Huey P. Long vs. Maurice Duplessis: Power and the People

Introduction: Power, People, and Political Tools

The political quest for power can take many forms. Leaders use certain tools to gain power, yet different leaders use similar tools in very different ways. Leaders must often choose whether they stand for the people or for the establishment. Big business and large institutions are generally considered to be in opposition to the people. Although many have attempted to seek a balance of power between these two entities, a true partnership between the establishment and the common people has yet to be achieved. It appears that granting power to one side means taking it from the other. Under the current social arrangement, politicians are often forced to choose sides between big business and the general population.

To explore this issue further, this paper examines the lives of two prominent political contemporaries who governed during similarly turbulent historical times and had similar tools at their disposal, yet used them differently. These two men were Huey P. Long, former Governor and U.S. Senator from Louisiana, and Maurice Duplessis, Premier of Quebec. Through comparison and contrast, this research supports the thesis that a political tool is nothing more than that — a tool that can be used either to give power to the people or to take it away from them.

Life of the Kingfish: Huey P. Long

Huey P. Long, a Democrat from Louisiana, became famous for his radical populist stance. His long career included service as Governor, election to the U.S. Senate, and a presidential bid against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. He sought to lead the country through turbulent financial times with a plan to restore wealth to the ailing American economy during the Great Depression.

Huey P. Long was born on August 30, 1893, in Winnfield, a rural area in the north-central portion of Louisiana. He was the son of Huey Pierce Long Sr. and Caledonia Palestine Tyson. His mother was of French descent. His family owned a farm and was, for the most part, middle class. He attended local schools and was said to be an excellent student with an astounding memory.

Long's first political act was to circulate a petition asking that the principal of Winn Parish be fired — a move that got him expelled from school. It is not surprising that Huey, with his fiery personality, went on to win a debating scholarship to attend Louisiana State University. However, he was unable to afford books and could not attend. He spent the next four years using his charisma as a traveling salesman, promoting canned goods and patent medicines, and also working as an auctioneer.

In 1913, Huey married Rose McConnell, a stenographer who had won a baking contest he promoted. They had a daughter named Rose and two sons, Russell and Palmer. As sales jobs grew scarce during World War I, Long briefly attended seminary classes at Oklahoma Baptist University, though he ultimately concluded that preaching did not suit him.

Long then pursued a legal education, attending the University of Oklahoma School of Law and later the Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. Using his characteristic charisma, he convinced the bar admissions board to let him sit for the bar exam after only one year of study. He passed, opened a private law practice in Winnfield, and quickly found himself representing small plaintiffs against large businesses — fighting for workers in compensation suits and taking pride in the fact that he never took a case against a poor man.

Long's most famous early case was a suit against Standard Oil for unfair business practices, challenging the company's outsized influence over state politics and its exploitation of Louisiana's oil supply. This victory won him an elected seat on the Louisiana Railroad Commission, secured on an anti-Standard Oil platform. His style featured fervent attacks on opponents, opposition to rate increases and monopolies, and an unwavering commitment to the common man.

Long continued to grow in popularity, winning a suit against Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph Company for unfair charges that returned $440,000 to approximately 80,000 customers — a victory he successfully upheld before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1924, he ran for Governor of Louisiana, attacking the Standard Oil–aligned political establishment, wearing his trademark white linen suits, and pioneering the use of sound trucks and public radio addresses. Though he came in third, the experience sharpened his political instincts.

After that loss, Long was reelected to the Public Service Commission and spent the intervening years building his reputation and political organization, deliberately supporting Catholic candidates to broaden his coalition. In 1928, he ran again for governor under the campaign slogan "Every man a king, but no one wears a crown" — a phrase originally associated with presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Long's campaign targeted the lower classes and concentrated on rural areas. He understood that oil companies and big business contributed money, but the poor and rural population contributed votes, and votes won elections.

Louisiana at the time of Long's campaign was burdened with severe problems: the highest illiteracy rate in the nation, families too poor to purchase school textbooks, a poll tax that effectively disenfranchised the poor, and selective literacy tests that excluded much of the population — with African Americans bearing the worst of these conditions. Long, having come from a rural farming background himself, sympathized deeply with the plight of the poor and ran explicitly as their champion.

