LOUISIANA: Younger Brother

In a New Orleans hotel suite sat an unkempt man, his flesh folding in rolls above his belt. He sipped contentedly from a jar of pure honey, bestirring himself now and then to waddle across the room, or to scratch himself, or to snap his suspenders, while the returns from the Democratic primary election for governor dinned into his ears: “Long 112,261 . . . Morrison 87,128 . . . Preaus 25,948 . . . Grevemberg 16,863 —McLemore 18,227.” “Looks good,” he croaked. “It’s in the bag.”

As the evening wore on, it grew clear to all that the unkempt man, Earl Kemp Long, had been elected for four years as governor of the great state of Louisiana. Since Earl Long was the younger brother of the late Huey Pierce Long (d. 1935), it was only natural that memories of “the Kingfish” should crowd into the hotel room, given the victorious occasion and the company. Around Earl sat some of Huey’s old associates: former Governor Richard W. Leche (rhymes with flesh), who went to jail in 1941 for mail fraud; Robert S. Maestri, mayor of a graft-ridden New Orleans for ten years, until ousted by a reform candidate in 1946; George Reyer, Maestri’s police superintendent; and Abe L. Shushan, former president of the levee board, who also went to jail in 1941 for mail fraud. Earl began to reminisce to the boys in the room about their late leader:

“The pioneering that Huey did had a lot to do with my victory,” Earl Long said. “We were more or less opposite types, however. I’m the slow, plodding type, and Huey was quick and ready at all times. He was kind of on the style of Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered the world before he was 21 and cried be cause he didn’t have more worlds to conquer. Huey was like that. I’ve often wondered how Huey would have made out physically if he had lived to be an old man. He died when he was 42. I’ll be 61 next August.” Earl Long then went outside, and over to his campaign headquarters. “This is a great victory—not just for Earl Long,” he proclaimed to his followers, “but for a cause.”

“I Can Sell Anything.” Nobody thought that Louisiana’s new Governor-designate Earl Long had the fiber and versatility of brother Huey, who had made Louisiana his private province. Nonetheless, there were stirrings of shock, or of joy, that the Longs were making a comeback. Huey’s son Russell is an able and respected U.S. Senator from Louisiana; another of Huey’s brothers, George Long, is member of Congress from Louisiana’s Eighth District. Earl’s election put the capstone on Louisiana’s monumental living tableau to the memory of Huey.

Governor-designate Earl Long, like Huey, grew up amid the piney woods of northern Louisiana, stamped by the social doctrine their father believed in.

“There wants to be a revolution,” the father used to say. “What do these rich folks care for the poor man—their women don’t even comb their own hair.”

Huey, accenting the positive, translated this into “Every Man a King.”

Huey got a job selling Cottolene, an oil shortening, and he hopped about from farm to farm telling stories, baking cakes, quoting the Bible, and proclaiming: “I can sell anybody anything.” Earl followed, selling shoe polish, stove polish, patent medicine. When Huey moved on to study law, so did Earl; when Huey entered state politics, so did Earl.

Amid growing storm and scandal throughout the nation, Huey served three years as governor, building 8,500 miles of roads, distributing 600,000 free schoolbooks, teaching 100,000 illiterate adults how to read and write so that they could qualify as kings. Huey dispensed thousands of jobs to consolidate his power, converted the state police into a semiprivate army, and ran up the state debt from $11 million to more than $100 million. Huey called the state legislature “the finest collection of lawmakers money can buy.” Earl’s contribution was often to placate or scare the lawmakers, and he once did it in a clumsy way that displeased Huey. When the legislature tried to impeach Governor Huey, Earl hurled himself upon one hostile lawmaker and bit his throat. Huey thought that impolitic.

“Liar Earl Long!” In 1931 Huey moved on to serve four gaudy years in the U.S. Senate. Back home in Louisiana, however, Huey’s slights and snubs, his withholding of the choicest of the plums, were beginning to pique Earl Long. One dramatic day Earl walked out on Huey, letting it be known that he, Earl, had fought Huey’s childhood fistfights for him. Earl screeched, “Big-bellied coward!” Earl later confronted Huey, face distorted and arms flailing, during a U.S. Senate hearing on election fraud. When Earl intimated that Huey was susceptible to graft, Huey raged at Earl: “Listen to that! Liar Earl Long!” But Earl shouted back: “I stood with you as long as I could, but you run wild!”

In September 1935 Huey was assassinated in the corridor of the State Capitol by Dr. Carl A. Weiss, on account of a family grudge. Needing a Long, however unpalatable, Huey’s machine put Earl on the ticket for lieutenant governor. In 1939 Earl won promotion when Governor Leche resigned shortly before the discovery of a state mail-fraud scandal. There followed a raucous conflict be tween the Long forces and a group of reformers, out of which Earl Long emerged once more, in 1948, for the second time governor of Louisiana.

Earl ran the state on a straight Huey program of veterans’ bonuses, old-age pensions, roads—things people would be “able to see and feel.” Earl seemed pathetically determined to prove himself a better man than Huey, once proclaiming, “Huey couldn’t have been elected dogcatcher without my help.” But Earl could never develop the splendor of Alexander the Great and Huey. Once Earl, entertaining friends at his home, spread out a copy of the hostile New Orleans Item, and spent the afternoon spitting on it.

“Poor Man’s Friend.” Earl could not succeed himself under the Louisiana state law, and in 1952 the anti-Long reformers came back. In 1955, Earl readied himself for his own comeback by having all his teeth taken out and by preparing monster newspaper advertisements in which he misquoted the Bible:

Better a little with righteousness Than great revenues without right

Earl faced heavy opposition—notably from DeLesseps (“Chep”) Morrison, reform mayor of New Orleans, and Francis Grevemberg, the racket-busting state police superintendent. But Earl’s opponents decided to campaign mostly by TV, and this gave Earl an opening. Although he had suffered a heart attack in 1950, Earl did not spare himself. Month after month he ranged the state, six to eight speeches a day, spit and scratch, handing out free hams and groceries, bringing on the hillbilly boys, whooping it up in the backwoods to break the monotony of rural life. There are 64 parishes (counties) in Louisiana, and Earl Long carried all but Orleans and nearby Plaquemines.

Upstate, Chep Morrison, a Catholic, failed to make headway against an old tradition that a Catholic cannot be elected governor of Louisiana. In New Orleans, which Morrison expected to sweep, he barely skimmed through on top; analysis of the vote showed that a lot of the Negroes unexpectedly chose Long as “the poor man’s friend.”

“No One Except Me.” In his hotel suite in New Orleans last week, Earl looked ahead to four more years of jousting for “the common, ordinary man.” Earl, who was loyal to Adlai Stevenson in 1952, talked about national politics: “I don’t want no more Republicans … I just think Republicanism is upside down. If we have a good presidential candidate, Louisiana will go Democratic again this year.” Earl hoped that President Eisenhower would not run because “he might accidentally win.” Red-eyed and frog-voiced, dog-tired, Earl Long concluded his account of last week’s election: “I got votes from the poor, the middle class and the rich class, and from thousands of our fine colored people. I never let up speaking. I feel very humble. I am deeply grateful for the confidence that the fine men and women in all walks of life placed in me by electing me a third time. No one has ever done it in Louisiana except me.”

No one who knew Earl Long doubted that this boast was directed to the memory of the brother he loved and hated.