No luxurious mansions empty, none walking the streets, none impoverished, none in pestilence, none in want.” He concluded the speech with a promise that, under his program, “none shall be too big, none shall be too poor none shall work too much, none shall be idle. It was about time, he said, to call them back to the table with their heaping plates and make them share it out. God had set the table, but Rockefeller, Mellon, and the rest of the robber barons had carried off nine-tenths of the food, leaving the scraps for everyone else. “The only way you will be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of ‘at grub he ain’t got no bidness wit’.” The crowd burst into laughter as Long’s senatorial cadence descended into Louisiana backwater dialect.Īmerica, Long explained, was the barbecue. Without waiting for a response, the senator from Louisiana answered his own question, swinging his arms and throwing his weight around with a fervor that was almost cartoonish. For them, the idea of dividing up too little food among too many mouths was painfully real. The speech was given at the height of the Great Depression many in the audience had experienced hunger and malnutrition. “ow are you going to feed the balance of the people?” The crowd was silent. “How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat?” roared Huey Long.
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