Address to Congressional Interns

Performed by Senator Huey Long (D-LA)
Recorded December 11, 1934

Text:
Ladies and gentlemen:

I've, on several occasions, had the particular honor of being invited to make some speeches that I was supposed to get some kind of Honoraria for. I started to say moratorium. [Laughter]

One time over in Cleveland I was supposed to get $250, and one time in New York I was to get five, six, seven hundred dollars, but my conscience wouldn't allow me, on either of these occasions, to take the money.

Now, however, I have never made a free speech. I never made a speech unless it was before a court or before a crowd where I was trying to get votes or before an audience where I was trying to get converts. And I am probably addressing, for the benefit of the work I am pursuing, the most important and probably the farthest-reaching organization that I've ever had the pleasure of speaking to, because you are the people who have the contact with the American people....

According to the tables which we have assembled, it is our estimate that 4 percent of the American people own 85 percent of the wealth of America, and that over 70 percent of the people of America don't own enough to pay for the debts that they owe.

Any man with a thimble-full of sense ought to know that if you take 85 percent off of that table and give it to one man that you are bound to have 2/3 the people starving because they haven't got enough to eat.

Giv'em a yacht! Giv'em a Palace!
Send 'em to Reno and
give them a new wife when they want it,
if that's what they want.