The approaching "public corruption trial" (Daily Dunklin Democrat July 1-2, 2005) involving Lobbyist Bill Waris, a Kansas City Democrat, tends to prove the point, recently discussed in this space, that today's little pecuniary political peccadilloes can't hold a light to "old fashion" indigenous Democratic dollar depravity. We're talking about a miserable little $12,000 alleged bribe here. We Missourians are belittled by the very idea that an allegation of such a paltry political payoff would make the Associated Press wire, payoffs being so rampant among those on the state's "sugar tit," as Huey Long once put it. A $12,000 courtesy in this age of taxpayer funded big city sports arenas and payoffs from dope dealers makes the whole of our political body appear cheap. It is also an insult to the memory of Missouri's Democratic political "Boss of Bosses," the late Mr. Thomas J. Pendergast, one of the two "subject-politicos" in this piece, the other being Huey "Kingfish" Long.

Mr. Pendergast sometimes spent $50,000 per day on the horses, and that's in 1940's dollars (New York "Herald Tribune," January 26, 1942). However, he insisted that he was just in the cement business. There is a small stream called Brush Creek in Kansas City that Pendergast caused to be needlessly paved, nearly all fifteen miles of it. And maybe one should mention that "T. J." was grateful if bar owners bought their booze only from one of his firms, and it was considered a nice gesture when government contractors bought all their cement from him, and if you were in one of those "wide open" sin-serving type of businesses that needed "protecting" his henchmen were there to help you, for a fee. It's more than a rumor that some Kansas City hoods became unwilling "customers" of the "personalized" cement business. But, even the great Thomas Pendergast of Kansas City started losing his power in 1939 when he got caught by the IRS for tax evasion, and went to jail for 15 months. He apparently forgot to list the $430,000 he allegedly reaped from some grateful insurance companies for his help in settling a rate issue. "T. J" died soon after his release from prison. His political machine essentially died with him.

After the death of President Roosevelt, and a couple of years after WW II, the age of the political bosses was over, the Democratic political bosses lost the security that President Roosevelt's successes with the masses had given them, even though FDR apparently kept the most corrupt of them in check, nationally. The great exception to Rooseveltian control was the senator from Louisiana, Huey Long. "The Kingfish" had been murdered (1935) before his role in national politics, and his relationship with FDR, had fully developed, but their relationship was already strained.

Huey Long is well worth mentioning in any discussion of power politics. He was mightily feared by both the Democrat and Republican parties. He could have been president. President Roosevelt understood the threat of Huey P. Long's ability to woo and win the hearts of the common man. "The Kingfish" had won national admiration, and not only from the lower middle class of America, Mr. Roosevelt's major constituency.

At the tender age of 28, then Railroad Commissioner of Louisiana, Huey Long took on the giant Standard Oil Company, and won. He also fought for and won the sympathy and support of the "little man" for pushing the private utility companies for more equitable rates. When he became governor, in 1928, he made some radical changes in the Louisiana government. He abolished local government and took personal control of all educational, police, and fire, job appointments throughout the state. He made school textbooks free to all students. He built toll-free bridges and roads. He had absolute control of the state militia, judiciary, and election and tax-assessing politically sensitive machinery. He was gaining national power with his "Share the Wealth" program ("every man a king"), which was a sure "vote getter" among the depression shocked and near starving public. In the spring of 1935, the year of his murder, it was estimated that he would have won up to four million votes in the next year's presidential election, thus wielding a balance of power between the two major parties.

My interest in Huey Long began when I was about 12-years-old. My brother-in-law, T. H. Benoit of New Orleans, took me to see the site of Huey Long's assassination. I remember running my hands along the bullet chiseled marble wall at the murder site in the State Capitol Building at Baton Rouge. My interest in "The Kingfish" was to reach its highpoint while I was a student at Ole Miss, reading editorial and news article attacks on Huey Long in back issues of the New Orleans "Times Picayune" that are archived in the library, and with talking political science professors about Huey Long. To a man, they literally hated him, but they hated Abraham Lincoln too.

He was often unfairly compared to other politicians of his time, especially Hitler and Mussolini. Huey was not like them. He had a sense of humor, never murdered anyone, and was sincere in wanting to help "his people." He, a brilliant speaker and entertainer, once eliminated an opponent who had pieces of a political picnic lunch hanging from his beard and moustache. When the debate began, "The Kingfish" asked the crowd of good ole boys, "How can you believe a darn thing coming out of a trashy mouth like that?" The bearded, well-dressed, city slicker was doomed. The "Kingfish" once said, "I was born into politics, a wedded man, with a storm for my bride." ("Louisiana Hayride," Harnett T. Kane)

Huey Long would have become dangerous had he lived, because he did not have FDR's grounding in philosophical values, but to his credit, he built good roads so that farmers could get their crops to market (without being victims of toll roads and high railroad rates), he built hospitals for the poor, he built school buildings, and founded LSU for the benefit of the lower middle class, he abolished the poll tax; he did not harass nor bait black citizens (rare in politics of those times), he provided educational opportunities for the poor with free textbooks, and his Share the Wealth program had a perfectly sound social and economic basis for those hard times. Raymond Swing once wrote in the "Nation" magazine (January, 1935) that, "It was impossible to understand how dangerous Huey Long was, without understanding what good he did too."

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.