Long won the 1928 election by a landslide, bridging the north and south populations of Louisiana. As governor, he moved aggressively to fulfill his campaign promises: providing free textbooks to schoolchildren, offering night courses to improve adult literacy, firing hundreds of political opponents from the state bureaucracy, and launching vast improvements to infrastructure — new roads, bridges, hospitals, and schools. These measures were popular with ordinary Louisianans but drew fierce opposition from those in power, whose financial interests were directly threatened.

In 1929, Long called a special legislative session to enact a tax on refined oil to fund his social reforms. In a surprise move, opponents used the session to bring impeachment charges against him — ranging from blasphemy to bribery to misuse of public funds — in what became known as "Bloody Monday." Long took his case directly to the people, arguing that the impeachment was a ruse by Standard Oil to deprive citizens of their rightful benefits. He then circulated a "Round Robin" document signed by more than one-third of Senate members stating that his offenses did not warrant removal. Since removal required a two-thirds vote, the impeachment effort collapsed. Long rewarded his loyal supporters with state jobs and favors, while growing increasingly harsh toward his enemies and founding a newspaper to promote his agenda. He also began receiving death threats and was forced to surround himself with bodyguards.

In 1930, Long won a seat in the U.S. Senate but delayed his resignation as governor, beginning his Senate term in 1932. During the 1930–1932 period, he continued to advance major infrastructure projects, including a bridge over the Mississippi River and a new Louisiana State Capitol building. He earned the nickname "the Kingfish" — after the leader of the Mystic Knights of the Sea Lodge on the popular Amos 'n' Andy radio show. When Lieutenant Governor Cyr attempted to claim the governorship on the grounds that Long, as Senator-elect, could no longer hold both offices, Long surrounded the capitol building with National Guard troops, fended off the attempt, and had Cyr removed from his position as Lieutenant Governor.

Long served in the U.S. Senate from 1932 to 1935, endearing himself to the public while drawing fierce opposition from fellow senators. Not one of his resolutions was passed by his colleagues. President Roosevelt regarded Long as dangerously radical and power-hungry. Long continued to maintain substantial control over Louisiana even while serving federally — a move widely criticized as blurring the boundary between state and federal authority. He reorganized the state government in ways that nearly eliminated local governance, passed a tax on newspaper earnings, and ultimately succeeded in enacting the oil tax that had once nearly cost him the governorship.

Long had long harbored presidential ambitions, famously planning his path from minor state office to governor to senator to the presidency — a plan his life followed precisely, save for the final step. His Share Our Wealth platform, which called for redistribution of concentrated wealth, resonated broadly with ordinary Americans suffering through the Depression. He was reportedly planning to break from the Democratic Party to run on this platform independently, giving Roosevelt a genuine challenge. Long was assassinated on September 8, 1935, shot in the Louisiana State Capitol building. His alleged assassin, Dr. Carl Weiss, was immediately killed by Long's bodyguards. The full circumstances of the assassination remain disputed. Long's funeral was attended by enormous crowds of supporters.

Maurice Duplessis, Premier of Quebec

Maurice Duplessis was a contemporary of Huey P. Long, though his background and approach to power were markedly different. He was born in Trois-Rivières, the son of a local politician, and obtained his law degree from the Université Laval's Montreal branch. He was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1913. Unlike Long, Duplessis had the financial support of his family and did not have to struggle to establish himself professionally. His father undoubtedly provided him with the connections and skills needed for a successful political career.

Like Long, Duplessis began his political career by winning a modest elected position, this time as a candidate for the Conservative Party of Quebec. He was reelected to a second term and won party leadership in 1933. He was also popular with reformists and liberals but did not exhibit the fiery extremism that characterized Long's early years.

Duplessis proved adept at using political scandal to unseat opponents. Two weeks before the 1935 provincial election, he formed the Action libérale nationale, drawing in liberals who had broken from the old Liberal Party of Quebec. He lost the election but managed to force out the winner by exploiting a family scandal that led to the winner's resignation. In the 1936 election, Duplessis and his newly formed Union Nationale party won decisively, ending thirty-nine years of Liberal rule. He won a second term as Premier in 1944 and eventually served five terms, four of them consecutive — the longest uninterrupted hold on power in Quebec's modern history. He became known as le chef — "the chief" or "the boss."

