Hard Times (55 page)

We are in a stately Victorian house: stained-glass windows, profuse with religious artifacts, portraits, statuary, Tiffany lamps and chandeliers, Persian rugs…. “Every stone in this house has been personally cut by hand.” What was once the prayer room of the original occupant, a Confederate officer, has been transformed into a bathroom: “I don’t think God makes himself available only at certain hours like eleven o‘clock Sunday morning.” In addition to paintings of The Saviour, there is, facing the entrance, a portrait in oil of Henry Ford, the elder
.

 

I WAS INTRODUCED to the Depression while I was in Shreveport, Louisiana. I was pastor of the most sophisticated church. The leadership included the top men in the community. Then the curtain fell. I had the experience of standing at the door of the church on Sunday mornings, meeting weeping men and women who had lost everything.

In the meantime, Huey Long had risen to power. He referred to Louisiana as the last stand of the feudal lords. Human slavery was still being practiced. When a Negro or a poor white was arrested, he would be assigned by the judge, district attorney or sheriff to the deputy, who
happened to own a plantation or sawmill. It was a matter of common practice.

Then came the Depression, and sophisticated people became penniless. Fifteen thousand homes were coming up for mortgage foreclosures in the city. The building and loan company decided to foreclose, before the HOLC could advance loans.

I couldn’t stand the tears of these people, and I offered aggressive resistance to this. I urged the company to postpone these foreclosures. They said it was none of my business. Lo and behold, I was waited on by the leaders in my church. They brought pressure on me to resign. They were silent partners in this thieving enterprise.

I called my friend, Huey Long: “The hypocrites in my church are planning to steal $50 million.” In about thirty minutes, the phone rang. It was the head of the building and loan association. Weeping and wailing, he said, “Dr. Smith, what can I do?
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You have no idea what Huey Long said to me. He’s going to ruin me. He has told me to do anything you want me to do.” I said, “All you need to do is cross the street to the courthouse and cancel the foreclosures.” They were canceled. It confirmed my great affection for Huey Long, and it lost me my job as pastor of the King’s Highway Christian Church.

 

“I’ve been asked, ‘Why did you leave the formal ministry?’ I said, ‘Because I want to go to Heaven.’ I insist on being called Mr. Smith. I don’t like a man that hits me and says, ‘Don’t hit back, I’m a clergyman.’ Take all these preachers causing all this trouble, stirring up the anarchists and all. They go out and tell these people what to do. Take off your collar and just be a private citizen in this controversy. So when someone hits back, they’re not slapping a priest or beating a clergyman
.”

 

Huey Long and I developed a mutual respect for each other. When his power was at an apex, he said to me, “If God was Governor of Louisiana, he couldn’t find enough honest men to make a chairman for each county. If anything happens to me, Gerald, you’re the only one of this gang that shouldn’t go to the federal penitentiary. These boys who were barefooted when I found them just can’t keep their hands out of the public till.”

Huey Long developed a philosophy in which I helped him along. He was the only man of this century who knew how to think like a statesman and campaign like a demagogue. His share-the-wealth program sounded like demagoguery to reactionaries, but it was sound. The barons of monopoly came into the state. They bought up all the natural resources: the oil, gas and timber concessions—everything from oil to trees, from sulfur to fish. Huey Long said the wealth on top of our ground and underneath
must be shared with the people. He said: No man should be allowed to accumulate a fortune of more than $5 million without a progressive levy against him. Imagine. We appealed to intelligent conservatives.

My strategy was to project Huey Long as candidate for President in ‘36, as Wallace was in ’68. It was the understanding we’d split the Roosevelt vote. But we would have a say about who the Republican candidate was. If Huey Long had lived, we would never have nominated this protoplasmic substance, Landon.

The conservatives lost because they didn’t know how to support a statesman. They only knew how to buy Senators and Congressmen. When the real crisis came, we had no one to defend the cause, because the man that can be bought isn’t intelligent enough to think for himself. His footwork is too slow.

I remember saying to the Republican leaders personally—in the days of the Mellons—we’re willing to split the Roosevelt vote, but we can’t promise to lose. Our man is becoming so popular so fast, he might win. Jim Farley said if Huey hadn’t been killed, he would have been President of the United States.

When Georgia was upstaging Louisiana and wouldn’t let us into the football conference, Huey threatened to impose an extra penny, tax on Coca-Cola. The Cannons, who own Coca-Cola, run Georgia. Naturally, Louisiana was brought into the conference.

