"Vote Yes!"

Last May the Louisiana Legislature convened in the new $5,000,000, 33-story Capitol at Baton Rouge for its regular 60-day biennial session. Down from Washington as State boss popped Senator Huey Pierce Long to see that things were started according to his will. His mission concluded in three days, Senator Long went back to Washington to resume his national duties. Thereupon the Legislature promptly fell into a do-nothing deadlock which lasted more than a month.

When Congress adjourned last month, Boss Long was again at liberty to turn his attention to his hand-picked Legislature. With a flourish his automobile shot him up to the steps of the Capitol. Surrounded by plug-ugly bodyguards he rose by private elevator to the office of Governor Oscar Kelly Allen. Up jumped Puppet Allen to surrender his seat and down sat Senator Long at the Governor's desk to take command. On one side of him was a loudspeaker which, by a twitch of the dial, let him hear debates in House or Senate. On the other was an electric gadget which, by means of red and green lights, told him how each member of each chamber downstairs voted. Senator Long may be mocked as a cheap demagog by the nation-at-large and his popularity with Louisiana voters may be on the wane, but at Baton Rouge he is still an autocrat. In a fashion which would have won instinctive approval from Benito Mussolini, he began to get things done.

The Senator did not confine himself to the Governor's desk. Bobbing along Capitol corridors on his short legs, he invaded committee rooms, jerked bills from the hands of their authors, rewrote them to suit himself. When the President pro tem of the Senate offended him, Huey Long marched into the well, demanded his resignation, got it.

In the last two weeks before the Legislature adjourned, Senator Long's brisk management of Louisiana's affairs bore him rich legislative fruit:

The Legislature repealed the State's $1 poll tax. That meant that the poorest white man in the State was free to vote the straight Long ticket.

The Legislature passed a liquor control bill and put Alice Lee Grosjean, Senator Long's onetime secretary, in charge.

The Legislature passed a tax bill assessing public utilities 2% on gross revenue.

The Legislature fixed a levy of 2 cents per $100 on futures in the New Orleans Cotton Exchange.

And loud and long were the wails of Louisiana newspaper publishers, most of whom mortally hate & fear Huey Long, when the Senator prepared a bill assessing a 2% tax on gross advertising revenues of all publications with more than 20,000 circulation.

"The newspapers," cried Senator Long, "are the charmed free bull of this country. They don't pay any tax on anything. They have newsprint on the free list and they don't keep enough on hand to pay any taxes on that. . . . They are using the mails to bring the Government a loss of $100,000 a year. . . . This idea is my own stuff."

The bill passed the Senate without difficulty. When the House showed signs of balking, Senator Long strode up and down the aisles shouting "Vote Yes! Vote Yes!" The House voted Yes. Notably immune to the newspaper tax was Senator Long's political mouthpiece, American Progress, published at Meridian, Miss.

Whip-sawed and hog-tied at every turn, the anti-Long faction in the House devoted the session's closing hours to burlesque. Rupert Peyton, leader of the Opposition, marched into the chamber wearing a gilt paper crown, a lavender bathrobe trimmed with cotton ermine, a stubby nose of putty which made him look like Senator Long. He was attended by other Representatives with tin horns, cap pistols, squirt guns. Apeing the accents of Senator Long, Representative Peyton mounted the rostrum, declared:

"Newspapers, consider yourselves glared at. I'm here a-fightin' for the common peepul. I'm for the redistribution of potlikker, now controlled by J. P. Morgan and the Standard Oil. I'm for the Share-The-Swag Society. . . ."

He then introduced a bill "conferring the title of Your Majesty on every man and woman in Louisiana, providing every male citizen with a pair of green pajamas, a castle, a hotel suite, a queen and an independent income of $90,000 a year. . . . As many of this house as may not be in favor of this bill, let him vote yea and the contrary nay."

Shouting hilariously, the Legislators all pressed their red-light nay buttons, thus passing the bill to the consternation of the Speaker who quickly rose to say: "And the bill is dead."

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