Huey Long Quotes
Anyone here own 4 suits? Three suits? Even 2 suits? Well J. P. Morgan has over 100 suits, each one stolen off the back of a working man.
Huey P. Long, 1893-1935, Louisiana Governor, U.S. Senator (Democrat, LA), Campaign Speech, Quoted on PBS, Ken Burns’ Huey P. Long, August 21, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
There is a very interesting parallel with the views and statements of FDR at the same time.
There were few if any consumer protection laws in those days and many wealthy aristocrats made their money by taking advantage of the poor. They were the landowners, bankers, financiers and often the industrialists. Shaw was a sarcastic social critic and this is a typical line he gave his upper class characters. Today, we have more controls on business and finance, and many wealthy business people have gotten that way by providing great value to the consumers and being honest. However, we still have large numbers of wealthy members of society who do make their money from the poor and middle class by unethical and often illegal means. In the aftermath of the Meltdown of 2008. hundreds of thousands of the homes of the working poor and middle class were foreclosed by the major banks forging the legal documentation for the foreclusures. Millions of consumer contracts are issued that even a PhD cannot understand the terms of without special legal and financial training. There is even a legal definition of a salesperson lying to make a sale which is so commonplace that our law excuses it and calls it "puffing". However, there has been over time, improvement over Shaw's era.
By producing growth and an increasing standard of living and universal education, capitalism’s citizens have the time, education, and resources to protest and produce social unrest. However, that assumes that there is also a democratic state. For Schumpeter and many others, capitalism and democracy go hand in hand, but many point to historical examples of one developing faster than the other.
In May of 1886 police had killed some strikers for an 8 hour work day at the McCormick Plant in Chicago. A left wing newspaper called a rally using the word “revenge.” (See {43614}.) The next day, at the rally, someone threw a dynamite bomb killing several police who in turn wounded and killed many of the protestors. 31 people were indicted for the “Haymarket Bombing,” 8 were tried, and 7 were convicted and sentenced to death including Spies. There was however, no evidence linking any of the defendants with the bombing, only evidence linking them with left wing, anarchist positions and writings.
Although Fiorello La Guardia proposed an aggressive reform program for New York City, he did not go far enough for some.
Huey Pierce Long Jr., byname "The Kingfish", was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a member of the United States Senate from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. He was a populist member of the Democratic Party and rose to national prominence during the Great Depression for his vocal criticism of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, which Long deemed not radical enough. As the political leader of Louisiana, he commanded wide networks of supporters and often took forceful action. A controversial figure, Long is celebrated as a populist champion of the poor or, conversely, denounced as a fascistic demagogue.
