https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vf9x3fXlSw from our Washington studios we bring it at this time a talk by the Honorable Huey P long United States Senator from the state of Louisiana he has announced as his subject the st. Vitus death govern will set us alone ladies and gentlemen whether you do or do not believe in the divine rule of the scriptures are in the precepts of the founders of this country or in the history or philosophy of all nations if you will believe the four tables of arithmetic those of addition subtraction multiplication and division you will agree with me that the wealth of this land must be immediately redistributed among our million people if America is to be saved as a country for a moment ladies and gentlemen let me turn to the last radio address by our president the Honorable Franklin Delano Roosevelt it was delivered to the people of our country on last Sunday night now the president says that the people cannot understand just how good he has got them coming along there are his words quote the job of creating a program for the nation's welfare is in some respects like the building of a ship at different points on the coast for our often visit they build great seagoing ships in quotations you see what the president is talking about there is that when he goes out on that five million dollar yacht they called the normal Hall owned by brother Vincent Astor who does lots of ships up to the business for the United States where they get as much as $, for Karen one three cent letter he sometimes sees them building the ship now let us quote further from the president who when one of these ships is under construction and the steel frames have been set in the keel it is difficult for a person who does not know ships to tell how it will find it look Wendy sailing the high seas it is that way with the making of a national policy so we see our President of the United States some of us call in the night of the normal Hall says we're confused because we cannot see just how this thing is going to look when he gets through Mickey why to be sure all those millions of hogs they kill all those cattle they shot out the milk they poured into the rivers with the people starving for all of the Cotton's they plowed under and wool that they burned up with the people naked because it could not get it none of us can see just how that is working out but the president says it is going to look pretty when he gets the picture made up surely it will look pretty it may not look exactly like a song but it would be something like a dance the st. Vitus tax how the president says that well they know that the process of constructive rebuilding of America cannot be done in a day or a year in post no and if he is a fair sample of it they know it cannot be done in a hundred years his process of construction if you call it construction is to start out repairing the automobile by first hang off the top and then when the rain begins to beat in the hammer the engine to pieces tire down chastised and then wind up and taken off the wheel that leaves only one thing to do he sends the bill for the work that bill is now reached the size of over billions of dollars six times more than all the money in circulates in the United States but now we're going to get to something the president takes her into his confidence here is what he says next quote the most difficult place in the world to get a clear and open perspective for the country as a whole is in Washington that is why I occasionally this scene of action for a few days to go fishing I'm going to read that again from the president quote the most difficult place in the world to get a clear in an open perspective of the country as a whole is in Washington that is why I occasionally this scene of action for a few days to go fish input now if you will observe closely ladies and gentlemen our president remarks that he could not find out about the people that country in water so he took himself on board the five million dollar yacht called the normal Hall owned by Vincent Astor where he was dead certain to find out just how things were getting along this normal whole yacht sailed out into the British waters with the President on board and soon thereafter was voted by the son and daughter-in-law of the King of England the Duke and Duchess of Kent and now after some several days a week Tudor on the briny British waters enthroned on a five million dollar yacht in Coughlin's with a multi-millionaire Astron the Duke and Duchess of Kent right out of England our gradient Evelynn president returns and says he went on this fishing to find out what it is all about this would be great comfort to the cotton hands were not allowed to plant cotton this year who are naked because again get cotton goods and can't make any money body that it will do a great deal of help among the starving who are told they must make contracts to reduce the quantity of foodstuffs so if there would not be too much to eat hooray for President Roosevelt's fishing trip let's send him off again if he doesn't get into better understanding of the conditions in this country than he has had in the last two years it would be a fine thing if Congress made a contract with mr. Vincent Astor and his five million dollar yacht not only to take the president out in the British waters to fish for a week or two but to keep him there for several more months then trust the look the country would find its way back to normalcy before he got back I didn't get to hear the message of our president it was delivered over the radio because I was on board a train returning from Des Moines Iowa where I had made a speech on last Saturday but I would say to you that at the place of Des Moines I took a vote of the crowd some , highly educated and intelligent people and without one single exception ever hand was raised into the air favoring the