American history Homework Assignment

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H U E Y L ON G

Letter to Members of the Share Our Wealth

Society (1935)

During his “first hundred days” in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) persuaded Congress to

pass an unprecedented wave of legislation—bills designed to save the nation’s banking system, provide jobs and

relief to the unemployed, and revive vast sectors of the economy. This federal activism halted the nation’s

economic slide and infused many Americans with a new sense of hope, but by 1934 it was clear that the

Depression was far from over. Americans on both the right and the left began to challenge Roosevelt’s leadership.

One of Roosevelt’s most outspoken critics was Louisiana’s colorful and charismatic Senator Huey Long (1893–

1935)—known as the “Kingfish.” A radical populist, Long rose from poverty to power by attacking corporate

interests in the state. Elected governor in 1928, he exercised dictatorial control but attracted a fervent following

among poor whites by lowering utility rates, building roads and schools, and distributing free textbooks. Long

was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930, but delayed claiming his seat for more than a year because he was

unwilling to turn over gubernatorial power to his lieutenant governor. An early supporter of Roosevelt, Long

broke with the president in late 1933 and formed his own political organization. By 1935 his Share Our Wealth

Society boasted some 27,000 local clubs and claimed 8 million members. In this letter to the group’s supporters,

written just months before he was assassinated by a constituent, Long laid out his plan for redistributing

America’s wealth.

From Huey Long, “Speech to the Members of the Share Our Wealth Society,” Congressional Record, May 23,

1935.

he Share Our Wealth Society proposes to enforce the traditions on which this country was

founded, rather than to have them harmed; we aim to carry out the guaranties of our immortal

Declaration of Independence and our Constitution of the United States, as interpreted by our

forefathers who wrote them and who gave them to us; we will make the works and compacts of the Pilgrim

fathers, taken from the Laws of God, from which we were warned never to depart, breathe into our

Government again that spirit of liberty, justice, and mercy which they inspired in our founders in the days

when they gave life and hope to our country. God has beckoned fullness and peace to our land; our

forefathers have set the guide stakes so that none need fail to share in this abundance. Will we now have

our generation, and the generations which are to come, cheated of such heritage because of the greed and

control of wealth and opportunity by 600 families?)

____________

o members and well-wishers of the Share Our Wealth Society:

For twenty years I have been in the battle to provide that, so long as America has, or can produce, an

abundance of the things which make life comfortable and happy, that none should own so much of the

things which he does not need and cannot use as to deprive the balance of the people of a reasonable

proportion of the necessities and conveniences of life. The whole line of any political thought has always

been that America must face the time when the whole country would shoulder the obligation which it owes

to every child born on earth—that is, a fair chance to life, liberty, and happiness.

* * *

It is not out of place for me to say that the support which I brought to Mr. Roosevelt to secure his

nomination and election as President—and without which it was hardly probably he would ever have been

nominated—was on the assurances which I had that he would take the proper stand for the redistribution

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of wealth in the campaign. He did that much in the campaign; but after his election, what then? I need not

tell you the story. We have not time to cry over our disappointments, over promises which others did not

keep, and over pledges which were broken.

* * *

It is impossible for the United States to preserve itself as a republic or as a democracy when 600 families

own more of this Nation’s wealth—in fact, twice as much—as all the balance of the people put together.

Ninety-six percent of our people live below the poverty line, while 4 percent own 87 percent of the wealth.

America can have enough for all to live in comfort and still permit millionaires to own more than they can

ever spend and to have more money than they can ever use; but America cannot allow the multimillionaires

and the billionaires, a mere handful of them, to own everything unless we are willing to inflict starvation

upon 125,000,000 people.

We looked upon the year 1929 as the year when too much was produced for the people to consume. We

were told, and we believed, that the farmers raised too much cotton and wool for the people to wear and

too much food for the people to eat. Therefore, much of it went to waste, some rotted, and much of its was

burned or thrown into the river or into the ocean. But, when we picked up the bulletin of the Department

of Agriculture for that year 1929, we found that, according to the diet which they said everyone should eat

in order to be healthy, multiplying it by 120,000,000, the number of people we had in 1929, had all of our

people had the things which the Government said that should eat in order to live well, we did not have

enough even in 1929 to feed the people. In fact, these statistics show that in some instances we had from

one-third to one-half less than the people needed, particularly of milk, eggs, butter, and dried fruits.

