Progress

Twelve years ago, when Huey Long's political machine was abuilding in Louisiana, the Kingfish founded a weekly paper which he called Louisiana Progress. As Huey's horizon expanded, Louisiana Progress became American Progress, a daily.

So scurrilous was American Progress that no printer in Louisiana dared to touch it. Huey had it printed in Mississippi. He forced all State workers (including New Orleans' State-paid firemen and police) to buy subscriptions in job lots. Merchants who wanted to do business with Louisiana's government found it worth their while to advertise in Huey's paper.

When Huey Long was assassinated in 1935, Governor Richard Webster Leche (now under a Federal indictment for fraud) took over the paper. When Leche resigned last summer, Governor Earl Kemp Long, Huey's brother, bought American Progress for $188,000. Last week Earl Long too was out of office, twice beaten at the polls (TIME, March 4), his political machine a shambles.

Without the power of Louisiana's government behind it, American Progress crumpled like a paper bag with a hole in it. Last week it folded, and the nice, new, $200,000 Progress plant that Leche built at Hammond, La. was on the market.

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