plan for redistribution of wealth and not one hand was raised against me but to get back to my point not having heard the president speak as I returned to Washington I stepped over to my office where I was approached by an officer he said to me he says I heard the president speak last night and I asked him I said what did he say he said he said to just keep waiting but the President of the United States has long since forgotten to pledge and promise which he made and on which he was nominated and elected the president he promised in terms that were certain in language which could not be misunderstood that he would break up the size of the big fortunes of this country and use it to build the common people up from the ground to where they had something on which to live in comfort he made that promise in the speech that he delivered in Atlanta Georgia and it was that speech that was the basis on which I declared for him as president I gave him the Louisiana delegation helping the gifts get several others on the promises that he made in that Atlanta speech he made that promise when he accepted the nominations Democratic Party the Chicago convention he made that promise in other speeches which he delivered during the campaign present I was sent into state after state North and South Dakota Nebraska and into Kansas directly from the then candidate for president mr. Roosevelt and I was sent there to tell the people that when mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the president of the United States that the big fortunes would be whittled down to reasonable limit in size and that thereby the common run of mankind would be built up from the bottom at least to the point where all of our people had a home and the comforts of life of our families with steady employment to all labor and profit over production cost to all the farmers what I say is to these promises by our president will not be disputed by him or by anyone else they are in indelible time they are in letters and pamphlets that cannot be disputed to question but now in the third year of his administration we find more of our people unemployed than at any other time we find our houses empty and our people hungry many of them have closed and many of them not flow at all mr. Hopkins announced millions on the dole a new high-water mark and that particular some few weeks ago we find not only the people going further into debt but that the United States is going further into debt the states are going further into debt and the cities and towns are even going into bankruptcy the condition has become the problem instead of his promises the only remedy that mr. Roosevelt has described is to borrow more money if you can and to go further into debt the last move was to borrow five billion dollars more on which we must pay interest for the balance of our lifetime and probably during the lifetime of our children and with it all their stalks the slimy specter of war hunger destitution and custom all because of the fact that in the land of too much to eat and of too much to wear our president has failed in his promise to have these necessities of life distributed into the hands of the people who have need of them now the jet black shadow of our war and misery came upon us step by step with certain precision day after day month after month and year after year there were investigate and studies made both by private bodies and governmental agencies to find out the cause of our trouble the whole matter was studied very seriously up to as late as the Year the department's of the United States government and many of our Statesman newspapers and other journals openly stated that our growing trouble was caused by too much of our wealth getting into the hands of too few of our people all of them said that we had to turn things around the other way so as to have the people owning less than less so as to have the masses owning more and more that is that the few should own less and the more people should own more but such things were said at a time before the money mastered had muzzled the public journals and before they had stifled the agencies of our governments research and publicity there is what the government report rendered to Congress in by the Industrial Relations Commission said whoa these sources from which industrial unrest Springs are when stated in full detail almost numbers for upon careful analysis of their real character they would be found to group themselves almost without exception on the four main sources which include all the others these four are one unjust distribution of wealth and income in quotation now the United States Industrial Relations Commission said this thing further quote the richest % of the people own % of the wealth the middle class thirty three percent of the people own thirty five percent wealth the poor % of the people own five percent the wealth this means in brief that a little less than two million people who would make up a city small event in Chicago own two a twenty percent more of the nation's wealth than all the other ninety million people those quotations but at about this time of when these studies were being made our quarter was thrown into the European war in the next year nineteen hundred and seventeen and when the shades of were lowered on the peace conference in Paris the billionaires and multimillionaires of our finances had become to apply their pressure throughout America they saw to a fair after that nothing more was said about too few people owning too much or about too many people only thing that they muscled down on everything as tight as a drum from to they chained businesses and banks and roped in all the businesses and institutions of this country four times as tight as they had ever held them in the first year of Hoover's reign with more foodstuffs and more wiring apparel more manufactured articles more houses and more