But why in the year 1929 did it appear we had too much? Because the people could not buy the things

they wanted to eat, and needed to eat. That showed the need for and duty of the Government then and

there, to have forced a sharing of our wealth, and a redistribution, and Roosevelt was elected on the pledge

to do that very thing.

But what was done? Cotton was plowed under the ground. Hogs and cattle were burned by the millions.

The same was done to wheat and corn, and farmers were paid starvation money not to raise and not to

plant because of the fact that we did not want so much because of people having no money with which to

buy.1 Less and less was produced, when already there was less produced than the people needed if they ate

what the Government said they needed to sustain life. God forgive those rulers who burned hogs, threw

milk in the river, and plowed under cotton while little children cried for meat and milk and something to

put on their naked backs!

But the good God who placed this race on earth did not leave us without an understanding of how to

meet such problems; nor did the Pilgrim fathers who landed at Plymouth in 1620 fail to set an example as to

how a country and a nation of people should act under such circumstances, and our great statesmen like

Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ralph Waldo Emerson did

not fail to explain the need and necessity for following the precedents and purposes, which are necessary,

even in a land of abundance, if all the people are to share the fruits produced therein. God’s law

commanded that the wealth of the country should be redistributed ever so often, so that none should

become too rich and none should become too poor; it commanded that debts should be canceled and

released ever so often, so that the human race would not be loaded with a burden which it could never pay.

When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, they established their law by compact, signed by everyone

who was on board the Mayflower, and it provided that at the end of every seven years the finances of their

newly formed country would be readjusted and that all debts would be released and property redistributed,

so that none should starve in the land of plenty, and none should have an abundance of more than he

needed. These principles were preserved in the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, and in our

Constitution. Our great statesmen, such men as James Madison, who wrote the Constitution of the United

States, and Daniel Webster, its greatest exponent, admonished the generations of America to come that

they must never forget to require the redistribution of wealth if they desire that their Republic should live.

And, now, what of America? Will we allow the political sports, the high heelers, the wiseacres, and those

who ridicule us in our misery and poverty to keep us from organizing these societies in every hamlet so

that they may bring back to life this law and custom of God and of this country? Is there a man or woman

with a child born on the earth, or who expects ever to have a child born on earth, who is willing to have it

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raised under the present-day practices of piracy, where it comes into life burdened with debt, condemned

to a system of slavery by which the sweat of its brow throughout its existence must go to satisfy the vanity

and the luxury of a leisurely few, who can never be made to see that they are destroying the root and

branch of the greatest country ever to have risen? Our country is calling; the laws of the Lord are calling;

the graces of our forefathers would open today if their occupants could see the bloom and flower of their

creation withering and dying because the greed of the financial masters of this country has starved and

withheld from mankind those things produced by his own labor. To hell with the ridicule of the wise street-

corner politician. Pay no attention to any newspaper or magazine that has sold its columns to perpetuate

this crime against the people of America. Save this country. Save mankind. Who can be wrong in such a

work, and who cares what consequences may come following the mandates of the Lord, of the Pilgrims, of

Jefferson, Webster, and Lincoln? He who falls in this fight falls in the radiance of the future. Better to make

this fight and lose than to be a party to a system that strangles humanity.

It took the genius of labor and the lives of all Americans to produce the wealth of this land. If any man, or

100 men, wind up with all that has been produced by 125,000,000 people, that does not mean that those

100 men produced the wealth of the country; it means that those 100 men stole, directly or indirectly, what

125,000,000 people produced. Let no one tell you that the money masters made this country. They did not

such thing. Very few of them ever hewed the forest; very few ever hacked a crosstie; very few ever nailed a

board; fewer of them ever laid a brick. Their fortunes came from manipulated finance, control of

government, rigging of markets, the spider webs that have grabbed all businesses; they grab the fruits of

the land, the conveniences and the luxuries that are intended for 125,000,000 people, and run their heelers

to our meetings to set up the cry. “We earned it honestly.” The Lord says they did no such thing. The voices

of our forefathers say they did no such thing. In this land of abundance, they have no right to impose

starvation, misery, and pestilence for the purpose of vaunting their own pride and greed.