Everybody came to us. The most subtle, the most cunning Communist leaders on the face of the earth, from Moscow and New York, visited us. They knew we were sincere friends of the people. They wanted to sell us on the Marxist philosophy. The moment we repulsed them, they called us Fascists. The moment we repulsed the reactionaries, we were called Communists. We were dealing with men who felt other men should go to work for a dollar a day and go to church in overalls.

We think our Congressmen pass laws and levy taxes. That is done by the money changers. We raise interest from four percent to six, six to eight, eight to ten. A conservative insurance company tried to persuade people out here to finance enterprises at twelve percent. When I was a boy, they’d shoot the three balls off a man’s store and put him in jail for that. (Laughs.)

 

“
You say money changer, and they think you mean Jew. The word anti-Semite is a dirty word given to people who take issue with aggressive Jews. My theory is the aggressive Jew is not an honest representative of his community. If I were to attack Rap Brown, would you accuse me of being anti-Negro?
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I don’t think the Jews should control Palestine any more than they should control New York. I don’t mean they should be driven out.
Not one ounce of their liberty should be affected. Their citizenship should not in any way be jeopardized, but they shouldn’t control everything, either… .”

“Here we have these liberal regimes. Yet it’s the greatest tyranny man has ever known. Cannibals are swallowing cannibals and dinosaurs are swallowing dinosaurs. The conglomerates. Under the leadership of the great impoverished statesmen like Harriman, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts (laughs),
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we have developed the most super-monopolistic octopus of the human race today
… .”

 

Huey Long died in my arms. We were walking through the hall, and this man shot Huey. The boys killed the killer, before he turned loose on the others. He missed me.

It was the largest public funeral in history. It took three acres of ground just to lay the bouquets. They came from everywhere on the face of the earth. There were people backed up eight miles on the other side of the Mississippi, couldn’t get across the river.

I sat down beside the bed and wrote the eulogy by hand. Later on, I had it photostated.

 

 

 

 

Modern politicians would like to romanticize things. Social Security is the substitute for the real thing. Henry Ford, for instance, never believed in charity. He believed in a job rather than a pension.

 

 

Henry Ford wasn’t entrenched wealth. He turned a bolt into a nut, a nut into a fender, a fender into a car, and a car into a genius-like formula. That is American wealth. He wasn’t part of a combine designed to destroy everyone else. He wasn’t part of the money market.

I gravitated to Detroit and started the Christian Nationalist Crusade. Frank Murphy was coming up fast. He played possum while the CIO destroyed Mr. Ford’s factory.

 

You came to Detroit just about the time the CIO was being organized
… ?

 

Oh, I was for organized labor. For years, I was an honorary member of the American Federation of Labor. But I believed that labor was moving in the same direction as capital—toward giant monopoly.

 

 

The time came for a coalition of the people—1936. There were three big mass groups: Huey Long’s following, Doctor Townsend’s and Father Coughlin’s. I was instrumental in effecting this coalition.

Townsend was a sincere, good, unselfish man. I was in Washington when they were crucifying Townsend—the wolf pack. They called in a bunch of neurotic women to testify against him. Hired perjurers, they tried to say it was a racket. They had a Roman holiday with the old man.

I said, “Doc, they’re going to destroy you. You treat them with courtesy. You should hold them in contempt.” He had two or three hangers-on, who were turning pale. They’re the ones who watch over the dues. (Laughs.) I said, “I would stand up, pronounce my contempt, walk out and
defy
them to come and get me.” He said, “If I had a young man like you beside me, I’d do it.” I said, “You’ve got him.”

So the stage was set. We didn’t tell any of those shortstops there, it would scare ’em.

The old man stood up. He pronounced judgment and contempt on the whole Congressional committee. He defied the gavel. I just took him by the arm, and we ran out. In the meantime, I was in touch with Henry Mencken. I told him I’d kidnapped the old man and would bring him to Baltimore: “Find a place to hide him.”

Mencken was delighted. We hid him for three days in defiance of the committee. The sympathy for old people was such that if any Congressman had offered a motion to cite him for contempt, he would have committed political suicide. If I may say so, that was the budge that made the Townsend movement a political factor.

He asked me to speak at his convention in Cleveland. You can hardly realize how the multitudes moved.
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It was a Populist movement.

The little machine makers who organized the program said the meeting must be unbiased. We must have a Republican, a New Dealer and so forth. I was scheduled to speak at ten thirty. The Roosevelt friend was set for eleven thirty, and the Republican for twelve thirty. So I spoke for three hours. (Laughs.) Every time the chairman made a move toward me, the crowd wanted to lynch him.