of everything else in this country had ever seen in all of its history notwithstanding all our abundance of everything for which our people had any needs that began to come about the first wave of our greatest hungered nakedness homelessness and destitution in this land where there was too much of everything why was that it was because of the fact that in spite of those conditions the two few owning too much as we found to exist in that as a matter of fact in the fourteen years time which followed from to those conditions group to be two times as bad as they were when they were complained about in the study of the Federal Trade Commission made in said this quote the foregoing table shows at about one percent of the estimated number of decedent's owned about fifty nine percent of the estimated wealth and that more than ninety percent was owned by about thirteen percent of this number so you will see from a comparison ladies and gentlemen of these two government reports one in the one in years apart that % of the people owned as much in as two percent of the people owned in so it proved that the government was correct in when it warned that too much of the wealth in the hands of too few people would bring a known calamity for when we reach nineteen hundred and thirty with the conditions growing from bad to worse the whole country collapsed and misery was brought about upon the population in the land that was flowing with milk and honey from the studies which I have made are charged in the United States Senate along about and then % of the people owned % of the wealth and that knighted percent of our people owned less than percent the well I charge it's percent of the people the United States didn't own enough to pay their debt that was considerable ridicule made against the figures which I gave during the last month of April of this very year three or four weeks ago the newspaper in New York City with the largest daily circulation called the Daily News announced that it would send Special Representative to Washington to investigate the figures that I had given out so it said here a gentleman named Lola limpets and in the issue of the Daily News of Monday Felice just three weeks ago here is what that great newspaper said I quote I now quote their own word Oh % owned % of the United States new survey show in quotation now that is the headline of this newspaper I will read you from the article of this newspaper of April three weeks old this biggest paper of the world quote the news recently suggested editorially that figures quoted in current discussions on the distribution of wealth or to be proved or disproved by an official survey no figures being available the news Institute the survey of it sold the results are covered in a series of articles of positions the first now I continue to quote from this article of the data you share is what they said quote again the new survey is simply brings the picture up-to-date or as nearly so as figures for me it reveals the following facts less than four percent are getting thirty eight and a half percent of the aggregate national income they this whole percent owned and controlled more than eighty seven percent of the national wealth the poor are getting poorer the national income is steadily draining into fewer impure pockets the nation's wealth is rapidly coming under the control of a mere handful of men the in quotations from newspapers now I'm going to quote further from this same article The Daily News I start again quote the facts were there but they were ignored it remained for senator you alone now notice that this Daily News its ridiculed me for all these many years what it says the facts were there but they were ignored it remained per senator here along and his ilk to force them to the attention of the public you were long open full I'm still quoting this paper he adopted the technique which it never occurred to the students you amounted a soapbox and beat a bass drum the public stopped to listen the new survey reveals that he knew what he was talking about but so did the students who preceded him close quotation yes my friends but if you knew the Mar and the ridicule and the and the distress that I had to come through in order to get those figures before the people you'd know what a public life might be nice I will not take the time to read you further what this big newspaper which checked upon my figures has said but he took the time to write a big editorial and here is an editorial of April the th that they address to the balance of the newspapers of the United States they say that oh he's April when here long and his share of the wealth replied at general Johnson said that % of Americans owned percent of America's wealth while a four percent over between percent of percent of wealth we knew he was a liar we hadn't made it as much and added that somebody ought to look into this question and get the true figures on American wealth distributions in order to refute his demagogue loans the news then assigned one of its most cops of investigators no Olympus to the job of digging up the things and so low Olympus Westar Washington worked for weeks in the Library of Congress and elsewhere to rout us the two figures with which to confound long the results of that research are now being published in the new and to the consternation of many people including ourselves when we first heard of them the results of that research showed that long we had essentially the correct dopes suggest the letters finding is this more than % of the workers in the United States received less than the $, a year which is regarded as sufficient only for buyer and assessed according to the United States Federal Trade Commission in % of the people dying did own percent of the wealth supported and since that time the rich have been getting richer in proportion and the poor have been getting poorer when lymph