* * *

Here is the whole sum and substance of the share-our-wealth movement:

1.  Every family to be furnished by the Government a homestead allowance, free of debt, of not less than one-third the average family wealth of the country, which means, at the lowest, that every family shall

have the reasonable comforts of life up to a value of from $5,000 to $6,000. No person to have a fortune

of more than 100 to 300 times the average family fortune, which means that the limit to fortunes is

between $1,500,000 and $5,000,000, with annual capital levy taxes imposed on all above $1,000,000.2

2.  The yearly income of every family shall be not less than one-third of the average family income, which means that, according to the estimates of the statisticians of the United States Government and Wall

Street, no family’s annual income would be less than from $2,000 to $2,500. No yearly income shall be

allowed to any person larger than from 100 to 300 times the size of the average family income, which

means that no person would be allowed to earn in any year more than from $600,000 to $1,800,000, all

to be subject to present income-tax laws.

3.  To limit or regulate the hours of work to such an extent as to prevent overproduction; the most modern and efficient machinery would be encouraged, so that as much would be produced as possible so as to

satisfy all demands of the people, but to also allow the maximum time to the workers for recreation,

convenience, education, and luxuries of life.

4.  An old-age pension to the persons over sixty. 5.  To balance agricultural production with what can be consumed according to the laws of God, which

includes the preserving and storage of surplus commodities to be paid for and held by the Government

for the emergencies when such are needed. Please bear in mind, however, that when the people of

America have had money to buy things they needed, we have never had a surplus of any commodity. This

plan of God does not call for destroying any of the things raised to eat or wear, nor does it countenance

wholesale destruction of hogs, cattle, or milk.

6.  To pay the veterans of our wars what we owe them and to care for their disabled.3

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7.  Education and training for all children to be equal in opportunity in all schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions for training in the professions and vocations of life; to be regulated on the capacity of

children to learn, and not on the ability of parents to pay the costs. Training for life’s work to be as much

universal and thorough for all walks in life as has been the training in the arts of killing.

8.  The raising of revenue and taxes for the support of this program to come from the reduction of swollen fortunes from the top, as well as for the support of public works to give employment whenever there

may be any slackening necessary in private enterprise.

I now ask those who read this circular to help us at once in this work of giving life and happiness to our

people—not a starvation dole upon which someone may live in misery from week to week. Before this

miserable system of wreckage has destroyed the life germ of respect and culture in our American people let

us save what was here, merely by having none too poor and none too rich. The theory of the Share Our

Wealth Society is to have enough for all, but not to have one with so much that less than enough remains

for the balance of the people.

Please, therefore, let me ask you who read this document—please help this work before it is too late for

us to be of help to our people. We ask you now, (1) help to get your neighbor into the work of this society

and (2) help get other Share Our Wealth societies started in your county and in adjoining counties and get

them to go out to organize other societies.

To print and mail out this circular costs about 60 cents per hundred, or $6 per thousand. Anyone who

reads this wants more circulars of this kind to use in the work, can get them for that price by sending the

money to me, and I will pay the printer for him. Better still, if you can have this circular reprinted in your

own town or city.

Let everyone who feels he wishes to help in our work start right out and go ahead. One man or woman is

as important as any other. Take up the fight! Do not wait for someone else to tell you what to do. There are

no high lights in this effort. We have no State managers and no city managers. Everyone can take up the

work, and as many societies can be organized as there are people to organize them. One is the same as

another. The reward and compensation is the salvation of humanity. Fear no opposition. “He who falls in

this fight falls in the radiance of the future!”

Yours sincerely,

Huey P. Long, United States Senator, Washington, D.C.

Study Questions

1.  What were the specific elements of Senator Long’s Share Our Wealth plan? Who stood to benefit from the plan? Who would have been hurt by it?

2.  What was Long’s goal in proposing this plan? How did he hope to change American society? 3.  Although this is a letter to his supporters, Long also made extensive use of the radio. What advantages

might the radio have provided to a populist insurgent like Long?

4.  In this letter, Long invokes a long list of American founders and statesmen—the Pilgrim fathers, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and others—whom he says would have

supported his plan. Why do you think he invokes these iconic figures? How and why might opponents of

Long have invoked some of the same men?