THE CONGRESS: Lady from Louisiana

Stepping into the Louisiana Governorship left vacant last week by the death of Oscar Kelly Allen (TIME, Feb. 3), James A. Noe chose as one of his first official acts the appointment of Mrs. Huey Pierce Long to the U. S. Senate vacancy left by the death of her husband. He also promised that the Democratic State Central Committee would promptly bequeath her the nomination which Governor Allen had just won to serve out the remaining year of the late “Kingnsh’s” term. Said Governor Noe: “This is the proudest moment of my life.” Said Senator John H. Overton of Louisiana: “It is a just and beautiful tribute to the memory of Senator Long.” Said Senator Hattie Caraway of Arkan sas: “It will be nice to have a woman’s company in the Senate.” Said Mrs. Hilda Phelps Hammond of New Orleans, longtime leader of Louisiana’s embattled anti-Long women: “It no longer is an honor to go to the United States Senate. … It is composed of an aggregation of the cheapest politicians who have neither courage nor honesty.” Of her selection to be the third woman Senator in U. S. history,* the new Lady from Louisiana remarked: “That’s fine. That’s very fine.” On the rare occasions when newshawks sought out Mrs. Long during her hus band’s turbulent lifetime, she liked to say that she was “just a nice Irish girl named Rose McConnell” when the future Kingfish met & married her. Born on a farm near Greensburg, Ind., she was taken by her parents to Louisiana at 10. Though Huey Long recorded in his autobiography that he met Rose McConnell while attending school at Shreveport and married her a year later at 19, the tale is firmly imbedded in U. S. legend of how their love began when she won a cake-baking contest which he had sponsored as a 17-year-old salesman of cottonseed oil shortening. Not until Senator Long began nursing Presidential aspirations did he begin to draw his wife occasionally out of the domestic shadows in which she kept herself after he got into the national spotlight. She rarely visited Washington, is almost unknown there. Of her qualifications to serve as one of its rulers, the nation last week knew only that Rose McConnell Long has been a loyal, patient wife, a devoted mother to her two sons and daughter, a quiet, retiring antithesis of her late husband.

*As a gesture of chivalry, the late Mrs. Rebecca Latimer Felton, “Grand Old Lady of Georgia,” was appointed in 1922 to a Senate term which lasted 22 hours. Mrs. Hattie Caraway was appointed in 1931 to serve out her deceased husband’s unfinished term, later won her nomination & election for the following full term.