was discovered that such was the picture of wealth distribution in the United States he wired the news that his data would prove their starting and that probably his findings could not be published it was decided after some deliberation to publish them nevertheless in other words they decided to tell the truth was part of themselves I continue to quote that decision was made on the ground that the ostrich act of sticking our heads in the sand finding ourselves to facts would only do us harm in the long run just to press these facts might dampen down some unrest for a while but disease facts which are causing the unrest the eventual kick back would be much more serious as effects continue to be kept under cover and they're armed their sights this is still cool it is happened time and again that what a nation's wealth has become concentrated into too few hands and ways of redistributing part of it piece of bliss have not been worse yeah that they say it has happened time and again that one of nation's wealth has become concentrated into a few hands and ways of redistributing part of it peaceably have not been worked out where is a redistribute in inspire violence have been adopted in time as in France and Russia that's why you better pay attention to what I'm advocating ladies and gentlemen I'm trying to do it secretly this newspaper says it'll be done otherwise if you don't do it quote again from the New York Daily News editorial and as long as mass purchasing power stays down and continues to strength that would be overproduction of the bathtubs cars radios in cohorts which we like to think or elements in the American standard of living will allow us for the newspaper through what this newspaper has done now I finish cooling from it or will they continue to be blind and lead the column to the find in the damar fresh and ruling the great journalistic tall to the present day refuses to see the lights The Saturday Evening Post of this week dated May th as an editorial about me as follows headline says factor severance well it as any subject received so much attention is honourable here long they say continuing to quote there is grave discussion as to how he will affect the portions of both the New Deal under the Republican Party everyone has an opinion as to whether he is a menace or not the view taken depending on many different facts the core of senator Long's plan is to take away from all persons such wealth as they have in excess of million dollars giving them the right to choose what particular times a proper they would teach within the maximum permitted while the total wealth of appropriated he suggests it's something less than has to use to educate young people and it's something over half you used to bring families having less than five thousand dollars of property up to that figure I'm continuing to quote from the sateen folk that is go vote this country has no official figures or even accurate estimate concerning the distribution of wealth now that's what the site eating folks say well now I'm going to read you from the same Saturday Evening Post of September rd they say we have no figures on it I'll hit me read to the same paper nineteen years ago September rd quote the man who studies wealth in the United States from Statistics only quoting The Saturday Evening Post quote further will get nowhere the subject because all of the statistics afford only and inconclusive suggestion a long one statistical line you can figure out a nation bustling with wealth along another it bloated plutocracy comprising one percent listen to that along another line a bloated food caucus in comprising one percent of the population lording it over a starving horde was only a thin margin of merrily well-to-do in between infestation what is the matter with the Saturday Evening Post here it is saying there are no figures to show any such thing as I am saying and yet twenty years ago when you were allowed to be honest mr. Saturday Evening Post you told the people that % of the people had a stranglehold on nearly everything the country headed it why this magazine doesn't know that I was its caller in that magazine taught me to make this fight in part and now after years of effort it is failed to remember what it knew way back yonder which everybody else has forgotten to find out at this late date now my friends you heard me read how a great New York newspaper after investigations declared that all I have said about the bad distribution of this nation's wealth is truth but we have been about our work to correct this situation that is why the shower wealth society is a forming and every nook and corner of America their meeting tonight soon there would be share our wealth societies for everyone to be they have a great work to perform here is what we stand for in a nutshell number one we propose that every family in America shall at least on a homestead equal in value to not less than one-third the average family wealth the average family wealth of America at normal Badgers is approximately sixteen thousand dollars so our first proposition means that every family will have a home in the comforts of a home up to a value of not less than around five thousand dollars a little more than that number two we propose that no family shall own more than times the average family wealth which means that no family shall process more than a wealth of approximately five million dollars nom the own less than five thousand none to own more than min we think that's too much too alarmed own but at least it's extremely conservative number three we propose that every fan shall have an income equal to at least one-third of the average family income in America if all were allowed to work there DNN comer from five thousand to ten thousand dollars to families we propose that one third will be the minimum we propose that no family will have an earning of less than around to