In proof of this he put on the witness stand an informer who had infiltrated into the ranks of the supposedly plotting group, and who testified as to the details of a conspiracy.
Early in his senatorial career he had made himself so offensive in the washroom of a club at Sands Point, Long Island, that the irate victim of a demand to “make way for the Kingfish” slugged him. Since the blow split the skin over an eyebrow, the incident could not be concealed. Long promptly charged that hired bravos of the House of Morgan had assaulted him in the club washroom, intent on taking his life.
Finally, when what he told the Senate on that August day in 1935 was boiled down in its own juices it made pretty thin gruel, as anyone who cares to wade through the fine print of the _Congressional Record_ for that date can see for himself. The truth is that on the eve of Congress’ adjournment, Long was trying to build up against Roosevelt something he could tub-thump before the voters in the next year’s presidential campaign.
On the principle that “the best defense is an attack,” he was keeping the New Deal hierarchy in Washington so busily occupied on another front that he could take advantage of their preoccupation to infiltrate Louisiana’s federal patronage with his followers.
Presumably control over these appointments to all sorts of oddball positions under the PWA, WPA, and other auspices was now in the hands of the anti-Long contingent, headed by among others a good half of the state’s members in the lower house of Congress. But these were parochial politicians, fumblingly inept at organizing such matters on a state-wide scale. To cite but a single example, one project sponsored under the anti-Long dispensation was a review of the newspaper files in the New Orleans City Hall archives. By direction of Mayor Walmsley, so many appointees were packed into this particular task that they had to work in one-hour-a-day shifts in order to find physical room in the small garret-like space set aside for it.
Theoretically, they were to index these files, and to repair torn pages with gummed tape as they came across them. Actually, they would for the most part merely turn the leaves of the clumsy bound volumes until they came to the Sunday comics or other such features, and read these at leisure. Then they repaired to Lafayette Square when their hour of demanded presence was up, and joked about the way they would put out of joint the noses of the anti-Long leadership on election day; for of course most of them were dedicated Share-Our-Wealthers eagerly looking forward to $5000-a-year incomes when Huey Long got around to redistributing the nation’s wealth.