Duplessis's rule is best characterized as authoritarian. He relied on the patronage of important persons, anti-Communist propaganda, and forceful measures against labor unions to maintain control. Where Long used charisma and populist energy to gain power, Duplessis relied on coercion and elite alliances. One of the sharpest distinctions between the two leaders was their approach to education: Long actively promoted mass literacy and educational access, viewing ignorance as his greatest enemy, while Duplessis deliberately limited educational opportunities for ordinary citizens, using ignorance as a tool of social control. These divergent attitudes can be traced, in part, to their vastly different upbringings — Long had experienced poverty and educational deprivation firsthand, while Duplessis never faced such hardships.

Support for Duplessis came primarily from upper-class officials and Quebec's business elite. He strongly opposed labor unions, viewing them as a threat to the wealth of the upper class. Where Long passed legislation to limit the power of big business, Duplessis passed legislation to limit the power of the working class. Like Long, Duplessis cultivated ties with the Catholic Church, using its institutional support to advance his political agenda. He went further than Long in targeting specific religious minorities, actively opposing Jehovah's Witnesses and using his influence to revoke liquor licenses from their businesses. Long, by contrast, avoided actions that would create religious divisions within the Louisiana population, preferring to focus on broad economic and structural reforms.

Duplessis was also known for corruption, vote-fixing, and questionable alliances with the Roman Catholic Church. He was accused of framing Union Nationale opponent Daniel Johnson for voter fraud when approximately 4,000 fake voter slips were found inside a train station locker. The population often distrusted Duplessis but felt powerless to unseat him, given the network of business alliances and patronage that undergirded his rule.

Duplessis also used infrastructure — roads and bridges — as a means of coercion rather than uplift. He declared on one occasion that a badly needed bridge over the Trois-Rivières would not be built as long as the population elected a Liberal MNA from that district. He kept his word for the entire term the opposition held the seat, and in 1956 voters in that district switched to Duplessis's Union Nationale, feeling they had no other way to secure the improvements they desperately needed. Duplessis died in office in Schefferville, Quebec, on September 7, 1959. Shortly after his death, sweeping reforms transformed Quebec as power began to return to the people in what became known as the Quiet Revolution.

Conclusion: Tools of Freedom or Oppression

Long and Duplessis found that several key issues tugged at the heart of the populace. The first issue was that of class divisions. Duplessis fought to keep the classes divided, where the wealthy controlled as many aspects of the populace's lives as possible. Long wished to narrow the gap between the classes, though he faced strong opposition in doing so. Both leaders understood the central principle discussed at the outset — that big business and the people are in opposition, and that giving power to one means taking it from the other — and each used that understanding to his own ends.

Two issues above all others symbolized the balance of power between big business and the people. Long gave roads and bridges to the people, diverting funds from entrenched political interests to do so. Better roads and bridges gave rural Louisianans access to markets, jobs, and opportunities that had been denied to them for generations. If farmers could not get their products to market, they could not improve their circumstances, and without the ability to improve their circumstances, they posed no competitive threat to the monopolies and political alliances that had developed since the Reconstruction era. Long's infrastructure campaign was a visible symbol of his commitment to economic mobility for the poor. Duplessis understood infrastructure's power equally well but used it differently — dangling bridges and roads like a carrot on a stick, coercing the population into political submission. The voters' willingness to abandon their true preferences for the sake of a bridge demonstrates just how central physical infrastructure was to the lives and choices of ordinary people.

Education and literacy represent the second major instrument of control. Like roads and bridges, literacy and access to education open pathways to self-improvement. An illiterate population cannot scrutinize what those in power are doing; it must simply accept whatever the educated class decides. Education is essential to self-determination. Both Long and Duplessis understood this clearly. Duplessis worked to deprive the people of education in order to make them easier to govern. Long worked to give them education so they could shape their own destinies. The decision to provide or withhold educational resources stands as a defining marker between freedom and oppression.

Duplessis and Long both represent significant political figures of the mid-twentieth century. Both employed similar political tools — infrastructure investment, education policy, religious alliances, patronage, and legal mechanisms — to gain and exercise power. Yet as this research demonstrates, they used these tools in opposite ways and achieved opposite ends. The examination of their careers is a prime example of how the same instruments of governance can serve either freedom or oppression. The tool itself is not to blame; it is the purpose and intention of the person wielding it that makes all the difference.

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