dollars and that none will have more than times the average less the ordinary income taxes which means that a million dollars would be the limit on the highest income we also propose to give the old-age pictures to the old people not by taxing them of their children for violating the taxes upon the excess fortunes the Whittle them down and on the excess incomes and excess inheritance is so that the people who reach the age of can be retired from the active labor of life and given an opportunity to have search ceased and these and the balance of the life that they have on earth we also propose the care for the veterans including the cash payment of the soldiers bonus we likewise propose that there should be an education for every youth in this land and that no youth would be dependent upon the financial means of its parents in order to have a college education but the children will have as much right to claim an education in order that they can be praying to do their full service in this life through college as they have the right now to claim through grammar school and through high school and that includes the living call that children's education shall not depend upon the financial capacity of their parents but it shall depend upon their own energy and upon their own ability to consume what they're taught in these schools and which they need to have both of them my plan is that our government should call him this surface wealth above a few million to any one family and then distribute out to those who have the need of the same some criticize that plan but but it is prescribed by the Bible I read you the words of the scripture quote and the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own but they had all things come neither was there any among them that lacked for as many as were possessions of land or house and sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the Apostles feet and distribution was made unto every man and according as he had need see act chapter verses to now you may criticize what I'm saying but there it is written in the Bible it is our purpose that every man should pursue a calling that means a living to himself and his family and peace and company that the shelter and home of every family should be every man and his family that is the Bible says it should be I read you the words of the scripture again quote and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks nation shall not lift up a sword against nation neither shall they learn war anymore but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree and none shall make them afraid that's from Micah chapter verses and we also say that none shall be too rich and none shall be too poor that's the philosophy of our share our wealth and thought the Bible says that such is as it should be I read you the words of the scripture quote give me neither poverty nor riches feed me with food convenient for me lest I be full and deny the in say who is the Lord or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain that's from proverbs chapter verses and and we say that if the statutes of God are observed our people shall live in peace and in comfort forever and that in this land of plenty none with all the Bible says so I read you the words again quote if you walk in my statutes you should eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land sake and I will give peace of the land and you shall live there and nothing to make you afraid that's from Leviticus chapter verses to now my friends let no one tell you that it is difficult to redistribute the wealth of this man it matters not how rich or how great one may be when he dies his wealth must be defended anyway if Rockefeller died today they'd have to discredit it well the law of God shows how it has been done throughout time seeing Nehemiah chapter nothing is more sensible or better understood than the redistribution of property the laws of God commanders it is required of all nations that are permitted to live under the laws of the law see Leviticus chapter that they are a nation is cursed with an overload of them public and private that I could gain billions of dollars that is more than $, to every person that they never will be able to pay under the present set up this burden of debt can never be paid it will forever condemn our peace the laws of our lord commanded such burden of debt must be wiped out of existence so that the people may have a fair chance of life see you Tirana chapter verses & so let us be about our work it is simple while ie here I there is enough for all let there be peace in the land let our children be happy our fight is old here in the United States Senate we're trying to pay the soldiers bullet it is a death which is due the soldiers who fought our Wars we're fighting to keep the Packman bill which actually pays this bonus from being sidetracked the bill is already passed in the House of Representatives maybe you would like to wire your united states senator tonight to ask him to stand for the Packman bill tomorrow morning I would like to hear from any of you if you wish to concern yourself with the work that we have intend to share our wealth Society if you want a copy of my speech I was sending a phone request you can write to me here in Washington DC care of the United States Senate while my friends how wonderful in Hungary our fruitful to all this great American land of ours can actually be we only have to eliminate useless trees and provide that none shall be too big and none too small beautiful America can rise to the opportunity before it it means to us all every man a king I thank you have just heard the Honorable Huey P long United States Senator from the state of Louisiana if talk was entitled the same Vitus dance government this broadcast has come to you from washington DC this is the national 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