"The great and grand dream of America that all men are created free and equal, endowed with the inalienable right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness— this great dream of America, this great light, and this great hope—has almost gone out of sight in this day and time, and everybody knows it; and there is a mere candle flicker here and yonder to take the place of what the great dream of America was supposed to be.

The people of this country have fought and have struggled, trying, by one process and the other, to bring about the change that would save the country to the ideal and purposes of America. They are met with the Democratic Party at one time and the Republican Party at another time, and both of them at another time, and nothing can be squeezed through these party organizations that goes far enough to bring the American people to a condition where they have such a thing as a livable country. We swapped the tyrant 3,000 miles away for a handful of financial slave-owning overlords who make the tyrant of Great Britain seem mild.

Much talk is indulged in to the effect that the great fortunes of the United States are sacred, that they have been built up by honest and individual initiative, that the funds were honorably acquired by men of genius far-visioned in thought. The fact that those fortunes have been acquired and that those who have built them for the financial masters have become impoverished is a sufficient proof that they have not been regularly and honorably acquired in this country.

Even if they had been that would not alter the case. I find that the Morgan and Rockefeller groups alone held, together, 341directorships in 112 banks, railroad, insurance, and other corporations, and one of this group made an after-dinner speech in which he said that a newspaper report had asserted that 12 men in the United States controlled the business of the nation, and in the same speech to this group he said, “And I am one of the 12 and you the balance, and this statement is correct.”

They pass laws under which people may be put in jail for utterances made in war times and other times, but you cannot stifle or keep from growing, as poverty and starvation and hunger increase in this country, the spirit of the American people, if there is going to be any spirit in America at all.

Unless we provide for the redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed; there is going to be no country left here very long. That may sound a little bit extravagant, but I tell you that we are not going to have this good little America here long if we do not take to redistribute the wealth of this country."

There have been many books written about Huey Long. This little book is not designed to be a comprehensive overview of his life and work. Those interested in Huey’s life are referred to Huey Long by Professor T. Harry Williams. That Pulitzer Prize-winning volume is probably the best overall study of this remarkable character. Our intent here is to provide the reader a broad-brush study of Huey’s career, coupled with a selection of writings by and about Huey that help us understand this larger-than-life legend in his own time.

As far as Huey’s assassination is concerned—and we’ll address that in the closing pages of this work—suffice it to say that if the individual widely believed to be responsible for the crime had not killed Huey, it’s quite likely that another individual (acting alone or part of a broader conspiracy) would have tried to do it, sooner rather than later.

You see, precisely because of his outspoken populist nationalism and his opposition to the powerful interests of Wall Street and its corresponding allies in the Rothschild banking dynasty of Europe, Huey was indeed “The Man They Had to Kill.” It’s as simple as that.

If Huey P. Long had ever achieved the presidency, he would have been responsible for serious “reform”—in the classic sense of the word—that would have made America (and the world) a very different place today.

We are indebted to the quite informative website located at spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ for the excellent and well-balanced summary of Huey’s career that is reproduced in this volume. This website is a treasure trove of information about politics and intrigue that is matched by few others.

Now, please sit back and join us in a colorful journey through the life and times of one of America’s most memorable figures—one whose brief but blazing appearance on the human radar screen is one that will not likely ever be matched.