictus: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

He was elected by the biggest vote in Louisiana history; 422,766 cast their ballots for him. He invited everybody to his inauguration in Baton Rouge—10,000 came, drank free pop, ate free hot dogs, and listened to free band music. Mothers were ushered into the governor’s office to change their infants’ diapers.

He ran the unprotesting legislature with an iron hand. His office has an electrical board which records every legislator’s vote at the moment he casts it. Earl watched the board. When things slowed down he sent for the legislators. Did they want roads? Did they want schools? When there were real difficulties, Earl swaggered down to the legislative floors, sat beside doubtful representatives, and waited for them to vote right.

When the session was over, Louisiana’s taxes had been almost doubled. Earl, unlike Huey, had soaked the poor as well as the rich, and he had kept his promises. Gasoline now sold for 29¢ and 31¢ a gallon; cigarettes, after next week’s election, would be 27¢ a package. There was grumbling. But both Earl’s taxes and Earl’s expenditures could be defended: Louisiana was a backward state and in many ways Earl, like Huey, was bringing it up to standard.

But what of the vast powers Earl had seized? Earl protested that he wanted to do nothing but be a “good governor.” He pointed proudly to the fact that he had not reinstituted “dee-ducts,” the famed kickbacks from the salaries of political employees. The cynical argued that he just didn’t know quite what to do next; he had followed Huey’s rule book to the point where things had to be played by ear, and had halted, baffled.

Would he try to go on? Many a Louisianan thought Earl was remarkably like the frog which tried to puff himself up to the size of an ox. A few more puffs, they said, and—pop!—no Earl.